Revealed: Major NBA brands related to China’s forced labor | NBA

Beijing’s response was quick when Enes Kanter Freedom appeared on the basketball court of his Boston Celtics jersey, and a pair of coaches with the slogan of “Free Uyghur”.

“Literally, they canceled every Celtic game on TV [in China] For the rest of the year, the basketball player told the Bureau of Investigation News (tbij) and guardian. That game in October 2021 marked a turning point in his career. Freedom said: “That was when the NBA was really angry with me.”

Freedom, long a vocal critic of the Turkish government, studied the issue after his father, who was concerned, questioned China’s treatment of Muslim minorities.

In Xinjiang, the westernmost part of China, President Xi Jinping’s “war on terrorism” involves oppression and detention as a means to force ethnic minorities to integrate into major Chinese culture. Uyghurs Other ethnic minorities were also imprisoned in rehabilitation education camps and forced labor in factories across the country.

Freedom has been used to make statements in unconventional ways. He changed his last name from Kanter to becoming an American citizen. As he digs deeper, he finds it hard to believe that people don’t know what’s going on in Xinjiang. So he decided to do something about it.

“I’m in contact with these artists all over the world and I tell them to put all the struggles on their shoes,” he said. “I’m going to play basketball there.”

That was the 11th year of freedom NBA Profession. That will be his last one.

Teammates began to warn him, and later he testified before Congress that he would never join the league again. Shortly thereafter, he was released from his contract – the NBA said the move has nothing to do with his activism.

The cancelled Celtics broadcast is not the first time Beijing punishes the NBA: In 2019, Chinese state media pulled the game from his schedule after NBA commissioner Adam Silver defended Daryl Morey, a Houston Rockets executive who tweeted protesters in Hong Kong. This incident cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

China is the billion-dollar market for the NBA, and there are more basketball fans than Americans. Freedom said that the alliance has some view on China’s interests.

It is also a huge platform for Chinese brands to promote themselves to the world. Since then Dwyane Wade The contract with Nike’s Jordanian subsidiary was concluded and signed with a Chinese company in 2012.

Li-ning and other Chinese brands such as Anta and 361 degrees are now competing with Legacy American Companies for profitable sponsorship deals. ESPN’s analysis shows that in 2022, more than a dozen NBA players reached deals with these three brands.

Li Ning deals with Jimmy Butler of Golden State Warriors – Jordan was also attracted to a huge deal in 2020, including a variety of signature shoe lines – and Fred Vanvleet of the Houston Rockets, who is also president of the National Basketball Players Association. Anda sponsored stars include Klay Thompson and Kyrie Irving, while the 361-degree roster includes the Serbian legend Nikola Jokić. (These sponsorship deals are directly reached with the players and are not subject to NBA approval.)

Representatives of these participants did not respond to requests for comment.

Now, Tbij and Guardian can reveal that all three brands are related to the oppressive freedom of his coach. The same is true Nike.

Using forced labor

Earlier this year Major Investigation The New York Times and Der Spiegel’s TBIJ links more than 100 global brands to Xinjiang’s labor transfer program, which transfers thousands of miles of ethnic minorities in China to work in the Eastern factory. The transfer plan is the central pillar for the Chinese government to systematically destroy the Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz communities in Xinjiang.

Anta, Li-Ning and 361 Degrees are one of the brands that directly own production sites with these human rights violations. These tags are also provided by other companies participating in the labor transfer program.

A 361-degree factory in Fujian has taken Xinjiang workers away for at least a decade: Nearly 400 workers were mentioned in the “group wedding” of Kazakh workers at the factory in 2015. Social media content from Xinjiang workers showed that factory compounds were uploaded last year.

At least three factories providing Li Ning use workers in the labor transfer plan. A clip uploaded by Uyghur workers shows a pair of black and silver coaches Li Ning on a conveyor belt at a factory in Hubei.

