FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
An image of the deceased Liu Fuzong [1] provided
by the Guangzhou Daily
Based on a China Labor Watch (CLW) investigation and media reports, CLW has come to understand that a 14-year old boy named Liu Fuzong (see note below) died suddenly on May 21, 2013 at Dongguan Jinchuan Electronic Company, Ltd., a factory which currently produces motherboards for ASUS and which belongs to the 3CEMS Group, a company that has produced for Samsung, Canon, and Sony. Despite official investigation, as of May 28, Jinchuan Electronics still has child workers.
On February 27, Liu Fuzong was sent by the Dongguan Wantong Labor Dispatch Company into Jinchuan Electronics to work. He entered the factory using the ID of a person named Su Longda, who was 18 years old. But Fuzong was only 14 years old. Jinchuan Electronics has already confirmed this information to media.
On May 21, Fuzong was found by co-workers dead on his dorm bed. According to the hospital's report, the cause of death was “sudden death”.
Students workers at Jinchuan told CLW that workers, no matter their age, all worked 12-hour shifts with two breaks for meals, though overtime may extend beyond 12 hours if production quotas require it. The students also said that they came recently with a group of 80 young students from a school in Sichuan, and some of these students were children under the age of 16.
Jinchuan Electronics was investigated by the Dongguan City Bureau of Human Resources after the death of Fuzong, but CW does not yet what specific punishment the government will give to Jinchuan.
[1] Liu Fuzong's name, in Chinese, is actually Liufu Zong. He has a rare family name spelled Liufu. However, in order to stay consistent with most English publications, we have continued to spell his name Liu Fuzong above.
**May 29, 2013 (6:20PM) UPDATE
On the 3CEMS website yesterday, Samsung was listed as a partner of the company. But when we went on the website today, Samsung had been deleted from the 3CEMS history. Only by using the search terms "3CEMS" and "Samsung" did we find the archived website from the 3CEMS website that included information about being a Samsung partner. This press release has been changed to reflect this information.