Brazil Scrutinizes BYD Labor-Rights Violations, Straining Ties with China

One of Brazil’s most high-profile Chinese investors has become embroiled in a scandal that threatens to upend its presence in the country. Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer BYD was building a factory in Brazil’s northeast state of Bahia—which would be BYD’s biggest EV plant outside Asia, with a production capacity of 150,000 vehicles per year—when government authorities ordered a halt to construction over serious labor-rights violations. As Kalyeena Makortoff at The Guardian reported, authorities found that over a hundred workers were being held in “slavery-like conditions”:

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