“Life is too hard, but I don’t want to admit failure.” In the video title of another worker at Li Ning supplier. “This guy is really ordering people to work a lot,” said the voiceover at Uyghur, referring to a Chinese supervisor standing nearby with hips on his hands. “If I don’t leave here, I know I’m going to die.”

The 361-degree sponsorship range goes beyond the NBA, to the world’s water sports and Olympic runners. Meanwhile, Li Ning’s partnership includes the Chinese Olympic delegation and young British badminton professionals. The brand also puts forward indicators to support Beijing’s approach to Xinjiang.

Li-ning kept it “made of Xinjiang cotton” on its clothing labels when global businesses began to remove Xinjiang cotton from their supply chains after they were concerned about forced labor in the fields. Although Nike and other global brands face strong opposition from Chinese consumers as they stop using Xinjiang cotton (amplified by the state media movement), Li Ning’s sales and share prices soar.

This sports partnership allows these companies to enhance China’s softness. When Houston Rockets executive Morey issued a statement in support of Hong Kong, both Li Ning and Anta announced that they would cease their partnership with the team.

Li Ning told us that it “strictly opposes and prohibits any form of forced labour in its supply chain” and regularly reviews its suppliers and implements a “zero tolerance” policy. It added that the company “always upholds the legal rights of human rights and labor.”

361 Degrees and Anta did not respond to requests for comment.

“We always support and will continue to support every member of the NBA family, including ENES Freedom, express personal views on social and political issues. We will continue to follow government guidance and policies that we operate in China and in more than 200 other countries and territories around the world,” said NBA spokesman Mike Bass.

Freedom is no surprise, hearing that Li Ning, Anta and six factories in the 361-degree supply chain are closely related to Xinjiang’s forced labor. But, most importantly, he had a question – he had been asking them for the past four years.

“Selective activism”

“Who makes shoes in China? Do you even know?” Freedom asks Nike to post to Twitter (now X) video in 2021.

Nike has been a major business partner in the NBA since 1992, and last year it has been signed as the league’s equipment, merchandise, marketing and content partner until 2037 – an agreement reached It is said that Valued over $1 billion.

The problem of freedom is that after Nike connects to a sneaker factory in Shandong Province, the factory took away Uyghur transfer workers. Nike insists that suppliers have stopped hiring workers in Xinjiang and inspections have confirmed this.

“Our continued diligence has not yet found evidence of hiring Uyghurs or other minorities [Xinjiang]elsewhere in our supply chain in China. ” said at the time.

But Tbij found a source that linked Nike to Fulgent Sun, a footwear manufacturer in Fujian Province that has long absorbed workers in Xinjiang. The factory began to cooperate with the government and brought Uyghur and the Kyrgyzs to Fujian in 2013.

A Nike spokesman said the company ended its relationship with its Fujian factory in 2015. They do admit that they do admit that Nike has come from an affiliate website in central China in recent years in exchange for its label Converse.

But from industry publishers and academic articles to Fulgent Sun’s own company materials, sources point to Nike as a major customer in the past decade.

Tbij extracted export records, which show multiple shipments from the Fujian factory to Nike after 2015, including the most recent November 2022. These goods were delivered through one of one of the major logistics partners in the region.

After seeing some evidence from Tbij, Nike said its record “with [TBIJ’s] Since 2015, the claim has been made and maintained that it has not purchased anything from the implicated factories. It added that it “still committed to ethical and responsible manufacturing.”

Fulgent Sun did not respond to a request for comment.

Freedom – wearing a pair of shoes with “Nike hypocrites”, “made with slave labor” and “no excuses” shoes, which he claimed was a criticism of China and Nike, which killed him.

He feels sad about Nike’s selective activism, a proud supporter of the American-centered social justice movement, such as Black Lives Matter. “Unless it’s pocketing, you’re going to do your best,” he said.

“Hand up and get on the right thing,” he added, saying, “Put yourself on your shoes. Imagine being your sister or daughter. Will you still be silent?”