SHANGHAI — A 19-year-old employee was found dead Tuesday morning in what appears to have been the ninth suicide this year at a factory in southern China operated by Foxconn Technology, one of the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturers, according to China’s state-run news media.

Foxconn, which produces electronics and computer components for Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and other global companies, has been struggling this year to explain a string of suicides among young workers at its huge complexes in the city of Shenzhen, where the company employs about 420,000 workers.

A spokesman for Foxconn, a unit of Hon Hai Precision Industry of Taiwan, could not be reached for comment Tuesday, and the Shenzhen police did not return phone calls. But Xinhua, China’s official news agency, said the Shenzhen police had reported that a young man they identified as Li Hai had apparently jumped to his death at 6:20 a.m. Tuesday at Foxconn.

Wang Tongxin, vice chairman of the general labor union in Shenzhen, a government-controlled organization, said the Shenzhen police had alerted his organization to the death Tuesday.