Taiwanese Employees of Apple Supplier Detained in China

Chinese authorities have detained four employees of Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturer that makes Apple iPhones, Taiwan said, in the latest incident involving government scrutiny of the private sector in mainland China.The police in Zhengzhou, China, had accused each of the four Taiwanese workers of an offense comparable to Taiwan’s “crime of breach of trust,” according to a statement on Thursday from Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council.The council described Foxconn as saying that, “the company did not suffer any losses, and the four employees also did not harm the company’s interests.” The statement from the Taiwan government added that the detentions could have been the result of “corruption and abuse of power” by law enforcement officers.It was not clear what jobs the Foxconn employees performed.Foxconn, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of consumer electronics, plays a central role in making iPhones and other products for Apple.Foxconn did not immediately comment on Friday.Mao Ning, China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, did not address the detentions, which have been in the news in Taiwan for the past two days, during the ministry’s daily news conference on Thursday.

The ministry had no immediate response on Friday.Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council declined to elaborate on where or when the detentions had taken place.Some reports in Taiwanese news media said that all four Foxconn employees were detained in January in Zhengzhou, which is 400 miles southwest of Beijing.

Other reports said that two of the employees were detained in Zhengzhou in January and that two were detained in April in Shenzhen, which is in southern China.A woman answering the phone for the Zhengzhou police said that she was not personally aware of the case but that any questions would have to be answered by police media personnel, whose phone number she declined to provide.Since January, there have been 77 incidents in which Taiwanese have gone missing in mai...