China Releases Activists Scrutinizing Ivanka Trump Shoe Factory<br />By KEITH BRADSHERJUNE 28, 2017<br />DALIAN, China — Three undercover investigators who were seeking evidence of abusive labor practices in the manufacture of Ivanka Trump-branded shoes have been<br />released on bail from a detention center in southeastern China pending a trial, the activist group that employed the investigators said on Wednesday.<br />Two of the men — Li Zhao and Hua Haifeng — worked undercover in the giant Dongguan factory of Huajian International, a Chinese company<br />that claims to make shoes worn by one in every 10 women in the United States.<br />China Labor Watch contends that Huajian requires its workers to labor up to 18 hours in a day, violating China’s regulatory limits on overtime, and<br />that they were paid less than they had been promised when they agreed to work for the company.<br />Zhang Huarong, the company’s founder and chairman, strongly denied in a lengthy interview at the Dongguan factory in December<br />that Huajian had violated labor laws, and company spokesmen have reiterated that position since then.<br />Mr. Li and Mr. Hua were also detained in Ganzhou because they had fled there to join<br />Mr. Su after they became worried that the police were monitoring them in Dongguan.<br />China Labor Watch, the group that sent the men into two factories that produce Ivanka Trump shoes, called for them to receive a fair trial.<br />China Labor Watch contends that further batches were scheduled to be manufactured for the brand at the end of May and in June, and<br />that its investigators had been planning to document the production of those shoes but were detained by the authorities days beforehand.
