Detained Over Ivanka Trump Factory Inspection, China Labor Activist Speaks Out

By KEITH BRADSHER

Workers on the assembly line in December at the Huajian Gongguan shoe factory, where merchandise for Ivanka Trump’s brand is made. The factory was being investigated by labor activists.

SHANGHAI — Hua Haifeng started May by taking a job at a factory that made shoes for the Ivanka Trump brand. 

By the end of the month, Mr. Hua, an experienced labor activist, was stranded in a crowded police holding cell, kicked by a fellow inmate and facing long interrogations about a wristwatch with a concealed video camera.
On Monday, in his first interviews since his release on bail, Mr. Hua described how he was barred from leaving mainland China, had been denied access to a lawyer, and had to sleep next to a bucket of urine while in custody.
The case involving Mr. Hua and two fellow activists has focused unwanted attention not only on poor labor practices in China, but also on the manufacturing operations of Ms. Trump, the president’s daughter and a special adviser in the White House.
China Labor Watch, a New York-based labor advocacy group, hired Mr. Hua, 36, in early May as a consultant to join two younger activists who had taken jobs at two Huajian International shoe factories in southern China. 

He was supposed to help them produce videos of labor conditions in the factories, then take them to Hong Kong, Mr. Hua said on Monday.

After he found a job at one of the factories in Dongguan, a city in southern China near Hong Kong, he learned the ultimate focus of their efforts: Ms. Trump’s brand. 

He said that the news made him resolve to be particularly thorough, but did not prompt him to worry that the case might be politically delicate.

“I thought President Trump was only doing the president’s job, and his daughter was only doing business,” he said.
When Mr. Hua tried to visit Hong Kong to discuss video details with Li Qiang, the founder and director of China Labor Watch, nearly two weeks later, he was stopped by Chinese border police and told that he could not leave mainland China. 

The next day, he fled 250 miles inland to Ganzhou, the location of the other factory, and met Li Zhao, one of the other China Labor Watch activists.
A day later, the police grabbed both of them and Su Heng, the third activist. 

The police took them to a detention center and put each in a different holding cell with common criminals.
Mr. Hua ended up in a cell with about 20 other men, who forced him to take the least desirable bunk: next to the urine bucket, where the smell and noise kept him awake at night. 

When he tried to warn the police the next day that his case would be internationally prominent and should be handled differently, another detainee stopped him with a swift kick.
“It was not a heavy kick,” Mr. Hua said. 

“I think he just wanted to warn me and didn’t want me to call for meeting the police.”
During the weeks that followed, Mr. Hua said, he was interrogated about 16 times, each time for periods between 30 minutes and three hours. 

He was not allowed access to a lawyer for the first week of his detention.
A State Department spokeswoman urged China on June 5, a week after the activists had been detained, to release the men and grant them legal protections and a fair trial. 

China rejected that request as an interference in its internal affairs, but soon allowed Mr. Hua access to a lawyer for the first time. 

China Labor Watch says the defendants have had very limited access to lawyers, and that the authorities have pressured the lawyers not to speak about the case.
The State Department spokeswoman, Alicia Edwards, also said that American companies benefited when undercover labor investigators could help make sure that Chinese manufacturers were respecting labor laws.
Ms. Trump has stayed silent about the case since the original detentions, while her company has repeatedly declined to comment and did so again Monday.
Local officials in Ganzhou released all three on bail from the detention facility on June 28, pending a trial, but have not yet indicted the men on specific charges or set a trial date. 

The Chinese authorities have repeatedly declined to comment on the case and had no comment Monday night. Chinese censors have deleted coverage of the case in mainland Chinese online media.
Mr. Hua said that he had decided during his four-week detention that he would speak to the news media after his release because he thought the public had a right to know about what he described as excessive work hours and other unfair or illegal labor practices at Huajian.
His two colleagues have kept low profiles since their release and could not be reached for comment. Li Zhao has changed mobile phones since his release. 

A relative of Mr. Su declined to pass a message on to him.
China Labor Watch has done hundreds of undercover inspections over the years of labor practices in supply chains of multinational companies, including Samsung and Apple. 

But this case is the first in which the Chinese authorities have detained the group’s activists, much less pushed them into the country’s labyrinthine criminal justice system, said Li Qiang, the organization’s founder.
Mr. Hua also said that a journalist had given him a wristwatch several years ago that could be used to record video, and added that the watch was a subject of repeated police questioning. 

But he said that he had never used it in any of his undercover work because the quality of the video was poor and the device’s battery life was extremely short.
He said that he had lent the watch to his fellow activist, Li Zhao, who also worked at the factory in Dongguan. 

