Rhino horn trading & resilience of criminal networks

(Many thanks to IntLawGrrls for inviting me to contribute this introductory post)

Wildlife crime is a growing global problem, with major implications for biodiversity conservation.
The trafficking of rhinoceros horn provides a clear illustration of the difficulties that are encountered in attempting to combat the illegal transnational wildlife trade. All five species of rhinoceros are under threat; three of the five ((Black, Sumatran and Javan rhinos) have ‘critically endangered’ status on the Red List of Threatened Species produced by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, a Switzerland-based nongovernmental organisation. (prior IntLawGrrls posts here, here, here, here, and here)
While habitat destruction is contributing to a massive decline in numbers of rhinos worldwide, poaching for horn is the main culprit.
Recently I wrote a paper about the illegal trade in rhino horn, as part of the Transnational Environmental Crime Project being undertaken at the Australian National University. The project is funded by the Australian Research Council, and conducted in partnership with the Australian Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities.
About 80% of the remaining world rhinoceros population is in South Africa. In the last five years, the numbers of rhinoceros poached in that country alone has increased exponentially, rising from 13 in 2007 to 448 in 2011. The 2012 number is well on the way to surpassing 500.
The population growth rate for South Africa’s estimated 20,700 rhino is 6% per year, but rhino poaching escalated by 35% between 2010 and 2011 alone.
These figures have given rise to concern that extinction of the species is a real possibility, despite the limits on trade imposed by the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES.
The main black market for rhino horn lies in Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam and China, where demand is driven by a belief that horn has curative properties for a range of ailments (recently expanded to include cancer), and by its use as a status symbol amongst elites. Organized crime networks are taking advantage of opportunities, presented by cultural norms and by the wealth of the growing middle class in the region, to traffic rhino horn to these markets.
Greed is a powerful driver of the trade, with enormous profits to be made. But this alone does not alone determine the trade’s sustainability.
As my paper notes, the illegal trade in wildlife is increasingly meeting with resistance from states and the international community, in the form of law enforcement and regulatory initiatives. Both money and effort are going into training and deployment of personnel to patrol poaching hotspots. New technologies for monitoring rhinos and tracking and catching poachers and smugglers are being deployed. More international agreements, designed to strengthen political will and law enforcement responses, are being signed. Campaigns are under way to inform consumers that rhino horn has no medicinal qualities and make them aware of the horrendous consequences of the trade for the animals themselves.
So why does the illegal trade persist?

On October 6

On this day in ...
... 1978, Liu Yang (right) was born in Zhengzhou in the Henan province of China. Following graduation from the People's Liberation Army Air Force Aviation College, she became a pilot in that force, attaining hte rank of major and logging more than 1,500 hours' flight time. She eventually joined her country's astronaut training program, and this year, on June 16, she became China's 1st woman in space. (photo credit) Having been in China at that time, this 'Grrl can attest to the local media's pride-filled celebration of Liu's achievement.

(Prior October 6 posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)

On September 29

On this day in ...
... 1972 (40 years ago today), in what then still was called Peking, amid a several-day official visit to the People's Republic of China by Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, who'd been invited by Premier Chou En-lai, was issued the Joint Communique of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People's Republic of China. It began with this clause:

'1. The abnormal state of affairs that has hitherto existed between Japan and the People's Republic of China is terminated on the date on which this Joint Communique is issued.'

It ended with this one:

'9. The Government of Japan and the Government of the People's Republic of China have agreed that, with a view to further promoting relations between the two countries and to expanding interchanges of people, the two Governments will, as necessary and taking account of the existing non-governmental arrangements, enter into negotiations for the purpose of concluding agreements concerning such matters as trade, shipping, aviation, and fisheries.'

That pledge to maintain a "normal state of affairs" has been sorely tested recently, as Japan and China spat over ownership of the East China Sea islands that the former calls Senkaku; the latter, Diaoyu. (prior post)

(Prior September 29 posts are here, here, and here, and here, and here.)

On August 25

On this day in ...

