China shuts down world’s largest electronics market

Beijing, August 29

China’s technology hub Shenzhen on Monday ordered the closure of the world’s largest electronics wholesale market to contain a recent spike in coronavirus cases in the southern city, amid a call by a leading Chinese think tank for a change in the country’s ‘zero-Covid’ policy that it said was causing widespread disruption of business.

Merchants in the Huaqiangbei district, home to the world’s largest electronics market, received an official notice that the market will be closed till Thursday to contain the Covid spread. All tenants are required to work from home and take a nucleic acid test every day, Hong Kong-based daily quoted one of the district’s biggest operators, Huaqiang Electronics World.

Key manufacturing enterprises, including telecommunications equipment giant Huawei Technologies Co, China’s top chip maker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp and Apple supplier Foxconn Technology Group, were ordered to follow a “closed-loop” system for a week that restricted movement of employees, while keeping their production schedules on track.