‘Ridiculous and Disrespectful’: British Lawmakers Blast Shein at Hearing
- Shein's general counsel for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, Yinan Zhu, evaded direct questions from British MPs about the company's sourcing of cotton from China's Xinjiang region and its potential public listing on the London Stock Exchange.
Less than 10 minutes into a British parliamentary hearing on Tuesday, during which a Shein representative equivocated on questions relating to the e-tail Goliath’s supply chain and a potential public float, a visibly frustrated Member of Parliament made his feelings known in no uncertain terms.
“You can’t tell us anything about listing, you can’t tell us anything about cotton in Shein products and you can’t tell us much, in fact,” Liam Byrne, MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North and chair of the House of Commons’s Business and Trade Committee, groused to Yinan Zhu, Shein’s general counsel for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
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Byrne had asked Zhu whether the Chinese-founded firm sourced cotton from China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region or China as a whole, whether it believed there is forced labor in Xinjiang, whether its code of conduct prohibited its suppliers from sourcing Xinjiang cotton and whether it was planning to list on the London Stock Exchange as has been widely, almost frenetically, speculated. These weren’t “trick” or “complicated” questions, he said, but rather ones that required only a simple yes or no.
Shein has previously said that it has zero tolerance for forced labor and that it has no contract manufacturers in Xinjiang. Facing the panel, however, Zhu would only say that Shein complied with laws and regulations everywhere it conducted business in the world, has “robust” systems and procedures in place and has “very strong” enforcement measures to ensure it adheres to high standards. She asked for permission to write to the committee at a later time because she didn’t have knowledge of “detailed operational information” such as the origin of Shein’s cotton. And she declined to respond to the question about forced labor in China because it “isn’t our place to comment on a geopolitical debate.”
“Are you able to tell us whether there is any cotton from Xinjiang in the products that you sell?” Bryne tried again.
“We’re going to have to write to the committee,” Zhu said.
“You can’t tell me definitively today whether the products that you sell contain any cotton from Xinjiang,” Byrne said.
“Thank you for your patience,” Zhu said. “I am going to apologize for having to repeat again, if you will allow me, that we’ll write to the committee afterward.”
Byrne tried a different tack. “It was reported that Shein sought permission from the China Securities Regulatory Commission to list in the U.K. or the U.S.,” he said. “Why would you need Chinese government permission to list in either America or Britain if you’re a company headquartered in Singapore?”
“Sorry chair, I am not able to comment on that because I’m not close to the details of the news report that you just mentioned,” Zhu said.
Antonia Bance, the MP for Tipton and Wednesbury had an equally hard time drawing a direct response about an “appalling” dossier that lawyers from Leigh Day had delivered to the Financial Conduct Authority on behalf of their client, the nonprofit Stop Uyghur Genocide, that they say shows “clear, identifiable links” between Xinjiang cotton production and forced labor and points to “publicly available evidence” that ties Shein’s supply chains to the same.
Leigh Day announced Friday that it had sent Zhu the same dossier ahead of her examination. It’s Stop Uyghur Genocide’s opinion that the FCA should block the Missguided owner’s listing because there is “good reason” to believe that its supply chains profit from modern slavery, a violation of Britain’s 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act.
Zhu said that Shein had reviewed that dossier, then repeated her earlier statement that the e-tailer complied with the laws and regulations of all countries in which it operates. When Bance asked if she was confident that Shein complied with the U.K. Modern Slavery Act, Zhu said the company’s position is that it was compliant with “relevant U.K. laws.”
Similarly swerved was a question about what its supplier code of conduct means when it says to “arrange working hours responsibly.”
“How many hours do you think is an appropriate number for a shop-floor worker at a supplier for Shein?” Byrne asked.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to judge what’s appropriate,” Zhu replied.
Byrne referred to a 2022 investigation by Britain’s Channel 4 that found workers at a contracted manufacturer toiling for 18-hour days with only one day off per month. Despite a spokesperson saying at the time that Shein would “swiftly” deal with offenders of local labor laws—China limits workweeks to 44 hours and overtime to 36 hours—a report that the nonprofit Public Eye published last May said that 75-hour workweeks were still the norm.
”Is that appropriate?” Byrne asked. “And do you think those two specific instances agree with your supplier code of conduct?”
“I don’t recognize the specifics of what you described,” said Zhu.
‘Wilful obfuscation’
The MPs had better luck getting Zhu to state where in China Shein makes its clothing, which it does via contract manufacturing with thousands of individual suppliers, mostly in China but also, of late, in Turkey and Brazil. But her detailed rundown of regions in China’s northern, southern and eastern swaths, including the provinces of Guangdong, Zhejiang, Hunan and Liaoning, prompted a resurgence of an earlier line of questioning.
