SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Chinese group Jinjiang is in the spotlight after authorities in Brazil said workers at a factory being built for electric vehicle maker BYD were victims of human trafficking and working in “conditions similar to slavery” .
A and did not respond to a request for comment on the trafficking allegation. China’s Foreign Ministry said it is communicating with Brazil and that the Asian country requires Chinese companies to operate in accordance with the law.
The company
Privately owned, Jinjiang — the name means “gold artisan” — was founded in 2002 and is qualified to provide property construction services. Its headquarters are in Shenzhen, the city in southern China that is also home to BYD.
Sichuan College of Architectural Technology posted on social media in 2021 that Jinjiang had a team of 1,500 employees and annual revenue of 3 billion yuan (equivalent to $400 million).
Jinjiang is controlled by Chairman Ma Jianwei, whose personal information is not available, according to records on the Chinese company database Tianyancha.
I work for BYD
In addition, Jinjiang is working on building BYD factories across China in cities including Changzhou, Yangzhou and Hefei, according to Tianyancha records and job advertisements on Chinese websites and social media.
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Jinjiang was looking for workers to build BYD factories in Xian, Shaanxi and Zhengzhou, according to job advertisements from recruiters on messaging app WeChat last month.
The company helped BYD build its Skyrail elevated monorail system in China, according to local government publications.
Reuters was unable to establish whether Jinjiang was working on BYD projects in Hungary, Mexico, Thailand and Uzbekistan, but the company’s recruitment postings show it is hiring for a number of roles in Hungary, including forklift driver and specialist in logistics.
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Jinjiang is also recruiting hydraulic and steel structures engineers in Turkey and translators for Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese and Hungarian, according to publications that do not mention BYD.
Job security
From 2018 to 2022, Jinjiang was ordered by Chinese courts to compensate workers in five disputes involving workplace accidents and injuries, according to Tianyancha. The company was fined in three cases in 2023 and 2024 for violating worker safety standards, according to the database.
A record of fines also showed that in May 2022, a worker at a BYD construction site in Hefei was killed in an accident. Jinjiang, the project’s main contractor, was fined 310,000 yuan ($1,900), along with two subcontractors, by local authorities in 2023 for failing to implement safety measures.
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Response from Jinjiang and BYD
Jinjiang said on its Weibo account that the description of workers as “enslaved” in Brazil is inaccurate and that there were misunderstandings in the translation.
The company posted a video of a group of Chinese workers, one of them reading into the camera a letter saying that the claim that they had been rescued insulted their dignity. According to Jinjiang, the workers had signed the letter together.
The unidentified worker stated that they were shocked at the possibility of being sent home, that they wanted to keep their jobs and continue working in Brazil.
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A. But Jinjiang’s statement was later republished online by a BYD executive, who accused “foreign forces” and some Chinese media outlets of “deliberately defaming Chinese brands and the country and undermining the relationship between China and Brazil.”
Brazil’s Public Ministry of Labor said BYD and Jinjiang agreed to help and house 163 workers in hotels until an agreement is reached to end their contracts.
