China’s Jinjiang Group is under scrutiny after Brazil’s labour authorities reported that workers at a factory it is constructing for electric vehicle manufacturer BYD were subjected to human trafficking and “slavery-like conditions,” Reuters reported.
Jinjiang has denied the allegations of slavery-like conditions and has not commented on the trafficking claims. China’s foreign ministry said that it is in communication with Brazil and that Chinese companies must adhere to the law in their operations.
Where and when did the controversy start?
Jinjiang responded on its Weibo account, stating that the depiction of workers as “enslaved” was inaccurate and resulted from translation misunderstandings. The company shared a video of Chinese workers, one of whom read a letter claiming that the workers had collectively signed, asserting that the suggestion they had been rescued was an insult to their dignity. The worker expressed surprise at the possibility of being sent home and emphasised their desire to keep their jobs and continue working in Brazil.
Initially, BYD stated it had severed ties with Jinjiang, but later, a BYD executive reposted Jinjiang’s Chinese statement online, accusing “foreign forces” and certain Chinese media outlets of deliberately smearing Chinese brands and straining China-Brazil relations.
Brazil’s Labor Prosecutor’s Office revealed that BYD and Jinjiang had agreed to provide assistance and housing for the 163 workers involved.
About Jinjiang Group
Privately held Jinjiang, which means “gold craftsman,” was founded in 2002 and is qualified to provide property construction services. Headquartered in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese city where BYD is also based, the company is led by Chairman Ma Jianbin. In 2021, Ma’s alma mater, the Sichuan College of Architectural Technology, posted on social media that Jinjiang employs 1,500 staff and generates annual revenue of 3 billion yuan (around $400 million).
Jinjiang’s major clients include Chinese property developers such as Vanke, Longfor, Country Garden, and BYD. According to the Chinese company database Tianyancha, Ma Jianwei controls the company, whose personal details are not publicly available.
Apart from working on the BYD factory in Brazil, Jinjiang is involved in constructing several BYD factories across China in cities like Changzhou, Yangzhou, and Hefei. As seen in job posts on WeChat, Jinjiang is also recruiting workers for BYD plants in Xian, Shaanxi, and Zhengzhou. The company was also instrumental in building BYD’s Skyrail monorail system in China.
Although it has not been confirmed whether Jinjiang is working on BYD projects in Hungary, Mexico, Thailand, and Uzbekistan, recruitment posts indicate the company is hiring for positions in Hungary, such as forklift drivers and logistics specialists. Additionally, Jinjiang is recruiting hydraulic and steel structure engineers in Turkey, along with translators for Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, and Hungarian, in posts that do not mention BYD.
Jinjiang’s work safety record
According to Tianyancha, between 2018 and 2022, Chinese courts ordered Jinjiang to compensate workers in five cases related to work accidents and injuries.
According to the database, the company was fined three times in 2023 and 2024 for breaching worker safety regulations.
A penalty record revealed that in May 2022, a worker at a BYD construction site in Hefei died in a fall. In 2023, Jinjiang, the main contractor for the project, and two subcontractors were fined 310,000 yuan by local authorities for failing to implement proper safety measures.
(With Reuters inputs)
