Founder of TikTok owner ByteDance jumps to top of China's rich list

Zhang Yiming, founder and global CEO of ByteDance, poses in Palo Alto, California ·

Mon, October 28, 2024

By Casey Hall

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming is China's richest person, with personal wealth of $49.3 billion, an annual rich list showed on Tuesday, although counterparts in real estate and renewables have fared less well.

Zhang, 41, who stepped down as chief executive of ByteDance in 2021, becomes the 18th individual to be crowned China's richest person in the 26 years since the Hurun China Rich List was first published.

He overtook bottled water magnate Zhong Shanshan, who slipped to second place as his fortune dropped 24% to $47.9 billion.

Despite a legal battle over its U.S. assets, ByteDance's global revenue grew 30% last year to $110 billion, Hurun said, helping to propel Zhang's personal fortune.

Third on the list was Tencent's low-profile founder, Pony Ma, while Colin Huang, founder of PDD Holdings, slipped to fourth place from third last year, even as his firm's discount-focused e-commerce platforms, Pinduoduo and Temu, continue to show healthy revenue growth.

The number of billionaires on the list dropped by 142 to 753, shrinking more than a third from its 2021 peak.

"China’s economy and stock markets had a difficult year," said Hurun Report Chairman Rupert Hoogewerf.

The most dramatic falls in fortunes have come from China's real estate sector, he added, while consumer electronics is clearly rising fast, with Xiaomi founder Lei Jun adding $5 billion to his wealth this year.

"Solar panel, lithium battery and EV makers have had a challenging year, as competition intensified, leading to a glut, and the threat of tariffs added to uncertainties," said Hoogewerf, who is also the list's chief researcher.

"Solar panel makers saw their wealth down as much as 80% from the 2021 peak, while battery and EV makers were down by half and a quarter respectively."

(Reporting by Casey Hall; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Sino-African economic partnership deepened

By Wang Keju (China Daily)

September 07, 2024

China and Africa are set to take their economic and trade partnership to greater heights, with advancing mutual openness, bolstering industrial integration and fostering cooperation in emerging sectors high on the agenda, Premier Li Qiang said on Friday.

Entrepreneurs have also been called on to channel more investment toward boosting economic development and meeting urgent societal needs, Li said in a speech at the opening ceremony of the eighth Conference of Chinese and African Entrepreneurs held in Beijing.

Economic and trade cooperation between China and Africa stands as a cornerstone of their partnership, yielding fruitful outcomes in recent years and providing robust support for the joint advancement toward modernization of both sides, he said.

Going forward, China will expand unilateral market access to least developed countries and widen the green channel for African agricultural exports to China, he added.

China is also committed to advancing mutual openness with Africa, and will expedite the process of negotiating and signing of framework agreements on jointly developing economic partnerships, in an effort to better drive trade and investment facilitation, the premier said.

Noting the concerted push toward advancing industrial integration, Li said that China stands ready to deepen cooperation along the industrial chains with Africa, aiming to integrate the two regions more deeply into the global industrial and supply chains.

Moreover, China is keen to strengthen collaboration with Africa in areas such as the digital economy, artificial intelligence, and new energy, thus fostering the growth of new drivers of development and achieving fresh economic growth opportunities through joint efforts, he added.

The premier called on entrepreneurs from China and Africa to steadfastly deepen their cooperation, and play a bigger role in driving development not only within the China-Africa partnership but also on a global scale.

African officials and business executives said that the practical initiatives outlined at the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation hold significant promise for accelerating the modernization efforts of African countries.

David Karl Ferreira, CEO of Vitality China under Discovery Ltd — a South Africa-based financial services provider — said that the company has benefited greatly from China's further opening-up of the financial sector in recent years and the country's super-large market.

With its vast consumer base, promising growth potential, and innovative prowess, China has emerged as a magnet for South African enterprises seeking to expand their footprint and capitalize on the country's economic dynamism, Ferreira said.

Meanwhile, Chinese enterprises doing business in Africa have been instrumental in providing a wealth of invaluable experiences to businesses across the continent, he added.

Lei Jun, founder and chairman of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, said that Africa's economic growth outpaces the global average, and the construction of the continent's Free Trade Area promotes cross-border trade cooperation and market integration.

Particularly noteworthy is the emergence of supportive policies for green transition in many African countries. Xiaomi is keen on seizing opportunities to enhance collaboration with African enterprises across various emerging industries, including new energy vehicles, Lei said.

Building on its presence in 16 African countries, including Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya, Xiaomi is gearing up to increase its investments across the continent, Lei added.

(Web editor: Tian Yi, Wu Chaolan)

China stops short of debt relief for African nations but pledges more cash

President Xi Jinping is hosting leaders from more than 50 African countries in Beijing. 

