Just over a year ago, a group of researchers from Sheffield Hallam University in England published a report in which the potential ties of a Chinese clothing company with forced labor were documented. Members of the British Parliament mentioned the report prior to a debate in November that China criticized for 'slavery and forced labor from a different era'.
But smart shirts, a subsidiary of the manufacturer and clothing makes for large labels, presented a defamation. And in December a British judge gave a decision: the case would improve, which could lead to compensation paid from the university.
The provisional finding in the case against the university is the newest in a series of legal challenges that investigate the think tanks and universities that investigate human rights violations and safety violations by Chinese companies. In order to stop the unfavorable reports, which have led to a political debate and in some cases export limitations, the companies are getting back with slander accusations.
In recent years, Chinese companies have sued a dozen times threatening legal letters in a dozen times to destroying negative information in an attempt to destroy negative information in an attempt, with half of those coming in the past two years. The unusual tactic lends from a Playbook that is used by companies and celebrities to discourage harmful reports in the media.
The budding legal tactics of Chinese companies would be able to silence critics who shed light on problematic business practices in one of the most powerful countries in the world, warn researchers. The legal steps have a hair -raising effect on their work, they say, and in many cases that make the finances of their organizations.
The problem has been pronounced in such a way that the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party of the American House of Representatives in September gave a hearing on the issue.
The researchers in these cases “are confronted with a choice: quiet and again against the pressure campaign of the CCP or continue to tell the truth and are confronted with the enormous reputation and financial costs of these lawsuits alone”, the chairman of the committee, representative John Moolenaar, a Republican in Michigan, said during the hearing.
He added: “The Chinese Communist Party uses the American legal system to silence those they can expose them in America.”
The struggle between Chinese companies and critical researchers has escalated because the tensions between the United States and China are mounted on trade, technology and territory.
Washington has taken steps to limit China access to resources such as chips needed for artificial intelligence, and in recent days the Trump administration has imposed a rate of 10 percent on all Chinese imports. Beijing prevented measures, including limits for the export of rare earth minerals and an antimonopoly investigation into Google.
In the past decade, researchers have documented problematic business practices in China – mainly depending on publicly available records and photos and videos. These reports have contributed to showing how products for American and European companies have benefited from an epidemic of forced labor by ethnic minorities in China. Researchers have also thrown lightly on potential security errors, which increases national security problems, as well as problematic connections between companies and the government.
Now, Chinese companies are increasingly taking up Western lawyers to combat reports of this on allegations of defamation.
One of the first examples took place in 2019 when Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications giant, threatened to sue the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, an Australian think tank. Aspi had released a report with accusations that servers that Huawei provided to a coalition of African countries sent data to Shanghai.
The Chinese embassy in 2020 gave the Australian government a list of 14 complaints that it wanted to tackle to improve relations between the countries. Complaints include the financing of Australia of Aspi, something that Huawei had lobby to stop after the report. (From 2024, the Australian government continued to finance the organization, according to the newest disclosures of the group.)
The embassy of Huawei and China did not respond to requests for comments.
Aspi remains a target of Chinese company threats on its research into topics, including the use of forced labor. The legal costs of the think tank, including staff time for Chinese-related legal matters, have risen from zero in 2018 to 219,000 Australian dollars, almost 2 percent of the annual budget of 12.5 million dollars.
“They are mountains of legal letters, who go around, go around and say,” We are going to sue, “said Danielle Cave, a director at Aspi.” It's pretty stressful and it is designed to distract you. “
More recently, companies have issued similar threats to researchers in the United States and Great Britain.
Eric Sayers, who focuses on the American technology policy at the think tank of the American Enterprise Institute, received a letter from lawyers in September who demanded that he gets an opinion article that he co-wrote about a Chinese drone company, Autel Robotics. The article, published by Defense News, a trading publication, said that Chinese drones made a national security risk because they could allocate the American infrastructure.
The representatives of Autel called the article “defamatory and harmful” and threatened to sue if it was not removed, although they eventually dropped the case.
Mr Sayers placed the letter on X as a warning for other researchers. He wrote that it was how the Chinese government “Lawfare looks like within our democracy.”
In May, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University published a report from Anna Puglisi, a researcher who had recently left. The report said that the Chinese government was probably involved in financing the growth of BGI, a Chinese biotechnology company.
In a letter in June, BGI accused Mrs. Puglisi of making defamatory claims and demanded that she withdrew the report.
“We remain disappointed by the report of Mrs. Puglisi, especially the many mistakes in it,” BGI said in a statement to the New York Times.
Mrs. Puglisi was made public with her experience during testimony for the House Committee in September.
“Speaking today can endanger me,” Mrs. Puglisi told the committee, “but I feel open democracy.”
After Mrs. Puglisi testified, Dewey Murdick, the executive director of her former think tank in Georgetown, said that the organization was behind her research.
“We have carried out a careful evaluation and have found no evidence to contradict the findings or conclusions of the report,” he said in a post on LinkedIn. BGI has not taken any legal action against Mrs. Puglisi.
In England, the researchers from Sheffield Hallam University contacted Smart Shirts in November 2023, while preparing the report at the parent company for forced labor practices, according to legal documents. After some back and forth, in which the company denied the allegations, the university published the report in December.
In a complaint submitted to the British Supreme Court that month, Smart Shirts said that the report was incorrect and its affairs to make shirts for brands such as Hugo Boss, Ralph Lauren and Burberry. Smart shirts said it believed that the allegations “spread through the Grapevine effect” among his customers.
The British slander laws are more favorable for claimants than the laws in the United States, making Britain a popular place for individuals to complain news broadcasts and others about things they write.
The university refused to comment.
In a statement to the Times, Smart Shirts said that the Supply Chain investigation welcomed, but it was disappointed that Sheffield Hallam had published the report without first allowing the company to correct inaccuracies.
“Our suit is aimed at tackling the material damage to our company resulting from their misleading report,” the company said. “It is not aimed at suppressing the important work of researchers in general.”