Republic of China flag 1912-28

... 1912 (100 years ago today), the 1st-ever meeting of the Kuomintang, China's Nationalist Party, was held in Beijing. Selected as the party's chairman was Sun Yat-sen, leader of the revolution of the year before and soon to become the husband of Soong Ching Ling, the subject of a recent IntLawGrrls post. Sun's party would govern the Republic of China on the mainland even after his death in 1925 – to be precise, till 1949 when, in advance of Communist victory, the Nationalists fled to the island of Formosa. Today the Kuomintang is the ruling political party in Taiwan, as that island is now known.

(Prior August 25 posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)

Welcoming Kelly Wegel

I'm delighted to welcome Kelly Wegel (right) as an IntLawGrrls contributor.
Kelly is a rising 2d-year law student at my home institution, University of Georgia School of Law in Athens, Georgia, where she has just been named a member of the 2012-2013 Editorial Board of the Georgia Law Review. I had the pleasure of working with Kelly last month, when she was a student in the Georgia Law China summer program in Beijing and Shanghai – as blog readers will recall, yours truly taught International Law & Commercial Responsibility in the Shanghai leg. (Posts here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Kelly and other U.S.-based law students in the program joined the Fudan University law students who helped us, and me, for the photo below.
After leaving Shanghai, Kelly went to New Delhi, India, where, as part of Georgia Law's Global Internship Program, she is a legal intern for a corporate law firm. Kelly describes that experience in her introductory post below; in particular, she writes about a fascinating Society of Women Lawyers-India conference that she attended. Kelly's own blog about her travels is here.
In addition to her law studies, Kelly is Board Treasurer of the Georgia Reproductive Justice Access Network, a nonprofit reproductive justice fund, which she helped to found and which serves the northeast Georgia region. She has interned at a local law firm, is a free-lance photographer for the local daily newspaper, the Athens Banner-Herald, and runs her own wedding photography business. While earning her bachelor's degrees in journalism and Spanish from the University of Georgia, Kelly was a journalism intern at the Chattanooga Times Free Press in Tennessee.
Heartfelt welcome!

 

On July 23

On this day in ...

(credit)

... 1877 (135 years ago today), amid post-Gold Rush/post-transcontinental-railroad job scarcity, workers in San Francisco called a mass meeting near the City Hall (right). (The building would perish by earthquake 28 years later.) The purpose was to show sympathy with strikers in Pittsburgh. But the meeting turned into a riot -- by workers of European ancestry against Chinese workers, who "constituted approximately nine percent of the total population of" California, "and, since practically all of them were men, at least twice as large a percentage of the total number of laborers." The riot formed part of a long city and state history of hostility, pitting workers of Irish ancestry against their Chinese counterparts. For a gender angle on this story, see "Laundering Gender: Chinese Men and Irish Women in Late Nineteenth-Century San Francisco," written by Georgia Comparative Literature Professor Peter D. O'Neill and published in his co-edited essay collection, The Black and Green Atlantic (2009).

(Prior July 23 posts here, here, here, here, and here.)

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

'[T]he issue of the relationship between rights under general public international law, such as permanent sovereignty over natural resources, and [World Trade Organization] obligations continues to be a source of tension.'

-- Northeastern University Law Professor Sonia E. Rolland (right), in an ASIL Insight examining China - Measures Related to the Exportation of Various Raw Materials, a dispute brought against China by the United States, in which the WTO this past February adopted both the January 30, 2012, Appellate Body report and the July 5, 2011, panel report. As Rolland explains, the dispute result indicates that any country that accedes to the WTO (as did China in 2001, and as Russia intends soon to do) and that wishes successfully to invoke exceptions to international limits on trade barriers, needs to make that clear in its accession instruments.

Fin skinned

Official functions in China soon will have to do without a "delicacy."
Shark fin soup is to be banned within the next 3 years, according to a report published by Xinhua, the government-run news agency. (photo credit)
China's Government Offices Administration of the State Council will be "instructing all levels of government agencies," Xinhua reported, "to restrict expenses on luxury food at official receptions, and impose stronger supervision over banquets funded with public money."
The Washington, D.C.-based NGO Humane Society International praised the promise of a ban:

'The news that the government of China will stop serving shark fins marks a watershed moment for the global movement to protect sharks and pushes China onto the world’s stage as an emerging leader in shark conservation.'

