Li Qiang didn’t expect the McDonald’s executives would fly to New York to see him.
It was 2001, and the 29-year-old political refugee from China had just released his first report for China Labor Watch, the labor rights organization he founded. The report was on Merton, a company whose factory in Dongguan, China, produced toys for McDonald’s, Hasbro, and Disney. It followed a two-year investigation that Li, a former Merton factory worker himself, had orchestrated with his contacts there.
With detailed evidence, it found that employees were required to work for 120 consecutive days before getting one day off; that up to 20 of them were crammed into one dormitory room; and that the average salary, after required deductions, was just 13 cents per hour. Workers also complained of strong chemical smells and hands frequently burned by paint thinner. Because of an abnormal color in their urine, many told Li’s team they were “sure they will have some kind of ch
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Did Eric Dai expose a Chinese scheme to steal critical military technology? Or did he steal millions of dollars from a Chinese company by exploiting geopolitical tensions? It's not entirely clear, but Dai's saga hits all the high notes of current U.S.-China tensions, including convoluted plots to illicitly acquire U.S. semiconductor technology and extraterritorial schemes to harass, intimidate and coerce the Chinese diaspora. What is clear is that, for Dai, who founded a successful Chinese investment firm but is now seeking asylum in the U.S., it feels like World War III.
The former National Intelligence Officer for East Asia talks about why engagement hasn’t failed, it just hasn’t succeeded yet; why strategic empathy is so hard to do; and why the U.S. needs an approach to...