Sep 07, 2024

BEIJING – China stopped short of providing the debt relief sought by many African countries this week, but pledged US$51 billion (S$66 billion) over three years in credit lines and investments.

The Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (Focac), launched in 2000, took on an enhanced role after the 2013 inception of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aims to recreate the ancient Silk Road for the world’s second-largest economy and biggest bilateral lender to Africa.

“China is moving back on to the front foot in terms of overseas deployment of capital in the emerging markets,” said Mr Hasnain Malik, head of equity research at tech firm Tellimer, while adding it is not yet at pre-Covid-19 levels.

China has also sought to use Focac to counter growing competition in Africa from the United States, European Union, Japan and others.

In Beijing, diplomats and delegates from around the world mingled in the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square as leaders from more than 50 African countries and Chinese officials led by Mr Xi gathered for a group photo.

The new financial pledge is more than what Beijing promised at the last Focac in 2021, but below the US$60 billion of 2015 and 2018, which marked the peak of lending to Africa under BRI.

During those peak years, Beijing bankrolled the construction of roads, railways and bridges. But a drying up of funds since 2019 has left Africa with stalled construction projects.

The new funds will go towards 30 infrastructure projects to improve trade links, China said, without giving details.

The 54-nation continent of more than a billion people has an annual infrastructure funding deficit estimated at US$100 billion, and needs transport links to make a new giant pan-African trade bloc a reality.

Beijing has in recent years cut funding for such projects as it shifted focus to “small and beautiful” projects, mainly due to its own domestic economic pressures and an increase in debt risks among African countries.

Asked how the new commitments fit into China’s current cautious overseas lending strategy, Ms Mao Ning, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, said there is no contradiction.

“The cooperation between China and African countries, including the specific implementation of projects, is discussed and determined by both sides,” she said at a news conference on Sept 6.

Currency swops

China also said it will launch 30 clean energy projects in Africa, offer cooperation on nuclear technology and tackle a power deficit that has delayed industrialisation efforts.

“The outcomes of the Focac summit signal an impetus for green projects and especially for renewable energy installations,” said Mr Goolam Ballim, head of research at South Africa’s Standard Bank.

China has become a global leader in wind and solar energy, Mr Ballim said, controlling significant supply chains and reducing production costs.

Others were sceptical.

“The issue is not so much about the size of the investments. It’s been about the lack of transparency around the terms of the debt,” said Mr Trang Nguyen, global head of emerging markets credit strategy at French bank BNP Paribas.

Success was less clear-cut for countries owing a large share of their debt to China, which made no express offer of assistance to those struggling with repayments.

Beijing instead urged other creditors “to participate in the handling and restructuring of African countries’ debts under the principle of joint actions and fair burden-sharing”.

African leaders hoping to bask in large deals for their countries had to settle for less splashy announcements.

Ethiopia and Mauritius announced new currency swop lines with China’s central bank. Kenya said it made progress on talks to reopen the lending taps for key projects like its modern railway to link the region.

Still, there was optimism from some, as they welcomed China’s increased commitments to Africa’s security, humanitarian challenges and other non-financial affairs.

“After nearly 70 years of hard work, China-Africa relations are at their best in history,” Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu said on her X account. REUTERS

 

Researchers use AI and robot dog to combat invasive fire ants

Society of Chemical Industry

 

image: 

CyberDog RIFA nest detection system at work

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Credit: Dr Hualong Qiu, Guangdong Academy of Forestry

