Slavery is Part of China, Inc’s Business Model; Slaves Were Even Brought to Brazil for a Chinese EV Plant
—Buck Throckmorton
Slavery is thriving in Chinese manufacturing, both in China proper, and at Chinese plants built in other countries. “Free traders” and others who blanch at the thought of corporations paying any labor expense have green-lit the aggressive renaissance of chattel labor in the 21st century. They are willfully blind to slave labor being the linchpin of the “China, Inc.” business model, because it gets labor expense as close to $0 as possible.
Meanwhile, libertarians and free traders say it’s all cool because consumers get lower prices. While I like to mock their buzzphrase “Tariffs are a tax on consumers,” they have effectively adopted a corollary phrase, “Abolishing slavery is a tax on consumers.” Sen. James Hammond of South Carolina made pretty much that exact argument in the 1850s when defending slavery in America.
The embrace of 21st century slavery as part of the globalist economic system is an abomination that I keep returning to, because slavery is as offensive now as it was 165 years ago. In a recent piece at The American Spectator titled “The War on Labor Expense is Renormalizing Slavery, Just in a 21st Century Form” I wrote, “So, despite America’s hangover from 19th-century slavery, many 21st-century libertarians still condone its practice overseas. If this type of slave labor offends our sensibilities when it occurs in Georgia, why is it acceptable for manufacturing that is outsourced to China to use the same labor system? The acceptance of slave labor anywhere in our supply chain makes the domestic acceptance of slavery possible.”
The Washington Post performed some important journalism recently in covering the horror of slaves being brought from China to the Americas to work at an electric vehicle plant in Brazil. It’s important to remember that if Chinese companies are brazen enough to use slave labor on foreign soil, think about how pernicious the use of slave labor is in China itself.
As weeks passed, Oliveira’s curiosity deepened. [The 56 Chinese laborers’] food was prepared in an improvAs ised kitchen in the garage, amid industrial detritus and vermin, and they never seemed to do anything for fun. All they did was work. “Seven days a week,” Oliveira, 35, recalled. “Sunday to Sunday. I never saw any one taking a day off.” They departed every morning at dawn and didn’t return until dusk. The hours in between were spent helping to build Latin America’s largest electric car factory for the world’s biggest electric automaker, China’s BYD.
Brazil welcomed the BYD electric vehicle operation because the intent was to provide manufacturing jobs for Brazilians. The intent was not to bring in foreign labor, and certainly not to import slaves. Perhaps because Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery (in 1888) it is very sensitive to those trying to find a workaround to bring it back. When word of slavery being used at the factory filtered up, the government investigated. It found hungry Chinese nationals living in squalor, and working all-day, seven days a week.
Chinese men were inhabiting practically every square inch. Most slept without mattresses. Trash lay everywhere. Food was stored on the ground. In one of the buildings, 31 laborers shared a single bathroom; it was coated with an “excess of sludge,” government inspectors reported. This went far beyond labor violations, the inspectors concluded. The workers enlisted by BYD to build its keystone factory in the Americas had been forced, they wrote, into conditions that recalled slavery.
Much like sex traffickers luring girls into prostitution with promises of a modeling career, BYD and its subcontractors lured poor Chinese men into slavery by promising them a high-paying, overseas job. Once in Brazil, their passports were confiscated, and the promised pay was withheld. Armed security patrolled their sleeping spaces to ensure they couldn’t escape.
As is often the case with modern-day slavery, there are layers of contractors and sub-contractors to muddy the issue of whom the slaves work for, and who is accountable.
But instead, BYD turned to a Rolodex of Chinese construction firms. The list included its longtime business partner, Jinjiang Construction Group, which BYD had hired more than a dozen times since 2017 to help build electric car plants, renewable battery factories and BYD monorails in dozens of locations across China, according to statements from both companies and Chinese state media.
Laborers in China have sued Jinjiang repeatedly, court records show, alleging unsafe working conditions and unpaid wages. Many have lost, not because they couldn’t produce evidence — but because they couldn’t prove they worked for Jinjiang. The use of nebulous subcontractors is common across China’s construction industry, labor advocates say, shielding businesses from accountability.
Jinjiang argued that the situation in Brazil was due to “cultural differences,” and it put out a statement reading, “The claims that Jinjiang’s workers were treated as ‘slaves’ and were ‘rescued’ are completely inconsistent with the facts.”
The same opaque system of “employment” was used by BYD and Jinjiang in Hungary.
“Many workers don’t even know who their legal employer is,” said Li Qiang, founder of the New York-based nonprofit China Labor Watch. His team recently interviewed 50 Jinjiang laborers working on the BYD factory in Hungary. In a letter to local authorities shared with The Post, the organization alleged “clear indicators of forced labor,” including 12-hour workdays and granting rest only when it rained.
Subcontracted slavery is still slavery. All the politicians, free traders, and EV fanboys who are excited about the promise of cheap Chinese EVs taking over the global auto market need to understand that they are active participants in the re-normalization of “the peculiar institution.”
Slavery is clearly not considered a problem in China. It’s policy. Slavery is a fundamental component of the business model for Chinese manufacturing. Those “free traders” who advocate for the use of Chinese manufacturing in the American supply chain are arguing in favor of slavery just as emphatically as John Calhoun or any other southern politician did in the antebellum era.
************************************
***************************
