BYD in Brazil: From the company’s triumphant arrival to a scandal involving ‘slavery-like’ working conditions
The plan is for the first Chinese electric cars made in Brazil to hit the market in March 2025. The manufacturer, BYD, is building a factory in the state of Bahia and this project serves as the best standard-bearer for the current sweet moment in the relationship between Beijing and Brasilia. The facility is expected to create thousands of jobs and is heavy with symbolism charge, occupying, in a quite literal sense, the vacuum left by the U.S. automaker Ford. Everything seemed to be going smoothly until, on Christmas Eve, a scandal broke out: Brazilian labor inspectors rescued 163 Chinese workers from the plant’s construction site, accusing their employer, a subsidiary of BYD, of subjecting them to conditions analogous to slavery. They had been working strenuous hours, living in unhealthy conditions, and some of them had their passports withheld.