A multidisciplinary research team based across China and Brazil has used a dog-like robot and AI to create a new way to find fire ant nests. Published in the SCI journal Pest Management Science, the study highlights how a ‘CyberDog’ robot integrated with an AI model can automate the identification and control of Red Imported Fire Ants (RIFA), a globally destructive pest. 
Field tests carried out by the researchers reveal the robotic system can significantly outperform human inspectors, identifying three times more RIFA nests with greater precision. Eduardo Fox, postdoctoral researcher at State University of Goiás in Brazil, and corresponding author of the study explained the motivation behind this pest management approach. 
“Fire ant nests are difficult for untrained personnel to identify and confirm in the field, and searching large areas can be time-consuming and exhausting under the hot sun. A robot could automatically locate the nests without requiring specially trained individuals and operate at various times of the day regardless of temperature conditions.”
Controlling an invasive species
RIFA is one of the most destructive pests worldwide. Accidentally introduced to the United States in the 1930s, they have since spread as an invasive organism across numerous areas including China, Japan and Europe, causing extensive environmental damage and economic losses. 
Discussing the importance of detecting RIFA nests, Fox noted, “RIFA proliferate rapidly in established areas, displacing local fauna and flora by outcompeting and eliminating sensitive species. Small vertebrates, such as birds and reptiles, are particularly vulnerable. Additionally, RIFA associates with significant agricultural pests like mealybugs and can damage some plants, exposing them to pathogens.”
Conventional approaches to controlling RIFA populations involve the use of pesticides, at the risk of harming local ecosystems. To implement effective and targeted RIFA control strategies which minimise the harm to native species, extensive monitoring of populations is essential.
Training the dog
The team utilised Xiaomi's CyberDog robot, integrating it with a machine learning model trained on a comprehensive dataset of over 1,100 RIFA nest images. This approach resulted in a nest detection precision rate of over 90%.
They conducted rigorous field tests to measure the system's effectiveness. The CyberDog was programmed to press the nest with its front paw: when a fire ant nest mound is disturbed, the workers will rush out from cracks and openings displaying aggressive behaviour. This, the researchers said, is key for diagnosing active mounds from abandoned nests, and to avoid false positives with mounds inhabited by other species.
Hualong Qiu, a researcher at Guangdong Academy of Forestry in China, and corresponding author of the study explained: “A group of students received official standard training for quarantine inspectors and were tasked with locating fire ant nests in an open field. Subsequently, the AI-trained robot was challenged with the same field, and the performances of the students and the robot were compared.”
Challenges and future directions
Despite the promising results, the researchers acknowledge several challenges in scaling up the technology. “The primary limitations to scaling the use of robots are their battery autonomy, which lasts about 30 minutes, and the high cost of acquiring more agile and efficient models”, noted Zheng Yan, a researcher at Lanzhou University in China and corresponding author of the study.
“Currently, it is still more expensive using the robot system than through the traditional approach, but we believe production costs may optimise this with time,” he said.
Improving public awareness with robots
The study's findings could have a significant impact on pest control policies and public awareness. “In addition to being versatile machines for navigating urban environments, robot dogs attract a lot of public attention. Fire ants pose a serious threat in China, yet most people remain unaware of the dangers of invasive fire ant nests in public areas. Therefore, sightings of robots tracking fire ant nests are likely to captivate the public and raise awareness about the presence of fire ants”, Yan said.

CyberDog RIFA nest detection system at work 

 

Credit

Dr Hualong Qiu, Guangdong Academy of Forestry

Journal

Pest Management Science

DOI

10.1002/ps.8254 

Article Title

The implementation of robotic dogs in automatic detection and surveillance of red imported fire ant nests

COI Statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

 

Numerous manufacturers use insecure android kernels

In an analysis of smartphones of ten manufacturers, researchers at TU Graz have found that the Android kernels used are vulnerable to known attacks – so-called one-day exploits – despite existing protection mechanisms.

Graz University of Technology

 

image: 

The kernels of many Android smartphones are not as secure as they could be.

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Credit: Lunghammer - TU Graz

Smartphones are a constant companion and important work tool for many people. In addition to contacts, appointments and emails, the devices are increasingly being used for sensitive tasks such as online banking or official matters. This increases the safety requirements. As Lukas Maar, Florian Draschbacher, Lukas Lamster and Stefan Mangard from the Institute of Applied Information Processing and Communications at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) have discovered in a comprehensive analysis of the Android kernels of the ten largest and most well-known smartphone manufacturers, there are numerous flaws here that allow one-day exploits using already known attack methods. The researchers presented their findings on 15 August at the Usenix Security Symposium in Philadelphia, USA.

Depending on the manufacturer and model, only between 29 and 55 per cent of the 994 smartphones tested by the research team were able to prevent attacks. In contrast, the Generic Kernel Image (GKI) version 6.1 provided by Google would be able to prevent around 85 per cent of attacks. Compared to the GKI, the manufacturer kernels performed up to 4.6 times worse in defending against attacks. The research team analysed devices from these manufacturers that came onto the market between 2018 and 2023 (listing from the most secure to the least secure): Google, Realme, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Vivo, Samsung, Motorola, Huawei, Oppo und Fairphone. The Android versions used on these smartphones ranged from versions 9 to 14, while the kernels covered the range from versions 3.10 to 6.1, with manufacturers who rely on lower kernel versions also offering less security.

Effective defence mechanisms rarely activated

Another key point of the analysis is that there are already effective defences for a number of the known attack methods, but they are either rarely activated in the manufacturers’ kernels or the kernels are configured incorrectly. As a result, even kernel version 3.1 from 2014 with all security measures activated could provide better protection against known attacks than around 38 per cent of the kernels configured by the manufacturers themselves. The researchers also found that manufacturers’ low-end models were around 24 per cent more at risk than high-end models. One important reason for this is the loss of performance that additional security measures can cause, which is why they are often deactivated in low-end models to conserve resources.