Not addressed by China's announcement are non-official-function sales of shark fins -- the consumption of which is said to be contributing to the endangerment of numerous shark species.
Thus will be interesting to see whether and when a makeover's in store for the menu board in the photo at right. Yours truly captured the image last month outside a Shanghai restaurant said to have hosted Clintons and Castro, among other global notables.

Mme Soong

SHANGHAI – It is so easy to get lost in this city, where every subway seems to have a dozen exits, where numbers on many streets seem to follow a nonsequential drummer.
On one day that led to serendipity; to be precise, to the villa at left, once called home by a woman whose good works earned her the title of China's Honorary President.
Her name was Soong Ching Ling.
She was born in 1893 to wealthy Shanghai parents who sent her and her 2 sisters to the city's McTyeire School for Girls, then on to their teacher's alma mater, Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. On returning home, the 22 year old married a much older man, the Nationalist Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen. At first Soong too was active in the Nationalist movement, but after her husband died and the movement expelled Communists, she broke with its leader – Chiang Kai-shek, husband of her sister Soong Mei Ling – and moved to Moscow.
When war broke out in the late '30s, Soong Ching Ling came home and immersed herself in humanitarian work. The Chinese Defense League she founded exists to this day – known as the China Welfare Institute, it focuses on health care, education, and family and women's issues. A kindergarten and hospital are among the institutions named after her.
Holding titles of Chairman from 1968 to 1972 and President in 1981, Soong Ching Ling is the only woman to have served as head of state in the People's Republic of China.
Her support for post-World War II China is evident at this 2-story whitewashed residence, located at No. 1843 in Huai Hai Zhong Lu, on what's now a busy street in Shanghai's former French Concession.

Her books, like The Struggle for New China (1952), may be found not far from the Stalin Peace Prize awarded her by the Soviet Union (right).
Also evident is her appreciation of finer things – the soft carpeting throughout the house, her collection of record albums (seems she was a Dean Martin fan), the limousines in the garage, the roses and century-old camphor trees in the garden.
For the traveler today no less than for the great woman, who died in 1981, the home is a welcome respite from the hubbub of this metropolis of 23 million.

The UN & the emperor's tomb

UNESCO World Heritage designation

XI’AN – International law is present even here in northwestern China.
Indeed, an international institution has played a key role in the development of Xi’an into a moderate-sized city – moderate by Chinese standards, as Xi’an’s population’s of 8 million is considerably smaller than Beijing’s 19 million and Shanghai’s 23 million.
That institution is UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. As told by our excellent tour guide, Connie, UNESCO put Xi’an on the map in 1987, the year it inscribed the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor on its list of World Heritage Sites.
If the tomb’s official name doesn’t ring a bell, its contents will. This is where China’s terracotta warriors are found.

Terracotta warriors

While digging a well in 1974 a local farmer – who even now sits in the museum gift shop and signs books about the site – found shards of decorative baked earth. More digging exposed an army of infantrymen, officers, charioteers, and archers, constructed to accompany the Emperor Qin, who died in 210 B.C., into his afterlife. The force is 8,000 strong. What’s more, each figure is different: different hairknots, different armor, different facial expressions. The craftwork is stunning, as is the sight of so many figures in a single field.

Bronze horses

Today this imperial tombsite includes multiple structures, some of which the international community helped to build. Much remains to be unearthed – some was revealed the very day we visited, as indicated by this video. China intends to keep much buried for the moment, our guide explained, for a very good reason. The figures retain the bright colors painted on them millennia ago – until, that is, they are exposed to oxygen. Scientists have not yet figured out how to stop the colors from fading. So it will be a while before the world sees the terracotta army, and the emperor it served, in full force.
In the meantime Xi'an seems likely to enjoy continued growth, not only from tourism but also from textiles, aeronautics, and pharmaceuticals.

It's a Great Wall.

