German car manufacturer Volkswagen and Taiwanese Apple partner Foxconn keep their factories in Chengdu running during the corona lockdown in the Chinese metropolis.
The employees of the automaker VW, which has a factory in the city together with its local partner China FAW Group, remain on the company premises via a so-called closed system and are not allowed to have contact with outsiders.
Foxconn, which makes the iPhone and other devices from the American tech company Apple, also uses this method to continue production in the city during the lockdown. The method was first used at the Beijing Winter Olympics as a way to keep athletes and support staff separate from the rest of the population. The closed system generally requires that companies are only allowed to use staff who stay on the factory site and are regularly tested for the coronavirus.
During previous lockdowns in Shanghai, companies were also allowed to remain open through such a closed system. A Tesla factory, among other things, could continue to produce in this way. Factories that did not have their own living quarters for employees set up part of the factory space as a sleeping place, whereby workers would also have slept on the floor.
Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan Province and is an important economic center. The city is an important center for industrial companies such as the Chinese car manufacturer Geely and the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota. The Sichuan factory of Swedish car brand Volvo Cars, which is owned by Geely, has suspended production due to the lockdown. In addition, the two factories of the Japanese Hitachi in Chengdu, where elevators and escalators are made, have reduced production on the orders of the Chinese authorities.
The residents of Chengdu have been in lockdown since Thursday and will be tested massively for the coronavirus in the coming days. It is unclear whether the lockdown will be lifted once the testing campaign is completed in the course of Sunday. The economic damage depends on the duration of the lockdown. The city, already hit by extreme drought and flooding in recent weeks, accounts for 1.7 percent of China’s gross domestic product.