“We hope that our results will help to ensure that more effective security measures can be found in manufacturers’ kernels in the future, making Android more secure,” says Lukas Maar. “We also shared our analysis with the manufacturers investigated and Google, Fairphone, Motorola, Huawei and Samsung have taken note – some have even released patches. We have also suggested that Google update the Android Compatibility Definition Document (CDD), which sets out the framework of requirements for devices to be compatible with Android. Google itself has emphasised that it is aware of the problem and wants to strengthen the integration of kernel security measures step by step. However, it is up to the manufacturers whether they want to sacrifice performance for this.”

This project was funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) as part of the SEIZE project and is part of the Field of Expertise “Information, Communication & Computing”, one of the five strategic focus areas at TU Graz.

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Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

A REUTERS SPECIAL REPORT
Apple supplier Foxconn rejects married women from India iPhone jobs

Two unidentified women wearing backpacks stand outside a security office in January last year at the main entrance to Foxconn's factory in Sriperumbudur, near Chennai, where workers assemble iPhones for Apple. 

REUTERS/Praveen Paramasivam

Foxconn, a major manufacturer of Apple devices, has been excluding female candidates from assembly jobs at its flagship Indian smartphone plant because they are married. Both companies’ codes of conduct state that workers shouldn't be discriminated against on the basis of marital status.

By PRAVEEN PARAMASIVAM, MUNSIF VENGATTIL and ADITYA KALRA
Filed June 25, 202
SRIPERUMBUDUR, India

The two women standing near the entrance to the iPhone factory in southern India were upset.

Parvathi and Janaki, sisters in their 20s, had come to the plant, run by major Apple supplier Foxconn, for interviews in March 2023 after seeing job ads on WhatsApp. But they had been turned away at the main gate by a security officer who stopped them and asked: “Are you married?”

“We didn’t get the jobs as we both are married,” Parvathi later said in an interview at her village shanty. “Even the auto-rickshaw driver who took us from the bus stand to the Foxconn facility told us they wouldn't take married women,” she added. “We thought we would still give it a shot.”

A Reuters investigation has found that Foxconn has systematically excluded married women from jobs at its main India iPhone assembly plant, on the grounds they have more family responsibilities than their unmarried counterparts. S. Paul, a former human-resources executive at Foxconn India, said the company’s executives verbally convey the recruitment rules to its Indian hiring agencies, which Foxconn tasks with scouting for candidates, bringing them in for interviews and employing them.

Foxconn typically doesn’t hire married women because of “cultural issues” and societal pressures, said Paul, who said he left the company in August 2023 for a better-paying role at a consulting firm. The company’s view was that there were “many issues post-marriage,” Paul added. Among them: Women “have babies after marriage.”

“Risk factors increase when you hire married women,” he said.

Paul’s account was corroborated by 17 employees from more than a dozen Foxconn hiring agencies in India, and four current and former Foxconn human-resources executives. Twelve of these sources spoke on condition of anonymity.

The agents and the Foxconn HR sources cited family duties, pregnancy and higher absenteeism as reasons why Foxconn did not hire married women at the plant, located at Sriperumbudur, near the city of Chennai. Many of these people also said jewelry worn by married Hindu women could interfere with production.

The ban isn’t absolute. Three former Foxconn HR executives told Reuters that the Taiwan-headquartered manufacturer relaxes the practice of not hiring married women during high-production periods when it sometimes faces labor shortages. In some cases, hiring agencies help female candidates conceal their marital status to secure jobs, Reuters found.

In response to questions from Reuters, Apple and Foxconn acknowledged lapses in hiring practices in 2022 and said they had worked to address the issues. All the discriminatory practices documented by Reuters at the Sriperumbudur plant, however, took place in 2023 and 2024. The companies didn't address those instances. They also didn’t specify whether any of the lapses in 2022 related to the hiring of married women.

Job aspirants talk with a hiring agent outside the Foxconn iPhone plant in Sriperumbudur, in Tamil Nadu state, in April. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has advocated for the removal of barriers that restrict women’s access to economic opportunities. 

REUTERS/Palani Kumar


“Risk factors increase when you hire married women.”S. Paul, former Foxconn HR executive, describing the company’s stance

While Indian law doesn’t bar companies from discriminating in hiring based on marital status, Apple’s and Foxconn’s policies prohibit such practice in their supply chains.

Apple told Reuters it upholds the “highest supply chain standards in the industry,” and noted that Foxconn employs some married women in India.