MUTIANYU, China – Advice to acrophobes on climbing the Great Wall:
Climb it.
That is, steer clear of the amusement-park means of going to and from this UNESCO World Heritage site and its base. The stairs will get you the 900-meter distance (shorter than an American football field) in not much time at all. (It's a bit of a secret on site, as tourists are steered to the fee-charging concessions.) The steps are to be found on a newly made stone pathway with ample resting spots and lots of shade. If you're at all fit you’ll hardly know you’re walking up, and for acrophobes at least, that's something that can’t be said about the long, slow chair-lift over a deep gorge.
However you make it up there, it's well worth the effort – at top, it’s both peaceful and exhilarating.
To borrow a 1972 line by President Richard M. Nixon, “It sure is a Great Wall.”

Beijing postcard

BEIJING – Greetings from Wangfujing Dajie, the Ramblas of this sprawling capital. At Wangufjing Gucci and Cartier meet street food and green-tea icepops on a pedestrian mall dotted with hotels – including one where Vladimir Putin joined Hu Jintao in opening a “cooperation summit” yesterday.
Yours truly was many subway stops away, in the northwestern district that’s home to a number of China’s premier institutions of higher education, including Peking and Tsinghua universities. I gave a lecture on “Responsibility and the International Criminal Court” at Tsinghua University School of Law. My host was Dr. Bing Bing Jia, whom I’d met more than a decade ago in Paliæ, a town near Serbia’s border with Hungary: while he was a Legal Officer at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, he and I were on the faculty of a weeklong program to train Serbian lawyers in international criminal law.
Yesterday, with Bing moderating, Tsinghua students posed incisive questions about the ICC and its relation to an array of actors – in particular, nonparty states like China and the United States.
In the audience was another colleague, Dr. Liling Yue, Professor of China University of Political Science and Law. Liling’s an expert in comparative and international criminal law and recently was a Fulbright visitor at my former home institution, the University of California, Davis, School of Law, as the guest of my colleague Floyd Feeney.
After the lecture, Liling took my family and me to the Summer Palace (see photo above left). It was built as a (then) out-of-town estate for the Qing emperors, and is especially associated with the Empress Dowager Cixi, one of the few women to have ruled China. Lacquered imperial buildings border a breezy lake, on which dragon-headed barges ferry tourists. Lovely.

On the Job! Dean, Peking University School of Transnational Law, Shenzhen, China

(On the Job! pays occasional notice to interesting intlaw job notices)

The Peking University School of Transnational Law welcomes applications from around the world for the position of Dean.
As I posted a few days ago, the school known as STL, began operations 4 years ago in Shenzhen, a mainland China city of  15 million persons located across the border from Hong Kong. STL is part of the century-plus-old Peking University system. Later this month it will graduate its first class of 53 students, mostly Chinese, who have studied law in a 4-year program that combines a Juris Doctor degree, taught in English on the American model and a Juris Master degree, taught in Chinese on the Chinese model. Faculty include both American and Chinese law professors.  As described in the full job notice available here:

'A unique creation of China’s most prominent university, STL reflects both the spirit of globalization and the spirit of an elite educational institution designed to cultivate cross-cultural legal talents in the 21st century. The school’s first class, totaling 53 students, will graduate from the four-year program this summer. The succeeding classes have numbered 60, 73, and 79 respectively; a new class of 90 students will begin this fall. STL students are selected using the highest admission criteria in mainland China, to ensure that the students are able to excel in the demanding bilingual and bicultural law curriculum and become exceptionally desirable candidates in the global legal market. Since its founding, STL has drawn worldwide attention. It has already produced curricular innovations tailored to the special needs of the transnational legal profession. The school’s unique ambition, combined with its extraordinary student quality, has attracted some of the best professors from the U.S. and other countries to teach, either as permanent or as affiliated transnational faculty. Everyone associated with STL senses the power of the community and shares a zeal for its future success.'

The school hopes to appoint its next dean very soon; as posted, STL's founding Dean, Jeff Lehman, is moving to establish a brand-new undergraduate college, NYU Shanghai. The full notice is here. The school hopes to appoint a new Dean as soon as possible, so interested applicants should contact STL Professor Douglas Levene, who's on the Dean Search Committee, at dblevene@gmail.com, right away.