“I’m trying to understand how you can lay out the regions that you’re using in China, but you’re unable to lay out if any cotton is being manufactured in China for your Shein products,” said Rosie Wrighting, MP for Kettering. “It’s not adding up.”
It was at this point that Charlie Maynard, MP for Witney, appeared to have had enough.
“Frankly, I don’t think you’re respecting the committee at all,” he said. “You say to our chair that you can’t state whether Shein is selling any products which are made in China, which are made of cotton. Frankly, I find that completely ridiculous and disrespectful that you’re here doing this. You mention every point of the compass but you don’t mention west China, you don’t mention Xinjiang at all, and it’s wilful ignorance.”
“Do you have a question?” Bryne asked.
“I am asking you whether you think you are being disrespectful by being so blanketly void of answers,” segued Maynard, not missing a beat.
“I am giving the answers to the best of my ability,” Zhu said.
“That is not true,” Maynard said. “We have asked you some very, very, very simple questions, and you are not giving us straight answers. And that, I find, dismisses the point of why we are here today. Do you understand how simple the questions we are asking you are? You have obfuscated wilfully.”
Zhu’s dodging drew a contrast with the responses of Shein’s rival and frequent legal nemesis Temu, which had sent two representatives to be grilled by lawmakers at the same session. Temu, too, had been accused of being operationally opaque, placing it in the same sightlines as Shein and stoking calls for de minimis reform in the United States. One 2023 U.S. congressional report said it was doing “next to nothing” to keep its supply chains free of forced labor.
Temu’s stance seems to have changed on at least one front since then, however, and its lack of prevarication on the issue also couldn’t help but throw into relief Shein’s avoidance of the same.
“We do not permit sellers from the Xinjiang region to sell products,” said senior legal counsel Stephen Heary.
He also said that the British market is one that Temu, which shares a parent company with Chinese retail app Pinduoduo but is headquartered in Boston, plans to grow. By the end of 2025, it’s committed to having at least 50 percent of the sellers who sell on its U.K. platform be physically based and registered in the United Kingdom. It’s also been buttoning up its compliance work: There’s tighter vetting of vendors, for instance, and traders receive training through a dedicated portal that “allows them to further their compliance efforts.”
“We’re committed to continuously improving our compliance program,” Heary said. “And I would like to mention that we’re at the moment undertaking an industry-leading initiative whereby we will require and make mandatory for all traders on our platform to disclose the origin of manufacturing of their products, and this information will be made available to consumers on our website.”
Still, Zhu’s hesitance to speak about Shein’s exposure to Xinjiang at the hearing might have been born of pragmatic reasons, or perhaps even strategic ones. It was only in 2021 that fashion powerhouses such as Adidas and H&M faced vociferous calls for boycotts after statements seen as anti-Xinjiang—and therefore anti-China—circulated on Chinese social media, contributing to the rise of domestic brands such as Anta Sports and Li-Ning as part of the guochao (translation: national wave) trend that has also ratcheted up in momentum since.
More recently, Fast Retailing CEO Tadashi Yanai revealed to the BBC that the Uniqlo owner doesn’t use Xinjiang cotton , though he immediately dropped the train of conversation by saying it “was too political.” Uniqlo has an outsized presence in China, its largest market with more than 1,000 stores that are responsible for over one-fifth of its revenue. The official response, to Yanai’s possible relief, has been relatively subdued, though the entire incident is illustrative of the near-intractable conundrum brands and retailers find themselves grappling with.
But Shein, despite being seen as a Chinese company, doesn’t sell within China. Sky Xu, its founder and CEO, however, is a Chinese citizen (and rumored Singapore permanent resident), as is most of the company’s C-suite. A Reuters report from last January that said that Shein was “seeking Beijing’s nod to go public in the U.S.” may reveal more than it says about the invisible tethers that yoke it to its country of origin, bringing additional complications as it’s increasingly being held to account by other, predominantly Western, nations for the human rights violations it denies takes place or warded off with protectionist policies.
What’s certain, however, is that British lawmakers were left completely unsatisfied by the time the hearing wound up with a terse “order, order.” It was Byrne who struck the death blow.
“I have to say, Ms. Zhu, for a company that sells a billion pounds for U.K. consumers, and for a company which is seeking to file on the London Stock Exchange, the committee has been pretty horrified by the lack of evidence that you presented today,” he said. “You’ve given us almost zero confidence in the integrity of your supply chains. You can’t even tell us what your product is made from. You can’t tell us much about the conditions which workers have to work in, and the reluctance to answer basic questions frankly borders on contempt of the committee. So I hope that we can bring some clarity to this matter as quickly as we can through follow-up correspondence.”