“When concerns about hiring practices were first raised in 2022 we immediately took action and worked with our supplier to conduct monthly audits to identify issues and ensure that our high standards are upheld,” Apple said in a statement. “All of our suppliers in India hire married women, including Foxconn.”

In a statement, Foxconn said it “vigorously refutes allegations of employment discrimination based on marital status, gender, religion or any other form.”

The exposure of the factory’s hiring practices turns a new spotlight on one of the highest-profile foreign investments in India.

Apple, one of the world’s most valuable companies, is positioning India as an alternative manufacturing base to China amid geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for its part, sees Foxconn’s iPhone factory and Apple’s broader supply chain in India as helping the world’s most populous country move up the economic value chain.

Apple, Foxconn and other big companies also play a key role in another imperative of Modi’s: the removal of societal impediments that prevent many Indian women from getting jobs.

While Foxconn employs thousands of women in India, discrimination on the basis of marital status risks undercutting Modi’s aims.

Modi’s administration has tried to overhaul labor laws to make hiring and firing easier and prevent gender-based discrimination in recruitment. Still, those measures are yet to be implemented and would not specifically address discrimination on the basis of marital status.

The hiring curbs at the iPhone plant also show the challenge for both Apple and Foxconn in upholding their stated global standards of inclusion while expanding their supply chains in this fast-growing but largely conservative country.

Between January 2023 and May 2024, Reuters made more than 20 trips to Sriperumbudur and spoke to dozens of jobseekers about the hiring process. Reporters also reviewed a candidate information pamphlet, dozens of job ads and records of WhatsApp discussions in which four of Foxconn’s third-party recruiters stated to prospective candidates that only unmarried women were eligible for assembly jobs. The ads make no mention of the hiring of men.

For some Indian women, a job building iPhones is a ticket out of extreme poverty. The Foxconn positions offer food and accommodation and a monthly paycheck of about $200, roughly in line with India’s per capita GDP. Such jobs are the kind of opportunities offered by multinational companies that the government has encouraged to help lift living standards.

Women board a Foxconn factory bus near the village of Molachur in April. REUTERS/Palani Kumar

Foxconn buses carry workers near the entrance to the Sriperumbudur factory. Assembly jobs at the iPhone plant pay around $200 a month. 

REUTERS/Palani Kumar


Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer, outsources its hiring of assembly-line workers to third-party vendors, who must be registered with the Tamil Nadu state government as official Foxconn service providers. The hiring agents scout for and screen the candidates, who ultimately are interviewed and selected by Foxconn. These same vendors directly employ the workers and manage the payroll, getting paid about $10 to $15 a month per employee, three hiring agents said.

Apple and Foxconn each require their suppliers to adhere to their respective codes of conduct.

Foxconn’s code states it is committed to a workforce free of “unlawful discrimination,” and that the company and its suppliers should not discriminate over marital status, gender and other factors in hiring. Apple’s code for suppliers states that they and their subsidiaries, as well as any subcontractors, should not discriminate against any worker based on age, gender, marital status and other matters.

In its statement, Foxconn said, “We enhanced our management process for hiring agencies in India in 2022 and identified four agencies that were posting ads that did not meet our standards,” without naming the agencies. “We took corrective action with those agencies and more than 20 job ads were removed.”

Further, Foxconn said that in its latest round of hiring, almost 25% of the women it hired were married, without specifying the number or where they were employed.

Modi’s office, and India’s federal ministries of labor, commerce and information technology, did not respond to requests for comment about Foxconn not hiring married women on its assembly lines. Tamil Nadu officials, including the chief minister’s office and the state ministries of industry and labor, also did not respond to questions.

Reuters could not establish when the practice of not hiring married women for assembly line work began. Thanga Rasu, a recruiter at Go Staffing, a hiring vendor for Foxconn, said in November 2023 that he had attended meetings with Foxconn officials for around a year and the “unmarried rule” had been in place during that period.

Assembly lines entirely or predominantly staffed by women have emerged in some industries in India. That’s in line with Modi’s efforts to boost female labor-force participation – which official data shows is around 37%, compared with almost 80% for men.

Scooter maker Ola Electric is an example of another company with a focus on hiring women. Bhavish Aggarwal, the founder, said on X in May that Ola runs one of the largest "women only automotive plants," where almost 5,000 work, with a plan to "grow to tens of thousands in the coming years.” Ola declined to comment about its hiring practices.

‘Betterment of society’

Despite the country’s economic boom, many women in India remain confined to household chores and childcare. Since taking office in 2014, Modi has put women at the center of his government’s plans to increase incomes.

