Chinese companies use legal threats to stop foreign research
A little more than a year ago, a group of researchers at the University of Sheffield Halham in England published a report documenting a Chinese clothing company Possible relationships of forced work. Members of the British Parliament were martyred in the report before discussing November, which criticized China for “Slavery and forced work from another era“
But smart shirts, which is a subsidiary of the manufacturer and manufactures clothes for the main marks, filed a defamation suit. In December, a British judge issued a ruling: the case will move forward, which may lead to the damage to the university.
The initial conclusion in the issue against the university is the latest in a series of legal challenges that roam the tanks of thought and universities that search for human rights violations and security violations by Chinese companies. To stop the unfavorable reports, which led to a political debate and in some cases, companies are shooting on defamation charges.
Chinese companies have sued or sent legal messages threatening to researchers in the United States, Europe and Australia near dozens of times in recent years in an attempt to cancel negative information, with half of those who come in the past two years. The unusual tactics borrows from the playing book that companies and celebrities use to inhibit harmful news coverage in the media.
Researchers warn that the legal tactic arising from Chinese companies can control critics who highlight the problematic commercial practices within one of the most powerful countries in the world. They say that the legal procedure has a chilling effect on their work, and in many cases it strains the resources of their organizations.
The problem has become very clear, the chosen committee of the US House of Representatives on the Communist Party A hearing was held on this issue In September.
Researchers in these cases “face an option: be silent and retract the pressure campaign in CCP or continue to say the truth and face the enormous reputation and financial costs of these lawsuits alone”, the head of the committee, and the actor, John Molina, and Republican Michigan said in the hearing.
He added: “The Chinese Communist Party is using the American legal system to silence those who may display them in America.”
The battle between Chinese companies and critical researchers escalated with the installation of tensions between the United States and China due to trade, technology and land.
Washington has taken steps to limit China’s access to resources such as chips for artificial intelligence, and in recent days the Trump administration has imposed a 10 percent tariff on all Chinese imports. Beijing responded with measures that include the limits of exporting rare ground minerals and the investigation of border anti -Google.
Over the past decade, the researchers – who are mainly dependent on records, photographs and videos available to the public – have documented problematic commercial practices in China. These reports helped show how the products made to American and European companies benefited from the forced work epidemic by the ethnic Uyghur minorities in China. The researchers also highlighted the potential security defects, increased national security concerns, as well as problematic ties between companies and the government.
Now, Chinese companies are increasingly employ Western lawyers to combat these types of reports on defamation allegations.
One of the first examples occurred in 2019 when Huawei, the Chinese communications giant, threatened to prosecute the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, an Australian research tank. ASPI issued a report containing allegations that the servers submitted by Huawei to an alliance from African countries were sending data to Shanghai.
In 2020, the Chinese Embassy gave the Australian government a list 14 complaints He wanted to address him to improve relations between countries. Grievances included Australia’s financing for ASPI, which Huawei pressed to stop after its report. (As of 2024, the Australian government continued to finance the organization, according to the latest group Disclosure))
Huawei and China’s embassy did not respond to the suspension requests.
ASPI is still a target of the Chinese company’s threats to its research on topics including the use of forced labor. The legal costs of the research tank, including the time of employees in Chinese legal issues, increased from scratch in 2018 to $ 219,000, or approximately 2 percent of its annual budget of $ 12.5 million.
“It is a mountain of legal, dressed messages,” said Daniel Kaif, a manager at ASPI.
Recently, companies have issued similar threats to researchers in the United States and Britain.
Eric Cires, who focuses on the US -Chinese technology policy at the American Institute Research Center, Receive a message In September of lawyers who are calling for an opinion article, he participated in writing about a Chinese drone company, Autel Robotics. The article that was It was published by defense newsA commercial publication said that Chinese Chinese drones are a threat to national security because they can appoint the American infrastructure.
AUTEL representatives described the article “The Dore and the Dead” and threatened to prosecute if it was not removed, although they eventually dropped it.
Mr. Sirers posted the message to X as a warning to other researchers. It has been written that this is what the Chinese government “Lawfare inside our democracy” seems to be.
In May, the Georgetown Emerging Security and Technology Center published a report issued by Anna Boglisi, the researcher who recently left. The report said that the Chinese government is likely to participate in financing BGI growth, a Chinese biotechnology company.
In the June speech, BGI accused Mrs. Puglisi submitting defaming claims and demanded the decline in the report.
“We are still disappointed by Mrs. Boglisi’s report, especially the many mistakes in it,” BG said in a statement to the New York Times.
Mrs. Boglisi issued publicly with her experience during a certificate before the House of Representatives in September.
“Speaking out today may put me in an additional danger” to open democracy. “
After Mrs. Boglisi, Dewey Mordec, the executive director of her former reservoir in Georgetown, said that the organization had been behind her research.
He said in a post on LinkedIn: “We had a careful review and we did not find any evidence that contradicts the results or conclusions of the report.” BGI did not take legal measures against Puglisi.
In England, researchers at the University of Sheffield Halham called smart shirts in November 2023 while preparing the report linking his mother company to forced work practices, according to legal documents. After some of them from behind, during which the company denied allegations, the university published the report in December.
In a complaint submitted to the British Supreme Court of that month, smart shirts said that the report was wrong and was at risk of his business for brands such as Hugo Boss, Ralph Lauren and Burberry. Smart shirts said it believed that allegations “spread through the effect of grapes” among its customers.
British defamation laws are more suitable for prosecutors than laws in the United States, making Britain a popular place for individuals to prosecute news and others about the things they write.
The university refused to comment.
In a statement to the Times, smart shirts said it welcomed the supply chain research, but was disappointed that Sheffield Halim had published the report without allowing the company first to correct inaccuracy.
The company said: “It aims to address the material damage that arises from our works arising from their misleading report,” the company said. “It is not intended to suppress the important work for researchers in general.”