Chip Starnes, founder and president of Specialty Medical Supplies, has been “held hostage” since Friday at his own factory in Beijing… kind of. Appearing totally unaccompanied by his “captors,” Starnes talked openly with a reporter through a three-foot high gate. When the reporter asked why Starnes doesn’t just climb over and leave, he replied, “I think I could absolutely do that, but I think that would probably be the wrong impression to give at this point in time.”

Starnes says the dispute is over demands for unmerited pay. He recently laid off 30 workers after moving their jobs to India, and they received severance. He says the 80 employees refusing to let him leave “got jealous” and demanded the same severance, which he insists it would be “business suicide.”

The workers, who were quite happy to talk to the press, say that they haven’t been paid in two months, and that they simply want their wages.

Now, I can’t find much on Starnes, (except that he lives in lovely Parkland, Florida, where the estimated median house value is $873,176), but the minimum wage in Beijing is 1,400 Chinese Yuan, or $227.77 a month. While CBS seems all but assured of his innocence and victimhood, I am, to say the least, skeptical.