“When women prosper, the world prospers,” Modi said in an address to a ministerial conference on women’s empowerment last August. “We must work to remove the barriers that restrict their access to markets, global value chains and affordable finance.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook gestures during the inauguration of India's first Apple retail store in Mumbai in April last year. The South Asian country is increasingly important to Apple, which is moving some production beyond China.

 REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas

Apple and Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, are central to those goals. When Apple CEO Tim Cook visited India last year, Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said he discussed “job creation especially for women” with the executive. Vaishnaw’s then-deputy, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, has also lauded Apple’s ecosystem for generating more than 150,000 jobs in the past three years.

Apple, in turn, has bet on India as its next growth frontier and a pillar of its efforts to shift production beyond China. India will account for about 9% to 14% of iPhone production globally this year, compared with 86% to 91% in China, according to Taiwan-based Isaiah Research. Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at TF International Securities, has predicted India’s share could reach and even exceed 20% this year. Apple did not address a Reuters query about these estimates.

India is also important to Foxconn, which last year exported devices worth $5 billion from the country, according to commercially available customs data. Led by chairman Young Liu, Foxconn in recent years has expanded in India, where it makes iPhones and products for other smartphone brands, including China’s Xiaomi, and plans to move into AirPods and chipmaking.

In January, Modi’s government awarded Liu India’s third-highest civilian honor. “Let’s do our part for manufacturing in India and for the betterment of society,” Liu said on receiving the award.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi greets Foxconn Chairman Young Liu during SemiconIndia, an annual semiconductor conference, in the city of Gandhinagar in July last year. During intense production periods, Foxconn relaxes its practice of not hiring married women on its assembly lines to mitigate labor shortages, three former Foxconn HR executives said. 

REUTERS/Amit Dave

Most iPhones made in India are produced at the Sriperumbudur plant, about 25 miles west of Chennai. The factory began producing the Apple devices in 2019. It now employs thousands of women on its assembly lines.

In a forum hosted by the Center for Emerging Markets at Northeastern University in 2022, Josh Foulger, then a top Foxconn executive in India, said the company was “completely aligned with” the Indian government’s plans to boost manufacturing. He described how Foxconn opted to hire a workforce in India that overwhelmingly comprised women.

“For me it was a no-brainer,” Foulger said, crediting his mother, a former school teacher, with giving him the idea. “We tried it and it was a fantastic success.”

Foulger said women migrated from around India to work for Foxconn, attracted by its provision of safe accommodation. He added that Foxconn also hires men – “amazing guys who program all the robots” – as technicians and engineers.

Foulger, who left Foxconn earlier this year, declined to comment about the manufacturer’s hiring methods.

Josh Foulger, then a senior executive at Foxconn India, has said it was a “no-brainer” for the company to hire an overwhelmingly female workforce in the country. He said he got the idea from his mother, a former school teacher. 

REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee

Many of the people who spoke to Reuters also attributed Foxconn’s hiring practices to what they said were the company’s concerns that married Hindu women wear metal toe rings known in southern India as metti and necklaces called thaali to signify the bond of marriage.

These customary ornaments could interfere with the manufacturing process, and married women won’t typically remove them, according to five of the hiring vendors and three current and former HR executives. Electrostatic discharge could occur when metals come into contact with phone components, potentially damaging them, one current and one former Foxconn HR executive said.

Additionally, three current and former engineers for Foxconn and an affiliate company, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, said women were screened for metals on entering and leaving the assembly lines, and that the prohibition on ornaments helped security officers prevent any theft of components.

Reuters could not independently ascertain whether ornaments affected the manufacturing process.

In its statement, Foxconn said “married women are welcome to wear traditional metal ornaments while working in our facilities,” without elaborating.

Suhasini Rao, a Bengaluru-based lawyer specializing in Indian labor regulations, said it would be reasonable for a business to require a person to remove ornaments for safety or quality-control reasons as a condition of employment, provided that was conveyed clearly.

Discrimination solely on the basis of marital status, while not prohibited in the private sector under Indian law, “may interfere with an individual’s fundamental right to freedom of trade and occupation and might be struck down by the courts, if challenged,” Rao said.

There is legal precedent on the subject of firing married women on the grounds of absenteeism.

Married Hindu women typically wear jewelry like this necklace, known in southern India as thaali. Hiring vendors for Foxconn said that the metal ornaments could interfere with the iPhone manufacturing process and so were a reason not to employ married women on the company’s assembly lines. REUTERS/Priyanshu Singh
Married Hindu women also wear jewelry like this toe ring, known as metti. REUTERS/Priyanshu Singh

In 1965, India’s Supreme Court struck down a pharmaceutical company’s practice of terminating the employment of women in its packing and labeling department when they got married.

