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The
appeal, sent by Gou in a letter more than a month ago, played a
major role in convincing China's leadership to quickly reopen
the economy and move away from its zero-tolerance COVID-19
policy, the report said on Thursday, citing people familiar with
the matter.
Gou's office said in a statement that it "sternly denies" the
facts in the report. Foxconn, which is the biggest assembler of
iPhones, declined to comment, while China's State Council
Information Office could not be immediately reached for comment.
Gou retired from Foxconn in 2019 and has no formal role within
the company any more, though remains influential.
The Taiwan-based company's Zhengzhou plant, which saw a
month-long unrest in November, has lifted its "closed-loop"
management curbs on Thursday.
The Zhengzhou plant had been grappling with strict COVID
restrictions that fuelled discontent among workers over factory
conditions, triggering an 11.4% year-on-year drop in November
revenue.
Some Wall Street analysts cut their iPhone shipment targets for
the all-important holiday quarter as a result of turmoil at the
major iPhone factory.
Chinese health officials and government advisers seized on Gou's
letter to bolster the case that the government needed to speed
up its efforts to ease its tough COVID-19 controls, the report
added.
(Reporting by Chavi Mehta in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by
Sarah Wu; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Sam Holmes)
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