Plan to double investment and employee numbers in India, and Foxconn will expand investment to celebrate Modi's birthday?

Source: Global TimesSeptember 17th is the birthday of Indian Prime Minister Modi. Foxconn, Apple's largest OEM manufacturer, celebrates Modi's birthday and plans to double its investment and workforce in India

Source: Global Times

September 17th is the birthday of Indian Prime Minister Modi. Foxconn, Apple's largest OEM manufacturer, celebrates Modi's birthday and plans to double its investment and workforce in India. The result has attracted hype from Western media.

Information map of Indian Prime Minister Modi

On the 17th, Foxconn India representative Li Jiaen sent a message in LinkedIn congratulating Modi on his 73rd birthday: "We will work even harder to give you a bigger birthday gift next year, with the goal of doubling the number of employees, direct investment, and business scale in India." Reuters reported that Foxconn already has an iPhone factory in Tamil Nadu, India, employing 40000 employees. In August of this year, the Indian state of Karnataka stated that Foxconn would invest $600 million in two projects in the state. According to Bloomberg, Foxconn plans to build a factory on 300 acres of land near Bangalore Airport, which is expected to create approximately 100000 jobs. The media hyped that Foxconn's expansion in India shows that China is at risk of losing its position as the world's largest producer of consumer electronics. Apple and other American brands are exploring alternative production locations in China, such as India and Vietnam.

But Foxconn's capacity transfer may not be smooth. According to the Indian Business Standards newspaper, Foxconn had been testing the Indian market as early as 2008, but it was not until 2017 that it moved the iPhone assembly line into India, and it was not until 2020 that it began producing the latest Apple products in India. According to the consumer digital media website 'Critical Point' in the United States, the progress of assembling the latest Apple products in India is slower than in China. According to India Today, Foxconn currently employs more than 720000 people in Chinese Mainland, compared with 40000 people in factories in Tamil Nadu. The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong recently reported that Foxconn provides generous signing bonuses and expands its workforce in China to meet the demand for Apple's new products. This recruitment boom highlights the fact that China remains an important manufacturing base for Apple.

There are also many obstacles within India. The Financial Times reported that the Modi government is providing subsidies to investors under the Production Linked Incentives (PLI) to attract manufacturing investment. But a person close to Foxconn said that subsidies from India are difficult to obtain. The report also mentioned that in July this year, Foxconn announced its plan to withdraw from establishing a semiconductor joint venture with Indian mining group Vedanta, precisely because the Indian government refused to approve the previously promised investment incentives. Some public opinion analysts believe that Foxconn's congratulatory letter to Modi is a reminder to fulfill investment incentives, otherwise it will lose a lot of job opportunities.

On the 18th, Qian Feng, a researcher at the National Institute of Strategic Studies at Tsinghua University, told Global Times that in recent years, under the influence of the geopolitical environment, especially the "decoupling and chain breaking" and "de risk" effects, some multinational enterprises are not abandoning the Chinese market on the one hand, but also searching for partial alternatives to China on the other hand. One of Foxconn's performances in this regard is to set up a factory in India to test water. India's market size, human resources, and proximity to the United States have led to high expectations from the outside world, but further improvement remains to be seen. In this context, Qian Feng believes that China needs to do a better job of high-quality opening up to the outside world, create a more friendly business environment and a more competitive market, and "strengthen itself and retain people".

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