The company, Messrs International Franchises, had argued that it required consistent attendance that “cannot be expected from married women,” and that there was “greater absenteeism among married women.”

The four judges determined there was “nothing to show that married women would necessarily be more likely to be absent than unmarried women,” and “there is no good and convincing reason why such a rule should continue.” Reuters was unable to determine if the company is still operating.


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Foxconn has faced scrutiny over the years for its culture and work environment, most notably in China, where it runs the world's biggest iPhone factory in Zhengzhou with 200,000 workers.

A spate of suicides by Foxconn employees in China more than a decade ago prompted questions from their families and labor rights groups about work conditions. Foxconn largely attributed the deaths to workers’ personal problems, and set up counseling hotlines.

In India, protests broke out at the Sriperumbudur plant in December 2021, leading to a brief production halt, after more than 250 workers suffered food poisoning.

That episode led Apple to dispatch independent auditors to assess conditions in workers’ facilities. Both Apple and Foxconn said they found some dormitories and dining rooms did not meet required standards, and Apple briefly put the plant on probation. Two days before the plant partially resumed operations in January 2022, Apple said that it would continue to monitor conditions at workers’ dorms and dining facilities.

Married ‘not allowed’

In addition to the sisters, Parvathi and Janaki, Reuters spoke to five other women who said they were rejected by Foxconn’s hiring vendors on the grounds that they were married.

Priya Darshini received the news in a WhatsApp group chat, which a recruiter from SS Enterprises, one of the hiring agencies, had created to scout for candidates.

Darshini posed questions to the group in August 2023, according to a transcript reviewed by Reuters: “I have a baby. Are there child care facilities? Could I bring my baby? Age is 2. Salary?”

The recruiter, T. Balu, sent a curt reply: Married “not allowed.”

Asked about his response, Balu told Reuters that Foxconn does not hire married women, who wear ornaments, because it wants to ensure a metal-free zone.

Darshini, who is in her late 20s, told Reuters she is seeking help from friends and family to find a job that would allow her to care for her child.

Paul, the former HR executive, said Foxconn management advises its hiring vendors not to mention marital and age criteria in their job ads.

But in some instances, vendors did not heed that advice.

“Job vacancy for Only Female … iPhone Manufacturing … Age: 19 to 30 Unmarried,” said an ad posted by a recruiter at Proodle, a hiring agency for Foxconn, in a publicly accessible WhatsApp group in February 2024.

A YouTube ad for Foxconn jobs posted by recruiter Cumans Manpower in July last year sought “unmarried only” female candidates aged 18 to 28.

A job ad posted on YouTube (left) by recruiter Cumans in July 2023 and an information pamphlet distributed by a Groveman recruiter outside the Foxconn factory in March last year sought applications from unmarried women only. Both hiring agencies are among the third-party vendors used by Foxconn. 

Credit: Screenshot of Cumans ad via YouTube

A recruiter with SS Enterprises also posted a Facebook ad in September 2023 that specified the same requirements and contained a link to a Foxconn job application. The ad became inaccessible in late May after Reuters sent questions to SS Enterprises for this story.

When Reuters visited Sriperumbudur in March 2023, a recruiter was standing outside the Foxconn plant and wearing a badge of the hiring agency Groveman Global. She handed a job pamphlet to a Reuters reporter. It advertised mobile-phone manufacturing roles, which the recruiter, who identified herself only as Kaviya, said were Foxconn assembly positions.

The pamphlet stated the jobs were for “unmarried women” aged 18 to 32, with a monthly salary of about $163 for those who live in company hostels and $220 for those who don’t. Foxconn doesn’t hire married women, Kaviya told Reuters, without elaborating.

None of the hiring agencies identified by Reuters responded to questions about the job ads and employment practices at the Foxconn plant.

Proodle, Cumans, Groveman and SS Enterprises are among the agencies registered by Foxconn as contractors with the Tamil Nadu government for providing assembly line helpers, according to copies of contractor licenses Reuters obtained from the state government under India’s Right to Information Act.

Suppliers that violate Apple’s code of conduct can face probation, suspension and even lose their entire business with Apple. The company said in its 2024 supply chain report that since 2009, it has removed 25 manufacturing supplier facilities and 231 material processors for failure to meet its standards.

In China, at least six online job ads reviewed by Reuters show workers engaged in iPhone assembly at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant can earn $400 to $800 a month, more than double the wages in India. The Chinese ads do not mention marital status or gender, saying anyone aged 18 to 48 can apply.

Concealing status

In Sriperumbudur, a road junction a little over a mile from the Foxconn plant is a hotspot for recruiters to meet candidates. Many jobseekers travel with their families from far-flung villages; if hired they are expected to start immediately.