Cheers from China

SHENZHEN, China – Greetings from this bustling city, which didn't exist 20 years ago yet now has a population of 15 million.
Located on the mainland just across the border from Hong Kong, Shenzhen is also the home of Peking University School of Transnational Law, started 4 years ago as part of the century-plus-old Peking University system. Teaching classes in English to a student body that's mostly Chinese, STL, as insiders call it, is the 1st school in China to award an American-style J.D. The 1st class, of 53 students, will graduate later this month.
The picture above was made made by law school staffer Kim Zhong on Thursday, when I had the honor of delivering a public lecture entitled "Responsibility and the International Criminal Court." (The talk built on ideas in my essays recently placed on SSRN, here and here.) At right is Professor Jaime L. Dodge, a colleague of mine at Georgia Law and a Visiting Professor of Law at STL this summer. An expert in dispute resolution law, Jaime's teaching a course on class actions.
It was great to meet with students, faculty, and staff at STL, including Associate Dean Stephen Yandle, who as a Northwestern dean years ago had a hand in admitting yours truly to law school, and Jeff Lehman, STL's Chancellor and founding Dean. While staying on as STL Chancellor, Jeff soon will move north to lead a new educational venture, NYU Shanghai. Aimed at undergraduate education, it will be the 1st comprehensive liberal arts and sciences research university in China launched in partnership with an American university.
As for this 'Grrl, it's Hong Kong (right) for the weekend, then back to the mainland.

New East Asian trilateral investment agreement

On May 13, China, Japan, and Korea concluded a trilateral investment agreement, promising stronger protection of foreign investment and deepening their commitment to international arbitration for resolving disputes with foreign investors.

The three nations have previously concluded several bilateral investment treaties among themselves, including a 1988 treaty between China and Japan, and a 1992 treaty between China and Korea. However, the rights granted in those agreements were more circumscribed. For example, investors had the right to submit claims to international arbitration only in the case of expropriation and only for a determination of compensation owed under national law (rather than international law). A more recent treaty between Korea and Japan provided stronger investor protections.

Following that lead, the new trilateral treaty establishes all three countries' firm commitment to relinquish national jurisdiction over investment claims by one another's nationals. The treaty may herald a broader shift toward increased integration among the three economies. Trade representatives involved in the treaty negotiations announced that efforts will begin in earnest this year to conclude a free trade agreement. A China-Japan-Korea trade area would be an historic development in international economic law, dwarfing both the NAFTA trading bloc and the EU in population size and surpassing the EU in share of world output, at around a quarter of global GDP.

However, it remains to be seen whether a free trade agreement between the largest East Asian economies is politically feasible—such a treaty would dramatically impact the agricultural sectors of Korea and Japan, which maintain among the world’s heaviest farm subsidies.

(Photo credit: Japan Cabinet Public Relations Office)

'Nuff said

'The days of blowing up the relationship over a single guy are over.'

-- No, it's not a nod of agreement between 2 BFFs.
The sentence comes from an unnamed official quoted in a recent New York Times story, "Behind Twists of Diplomacy in the Case of a Chinese Dissident." Steven Lee Myers and Mark Landler quoted a number of such officials in reporting how diplomats from the United States and China managed to work through this month's unexpected arrival, at the former's embassy in the latter's country, of Chen Guangcheng (below right), a Chinese lawyer-activist who'd escaped from house arrest. (photo credit) Yesterday, Chen and his family flew from Beijing to Newark. Outside his new home at New York University, this morning's New York Times reports,

'He said he was grateful to the American Embassy and the Chinese government, which allowed him to leave China, and thanked Chinese officials for "dealing with the situation with restraint and calm."'
'"I hope to see that they continue to open discourse and earn the respect and trust of the people."'

Go On! Study in China this summer

A while back I posted on my plans to teach in China this summer. We're still welcoming applications, and to that end, I re-publish the notice, and encourage students to join us there:

