Targeting the Sponsors of the 2008 Olympic Games

Following up on a recent post about the PlayFair 2008 campaign denouncing the violation of core labor standards in China, I would like to point out an article that just came out in Business Week (BW). It explains how the multinational corporations–General Electric, Kodak, Samsung, Johnson & Johnson, McDonald’s, Visa, etc.–that are sponsoring the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games are being increasingly targeted by activists. According to BW, the sponsors are caught between a rock and a hard place:

“If companies ignore activists such as Darfur groups—who have already branded next summer’s games the Genocide Olympics, in reference to what they say is China’s complicity with mass killings in Sudan—they risk angering consumers back home. But if they criticize Beijing, they could run afoul of the Chinese government and jeopardize their future in the world’s most promising market.”

Companies respond with some spin, trying to please everyone:

What I find really interesting in these developments is that civil society organizations no longer target exclusively governments and international institutions but also private actors such as multinational corporations. Replicating the anti-sweatshop campaigns of the 1990s, they attempt to undermine the reputation of brands in consumer markets. Insofar as in advanced industrial economies corporations increasingly concentrate their activities on product definition, design, and marketing–while offshoring manufacturing–brand reputation has become one of their major weak points. Hence the apparent effectiveness of this brand-targeting strategy.

Slave Labor Scandal in China

It is no secret that labor conditions are often very hard in China. I recently pointed out an international campaign called PlayFair2008 that denounces such conditions as they relate to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The issue is now becoming a public debate in China, in the wake of the discovery of illegal brick factories and mines in Shanxi (north) and Henan (center) that relied on slave labor. Chinese TV showed images that shocked the Chinese public:

Simultaneously, a moving letter written by the fathers of 400 abducted children working as slaves was published online and relayed to top authorities. The public outcry that followed this TV report and the online letter forced the government to react. According to the China Labour Bulletin (CLB):

 

By June 17, 45,000 police officers had raided some 8,000 mines and kilns in Shanxi and Henan, freeing 591 slave labourers including 51 children. The official All China Federation of Trade Unions has vowed to bring rural labourers under the protection of grassroots unions. Local governments have agreed to pay compensation to all freed labourers, and Premier Wen Jiabao has personally ordered an in-depth investigation into the use of slave labour, promising that all perpetrators will be punished. As of June 17, 168 suspects had been detained.

According to CLB, such abuses are the product of a “widespread corruption and collusion between local government officials and mine owners.” Perhaps the Beijing central government will manage to crack down on corruption, but several problems are likely to remain.

First, the crack down and the promised investigation target only slave labor. What about working conditions and labor rights in booming regions and sectors related to foreign investment? Second, in such situations independent monitoring mechanisms are crucial. In a country with no independent trade unions and no free press, how will the relevant information circulate and reach the proper authorities? The question of labor conditions directly raises not only the issue of labor rights but also of democratic liberties.