A Covid outbreak has locked down ‘China’s Silicon Valley’ which is likely to result in global supply chain disruption.
A recent Covid-19 outbreak has locked down all production in Shenzhen, a city that borders Hong Kong and is notable for being the ‘Silicon Valley’ of China. With manufacturing and transportation at a standstill, popular products like the Galaxy S22 Ultra, MacBook Pro laptops and the iPhone 13 could all soon become much harder to find in stock. With the city of 17.5 million people now being asked to suspend production (if the business is deemed to be non-essential), the global source for most of the world’s gadgets is being brought to a standstill, which could result in a frustratingly familiar scenario where new tech becomes harder to get our hands on. Foxconn announced that it’s stopping production at its Longhua and Guanlan factories until further notice, and is especially notable as the world’s biggest manufacturer of electronics, supplying aforementioned brands such as Apple and Samsung. While Foxconn has several factories located around the world, The Verge reports that the Shenzen one is the second largest in China, which is where a majority of production takes place. Epidemiologist & health economist @DrEricDing claims that these new Covid restrictions in China have the potential to cause the world’s supply chain to « completely melt down for a period ».