Huajian International, which owns that factory and the one in Ganzhou, is a giant company that has manufactured shoes for the Ivanka Trump brand and many others. 

Mr. Li experimented briefly with the wristwatch but also concluded it was useless, Mr. Hua said.
Mr. Hua said he opted to use the camera on his mobile phone, but had only filmed while in public areas at the Dongguan factory.
Jerome Cohen, the faculty director of New York University’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute and the best-known Western specialist on China’s criminal justice system, said that the legality or illegality of any specific piece of equipment under Chinese eavesdropping laws was a complex subject on which the legal system would tend to defer to the judgment of the police.
While the Chinese government engages in extensive surveillance of the population, he added, “it wants to reserve for itself, not the public, the right to do so.”
Zhang Huarong, the chairman and founder of Huajian, and the company have denied that they broke any labor laws.

Defence to move secret files out of data hub after Chinese buy-in

• Chinese consortium bought 49pc stake in data hub's parent company
• Defence will shift data back into government hands once contract expires
• Moving data could cost up to $200 million

By Chris Uhlmann

The Defence Department will terminate its relationship with a Sydney data centre in 2020 and move its secret files back into a government-owned hub, because a Chinese consortium bought half of the centre's parent company.
The department is preparing to spend up to $200 million on the move, despite assurances from the company, Global Switch, that its files are secure.
Global Switch owns two high-security data centres in Ultimo where the company holds classified government information, including sensitive Defence and intelligence files.
The centres have massive storage capacity, multiple power sources, high-bandwidth internet connections and an Australian Signals Directorate-accredited gateway which allows secure access by public sector agencies.
The ownership of Global Switch changed in December when the London-based parent company, Aldersgate Investments, accepted $4 billion in cash for a 49 per cent stake from Chinese consortium Elegant Jubilee.
The investors were assembled by Li Qiang, who owns shares in one of China's leading data centre companies, Daily Tech.
The lead investor is the Jiangsu Sha Steel Group, described as the largest private steel enterprise in China.
Former British defence secretary, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, was among senior politicians and experts in the United Kingdom who raised security concerns when the deal was being forged.
The ABC has confirmed that the ownership change triggered a Foreign Investment Review Board investigation.
The Government then imposed strict new conditions on the company, including seeking an assurance that its Australian arm would continue to be 100 per cent owned and operated by Aldersgate Investments.
But in a sign that Defence now questions the wisdom of outsourcing sensitive data, the ABC has been told it will shift it all back into government hands once the contract with Global Switch expires in 2020.
Planning for that is already underway and could cost up to $200 million.

The executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Peter Jennings, said data management was a rapidly changing field.
"We see how sophisticated actors can use cyber techniques to steal information and if you combine that with ownership of companies which gives intelligence agencies access to both hardware and software, well that's a vulnerability," Mr Jennings said.
In a statement, Global Switch's group director, Asia-Pacific, Damon Reid, said the company did not discuss individual customers.
But he said the company was essentially a high-quality, technical real estate business.
"We don't provide IT services to customers nor do we have access to customer data," Mr Reid said.
"Our customers lease space which they fit out with their own secure cages with their own servers. Global Switch operates under the highest levels of security and our shareholders are restricted from physical access to the data centre."
Federal agencies began consolidating their data in privately owned centres under an arrangement struck seven years ago.
One of the requirements for a centre to qualify was that it demonstrate the credentials to store national security classified systems, from Restricted to Secret.
Files classified Top Secret are not held in private hands.

Telco Huawei ruled security risk by Australian Government
Five data centre operators in three states and territories were initially approved in a move designed to save $1 billion over 15 years.
Global Switch's Sydney operation was on the list.
It signed a 10-year lease agreement with Defence in 2010, as the department sought a new home for the data then held at an outdated facility in the Canberra suburb of Deakin.
The London-based company was established in 1998 and has 10 data centres around the world.
In 2004 it was bought by Aldersgate Investments, which is controlled by global private equity firm Reuben Brothers.
David and Simon Reuben are celebrated as the richest people in Britain.
In May it raised nearly $2 billion through two bond offerings as it cashed up for an expansion in new and existing markets.
Global Switch is currently planning eight new facilities, two of them in new markets: Hong Kong and Shanghai.
In April, Global Switch also announced a strategic partnership with the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world, Chinese multinational Huawei.
The Australian Government blocked Huawei from tendering for contracts in the National Broadband Network in 2012 because it believed the telco was a security risk.
The Government spends around a billion a year on data centres.