Ivanka has sought to bring an aura of female empowerment to her lifestyle brand. But her legacy has been less than empowering for at least one woman in China.
With two young children, Deng Guilian hadn’t planned on going back to work. That changed after her husband was arrested while investigating labor abuses at Chinese suppliers for Ivanka Trump’s brand.
Now the 36-year-old mom works the overnight shift at a karaoke parlor and stays in a dorm nearby. She gets just three days off a month to see her kids.
“They seem accustomed to not having their mom,” Deng said of her 7-year-old daughter, Chen Chen, and 4-year-old son, Bo Bo.
She flashed an uneasy smile.
Ivanka Trump has sought to bring an aura of female empowerment to her lifestyle brand and spoken out for women’s rights from her post at the White House. But her legacy has been less than empowering for at least one woman in China.
In May, Deng’s husband, Hua Haifeng, and two of his colleagues were accused of illegally using secret recording devices and thrown in jail while investigating factories that made shoes for Ivanka Trump’s brand. The group they were working for, a New York non-profit called China Labor Watch, obtained evidence of forced overtime and pay as low as $1 an hour, as well as a video of a manager berating a worker for apparently arranging shoes in the wrong order.
Deng Guilian, the wife of Chinese labor activist Hua Haifeng, speaks during an interview in her home on the outskirts of Xiangyang in central China’s Hubei Province.
“If I see them f—ing messed up again,” the manager yells, “I’ll beat you right here.” Another worker was left with blood dripping from his head after a manager hit him with the sharp end of a high heeled shoe, according to three eyewitnesses who spoke to the AP.
The Huajian Group, which runs the factories where the abuses allegedly occurred, has called the charges “completely not true to the facts.”
The investigators were released after 30 days, but the bail conditions — restrictions on travel, regular meetings with the police — have made it hard for Hua to find work.
Hua was ordered not to speak to the media and declined to comment for this story.
Ivanka Trump, who still owns but no longer closely manages her namesake brand, has remained silent about human rights issues within her brand’s supply chain — and labor conditions in China, where tons of her products are made and a generation of women like Deng has left their children to go work.
