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A riot involving 2,000 workers broke out this past Sunday evening at a Northern Chinese Foxconn factory where components of Apple’s iphone5 are currently being manufactured. Five thousand police officers were sent in to stop the unrest at the Taiyuan plant, according to Xinhua, China’s official news agency.

The rioting, which took place in the dormitory area of the factory complex, ended after four hours resulting in about 40 people being hospitalized. By Monday night the factory was shut down and police in riot gear were guarding the entrance. As of this morning the factory is once again up and running racing to meet the enormous demand for the latest Apple iphone.

According to Foxconn, a Taiwanese company which employs about 79,000 people in its Taiyuan plant, the conflict started with an internal employee dispute. Yet, according to laborers working inside the plant who had posted messages online and via Twitter, the riot took place between employees and factory security forces after guards were seen violently beating up an employee.

Foxconn, the world’s largest manufacturer of electronic components for companies like Apple, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, has a total of 1 million employees working in factories around the world, including India, Hungary and Mexico. While Foxconn has said that it is working on improving conditions at its factories, in 2010, 14 workers committed suicide at one of its plants in China and Foxconn plants around the world have reported worker abuses including notoriously low wages.

GUEST: Robert Weil, author of Red Cat, White Cat: China and the Contradictions of Market Socialism, and of the forthcoming book, Is the Torch Passing? Resistance and Revolution in China and India