[It is not clear why the three labor activists, who were working for an activist group called China Labor Watch, were detained while others were not, or whether the connection to President Trump’s daughter played a role. Still, Ms. Trump’s involvement complicates what might otherwise have been a more-or-less routine call from the United States for China to improve its human rights practices.]
By Keith Bradsher
 |
|
An
assembly line at a Huajian International factory in Dongguan, China. The
factory
produces shoes
for a number of international brands, including Ivanka Trump’s line.
Credit
Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times
|
SHANGHAI
— China faces growing
pressure to release three labor activists detained for investigating conditions
at factories that make Ivanka Trump’s shoe brand, as experts warned that the
detentions could make it more difficult for other Western companies to take a
clear look at the practices of their Chinese suppliers.
Chinese officials on Tuesday dismissed a call
from the United States to release the activists and grant them judicial
protections and a fair trial. At a daily news briefing, Hua Chunying, a
spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said it was an internal
Chinese matter.
On Monday, Alicia Edwards, a deputy State
Department spokeswoman, said that such labor activists can help American
companies find abuses in the factories that make their products or parts. For
companies, she said, finding those abuses “can be essential in fulfilling their
own responsibilities and holding Chinese manufacturers accountable under
Chinese labor laws.”
That statement echoed the views of experts on
how foreign businesses use China’s vast numbers of factories to make their
products. While activists in general are commonly detained in China, labor
experts say that this represents the first time that China has held undercover
labor activists looking at the supply chains of Western companies. Their
continued detention, they said, could erode the confidence of companies that
they can find out what is really happening among their suppliers.
“To
the extent that a brand will only purchase items that it is confident were
produced free of labor abuse, limitations on independent monitors present a
serious obstacle to doing business in a jurisdiction,” said Aaron Halegua, a
research fellow at New York University’s Center for Labor and Employment Law,
It is not clear why the three labor
activists, who were working for an activist group called China Labor Watch,
were detained while others were not, or whether the connection to President
Trump’s daughter played a role. Still, Ms. Trump’s involvement complicates what
might otherwise have been a more-or-less routine call from the United States
for China to improve its human rights practices.
For the activists, it could also offer a
potential way out. If Ms. Trump called for their release, said Jerome Cohen,
the faculty director of New York University’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute, they could
quickly win their freedom or better treatment.
“There is no doubt that a statement by the
Ivanka Trump organization, expressing deep concern over the detention of labor
activists striving to improve working conditions, would be helpful to their
situation,” said Mr. Cohen, an influential academic since the 1960s on China’s
legal system. “It alone might bring about their release.”
The Ivanka Trump brand has declined to
comment on the case. Marc Fisher Footwear, which licenses and distributes the
brand, has said that it is looking into the allegations against Huajian
International, a Chinese company that makes shoes for a number of brands,
including Ms. Trump’s.
The three activists who disappeared last
month were investigating conditions at factories owned by Huajian. The chairman
of Huajian, Zhang Huarong, strongly denied in an interview in December that his
company had broken any labor laws, and company spokesmen have reiterated that
in recent days.
Hours after the statement from the United
States, a lawyer for one of the activists was allowed to hold a 90-minute
lunchtime meeting with his client at a detention center in Ganzhou in southern
China. The lawyer, Wen Yu, said he had previously been turned away twice in
attempts to meet his client, Hua Haifeng.
Mr. Wen said that his client described being
kept in a room crowded with about 20 suspects in various criminal cases. Mr.
Hua had to sleep just a foot from a bucket that detainees used to urinate
during the night, and the smell and noise made it hard for him to sleep, Mr.
Wen said.
Mr. Wen said that a second investigator who
had also been in Ganzhou, Su Heng, was being detained in a different room at
the same center, and had a different lawyer representing him.
Mr. Hua’s wife, Deng Guilian, said she had asked
a guard at the detention center if a third investigator, Li Zhao, was also
being held there and the guard had said yes. But Mr. Wen said he had not heard
of any lawyer being named to represent Mr. Li.
A spokesman for the Ganzhou police, who gave
only his surname, Wu, declined to comment on the men’s cases and referred
questions to a municipal propaganda office. Reached by phone, an official there
had no immediate response.
Mr. Hua is accused of illegal use of
eavesdropping or photographic equipment, Mr. Wen said, while the accusations
against the other two men have not been officially confirmed. China Labor Watch
said the three men were not engaged in illegal activity; Mr. Wen said his
client had used a cellphone in the factory to take photos but added that this
was legal.
Huajian makes 100,000 to 200,000 pairs of
Ivanka Trump shoes each year out of annual production of eight million pairs.
The company last made a batch of the Ivanka Trump brand in March, and was
planning to do another batch at the end of May, before the activists were
detained, China Labor Watch said.
China Labor Watch said the detentions marked
the first time in its 17 years of operation, including hundreds of
investigations, that any of its undercover activists had been detained. China
has been cautious about enacting legal protections for people who expose labor
abuses. The Chinese Communist Party strictly controls labor groups and forbids
independent unions.
At the same time, Beijing has also been wary
of seeming as if it is protecting Western companies and their suppliers against
the interests of Chinese workers. As a result, the Chinese government has
generally been somewhat more tolerant of labor activity at factories belonging
to multinationals, and to some extent at factories in their supply chains,
while taking a very strict stance toward any hint of independent labor actions
at purely domestic companies.
Anita Chan, a political scientist at
Australian National University, said some companies might have become numb over
the years to warnings about labor violations in their supply changes.
Complaints may seem constant, she said, and they might not mind if activists
find it harder to get inside a factory.
“Things haven’t changed very much,” she said,
“and it doesn’t embarrass them.”
Follow Keith Bradsher on Twitter
@KeithBradsher.
Ailin Tang contributed research.