If a married woman somehow makes it inside for an interview during the typical hiring season, Foxconn officials remain on the lookout for telltale metal ornaments, according to one current and one former Foxconn HR executive. Those wearing the ornaments are then turned away with the explanation that there had been a miscommunication or that recruitment had been paused, the people said.

But there are ways to bypass the system.

After she and her sister were turned away at the factory gate, Parvathi told Reuters that their recruiter, whose name she did not know, told them they should have removed their ornaments to conceal their marital status and gain entry.

Five recruitment agency officials also said candidates can conceal their marital status to secure jobs if their Indian government-issued ID card, known as Aadhaar, still reflects them as unmarried.


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M. Malathi, a Cumans recruiter, said candidates who had not updated their marital status on Aadhaar and were willing to remove ornaments “could be helped by manpower agencies, and Cumans does help.”

Reuters spoke to a married woman from a town near Chennai, who said she used that strategy to work at Foxconn for a year, undetected, before quitting for personal reasons in 2023.

“It helped that I didn’t wear metal ornaments to work,” said the woman. Reuters is withholding her name so as not to harm her future prospects.

“You don't need many educational qualifications. I liked it there. I want to go back when the opportunity comes.”

Auto-rickshaws pass by billboards promoting Apple’s iPhone X devices in Mumbai. Most iPhones made in India are produced at Foxconn’s Sriperumbudur plant.

 REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas


Additional reporting by Jatindra Dash in Bhubaneswar, India, Sethuraman N R in Bengaluru, and Shanghai Newsroom


Wives Out

By Praveen Paramasivam, Munsif Vengattil and Aditya Kalra

Photo editing: Edgar Su

Art direction: Catherine Tai

Edited by David Crawshaw

PDD Holdings' Colin Huang and ByteDance's Zhang Yiming top China's tech rich list

South China Morning Post
Thu, Jun 13, 2024

Colin Huang Zheng, the 44-year-old founder of PDD Holdings, and Zhang Yiming, the 41-year-old founder of ByteDance, are the richest tech entrepreneurs in China, according to a list published by Chinese magazine New Fortune on Wednesday.

Huang, whose wealth is largely derived from the popularity of budget e-commerce platforms Pinduoduo and Temu, has a personal wealth of 425 billion yuan (US$59 billion), followed by Zhang, whose 21 per cent stake in TikTok's parent company gives him a personal net worth of 340 billion yuan.

The two young billionaires were followed in the rankings by Tencent Holdings' founder Pony Ma Huateng, Alibaba Group Holding's founder Jack Ma, and NetEase founder William Ding Lei. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

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However, China's richest man is Zhong Shanshan, in the traditional mineral water business, with a personal wealth of 456 billion yuan, according to the list.

The Pinduoduo logo is seen on a smartphone in this arranged photograph. Photo: Shutterstock Images alt=The Pinduoduo logo is seen on a smartphone in this arranged photograph. Photo: Shutterstock Images>

Gains in the share price of Nasdaq-listed PDD Holdings enabled Huang - whose net worth nearly doubled last year - to overtake Zhang as richest tech founder. Pinduoduo is famous for its cheap price strategy in China, posting revenues of 147.6 billion yuan in 2023, a hefty increase of 90 per cent from the year before.

ByteDance's Zhang fell below Huang on the rich list, as China's most valuable private company faces fresh pressure to sell the US operations of its flagship short video app TikTok to American investors or be banned from app stores in the country.

Few tech billionaires in China celebrate making it to the rich list, given Beijing's regulatory crackdowns on the tech sector in recent years, and the ongoing Sino-US tech war. Huang and Zhang, who both stepped down as chairman of their respective companies, have deliberately stayed out of the public view in recent years.

China's internet service sector continues to generate billionaires. Xu Yangtian, the founder of fast fashion giant Shein, ranked 22nd on the list with a personal wealth of 81 billion yuan, while Cai Haoyu, the 37-year-old co-founder of miHoYo, a gaming studio, ranked No 26 with a personal wealth of 73.8 billion yuan.

However, China's super rich are dwarfed by their US tech counterparts. Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, has a personal net worth of US$209.8 billion, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is worth US$204.3 billion, according to the Forbes real time billionaires list on Thursday.

China's electric vehicle industry (EV) and pharmaceutical sectors are also represented on the billionaires list. Xiaomi's founder, Lei Jun, who only joined the EV industry this year, leapt onto the New Fortune rich list with a 10.3 billion yuan worth of family wealth, almost on par with BYD founder Wang Chuanfu. Robin Zeng Shuqun, founder of the world's largest battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology, was listed as China's 7th richest person, with a net worth of 168 billion yuan

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