Swedish clothing giant Hennes & Mauritz AB (H&M) on Tuesday said that it was ending its relationship with a Chinese yarn producer over accusations of “forced labor” involving ethnic and religious minorities from China’s Xinjiang region.
The fashion retailer specified that it did not work with any garment factories in the region and that it would no longer source cotton from Xinjiang, which is China’s largest cotton-growing area.
A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank, published in March, pointed to H&M as one of the beneficiaries of a forced labor transfer program through their relationship with the dyed yarn producer Huafu Fashion Co’s (華孚時尚) factory in Anhui Province.
Photo: Reuters
However, H&M said in a statement that it had never had a relationship with the factory in Anhui, nor Huafu’s operations in Xinjiang.
H&M did concede that it has an “indirect business relationship with one mill” in Shangyu in Zhejiang Province, belonging to Huafu.
“While there are no indications for forced labor in the Shangyu mill, we have decided to, until we get more clarity around allegations of forced labor, phase out our indirect business relationship with Huafu Fashion Co, regardless of unit and province, within the next 12 months,” H&M said.
The company also said that it had conducted “an inquiry at all the garment manufacturing factories we work with in China aiming to ensure that they are not employing workers ... through what is reported on as labor transfer programs or employment schemes where forced labor is an increased risk.”
International pressure is building on the Chinese Communist Party over its actions in the resource-rich Xinjiang region, and the EU on Monday pressed China to let its independent observers into Xinjiang, binding human rights to future trade and investment deals with Beijing.
Rights groups say that more than 1 million Uighurs languish in political re-education camps, which Beijing describes as vocational training centers where education is given to lift the population out of poverty and to chisel away at Islamic radicalism.
China says that criticism of its handling of Xinjiang is politically motivated, and based on lies about what happens in the vast facilities it has built.
US Customs and Border Protection on Monday said it would bar a raft of Chinese products from Xinjiang over fears that they were made using forced labor.
China on Tuesday slammed the US move as “bullying” and dismissed accusations of forced labor as “a complete fabrication.”
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS