Zhengzhou

Capital of Henan province, China.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
Breakneck	Dan Wang	journey waypoint	After Shenzhen outgrew its labour pool Foxconn moved to Sichuan, Chongqing, the Shanghai region and Henan.

Breakneck — Dan Wang (2025)

Source: Readwise highlight

These regions remain major production sites for Apple, the biggest of which is in Henan’s capital city of Zhengzhou. At peak season, Zhengzhou has the capacity to employ around 350,000 people.

• Role: journey waypoint
• In the book: After Shenzhen outgrew its labour pool Foxconn moved to Sichuan, Chongqing, the Shanghai region and Henan. Henan officials ‘borrowed’ coal-company workers in 2016, put up to 3,000 high school students on assembly lines in 2017, recruited retired PLA personnel in 2022; Foxconn’s Henan sites saw some of the most dramatic zero-Covid protests, with young men throwing bricks at riot police.
• Why it matters: Illustrates how local officials compete to supply labour to Apple’s biggest plant. Text names only the city, so the pin is the city.