Ahead of Breaking News, a Shoe Story That Fits
Several months later, with my Huajian reporting on the back burner as I continued to explore other Trump-branded merchandise in China, we learned
that a New York-based advocacy group, China Labor Watch, had coincidentally sent in undercover investigators to look at the company’s shoe production.
By KEITH BRADSHERJUNE 2, 2017
A labor advocacy group announced on Tuesday evening in Hong Kong
that one of its undercover investigators, who had gone missing while probing the production of Ivanka Trump-branded shoes in a Chinese factory, had been detained by the police, and two more of its investigators had disappeared in China.
Within a day and a half, The New York Times had published two in-depth articles, one on the disappearances
and the other on how Ivanka Trump shoes are made, complete with numerous photos from inside the factory.
But the workers, and later a co-owner of Xuankai, confirmed something else: The
factory no longer made Ivanka Trump shoes, and had not done so for many months.
He shared some troubling news: One of his undercover investigators, Hua Haifeng, had tried to cross the border the day before to meet him
but had been stopped from leaving mainland China by border police.
On a bullet train to Guangzhou — the region’s hub — from Wuhan in central China, where I had been reporting
on China’s solar power industry, I began checking online for factories that produced Trump merchandise.