China-bound study

Delighted to report that I'll be teaching in China this summer – and to welcome study abroad applications by students from any law school who are looking for a learning adventure in China or, for that matter, in Europe.
► China
Beijing and Shanghai once again will be the sites of the China Summer Program sponsored by my home institution, the University of Georgia School of Law, to be held from May 28 to June 20. The English-language curriculum introduces students to China's legal system, with particular emphasis on commercial law and China-U.S. trade law. Upon completion of the ABA-approved program, students will receive 4 law school credit hours.
In Beijing, my colleague C. Donald Johnson, former Ambassador in the Office of the United States Trade Representative and Member of Congress, and now Director of Georgia Law's Dean Rusk Center, will teach U.S.-China Trade Issues under the World Trade Organization.
In Shanghai, yours truly will teach International Law & Commercial Responsibility, a course that will examine the subject from angles likely to include the Ruggie Principles, Alien Tort Statute litigation, and disputes such as Shrimp-Turtle (WTO, 1998) and Bluefin Tuna (International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, 1999).
Law professors from Beijing's Tsinghua University will teach Introduction to the Chinese Legal System and Introduction to Chinese Commercial Law during the first part of the program; from Shanghai's Fudan University, during the second part.
Also featured are cultural tours and field trips, trade briefings at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, and a seminar on trade issues hosted by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.
Details and applications for the China Summer Program here.

► Europe
Georgia Law's Summer Program in Brussels and Geneva will be held June 18 to July 12 in Belgium and Switzerland. The curriculum in this program, also conducted in English and carrying 4 ABA-approved credit hours, introduces students to trade law under the WTO and to the European Union's legal system, especially with regard to business law.
Ambassador Johnson will teach in this program as well, along with Georgia Law Professor Michael L. Wells, Professor Joost Pauwelyn of the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, and law professors from Brussels' L'Institut d'études européennes, Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis. Courses: Introduction to the Legal System of the European Union, Aspects of European Union Business Law, Comparative U.S./EU Law, and International Trade Law Practice under the WTO.
Field trips in this program will include visits to the European Parliament and the World Trade Organization.
Details and applications for the Brussels-Geneva Summer Program here.

On April 13

On this day in ...
... 1987 (25 years ago today), was issued a Joint Declaration by Portugal agreed to transfer to China sovereignty over Macau, in 1999. Negotiations toward this goal had begun in the mid-1970s, after a coup brought to an end a long-standing military dictatorship, and the new government withdrew Portuguese troops from the Asian territory over which Portugal had exerted influence for centuries. Today Macau, which has more than a 1/2 million people in its nearly 30-square-kilometer space off the mainland, is a "special administrative region" of China, enjoying considerable autonomy and its own legal system. (map credit)

(Prior April 13 posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)

A Bite of Apple: Policing Worker Rights in China

Your cherished iPad? It was made by a 13 year old Chinese factory worker who, for the ripe sum of $0.30 an hour, completed a 16-hour shift while inhaling the toxic fumes emanating from the tablets' component parts. At the end of her shift she retired to her dormitory bed, in a room shared with six to eight others, on the grounds of the factory where she worked an endless week -- thousands of miles from home. When she just could not take her life any longer, she climbed up on the roof of the factory's tallest building and leaped to her death. The factory responded by installing safety netting across the building, and it was back to business as usual.
That was the image Mike Daisey presented of life at Foxconn, a South Korean electronic manufacturing company, with factories throughout China, responsible for producing roughly 40 % of all consumer electronics products in the world. Foxconn manufactures Apple's iconic products, including the iPad. Daisey was an unknown artist, a self-described "storyteller whose groundbreaking monologues weave together autobiography, gonzo journalism, and unscripted performance to tell hilarious and heartbreaking stories that cut to the bone." Enter Ira Glass of This American Life, host of a weekly public radio show that uses the power of storytelling to provide social commentary on serious issues -- all with flair and a great sense of fun. Glass and Daisey were a perfect match. Daisey's one-man show caught Glass' attention, and in January This American Life broadcasted excerpts of Daisey's The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. The show added its voice to a chorus of bad publicity for Foxconn--and Apple--from CNN, Nightline and the New York Times, among others. All of a sudden, Apple faced the wrath of shareholders and consumers who expected more: great products and a great corporate citizen. The company responded with a statement:

We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. We insist that our suppliers provide safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect, and use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes wherever Apple products are made. Our suppliers must live up to these requirements if they want to keep doing business with Apple.

More specifically, Apple affirmed its Supplier Code of Conduct, published a list of all its suppliers (the first time it has ever provided such information), and engaged the Fair Labor Association, an independent, nonprofit auditing company founded in 1999 by universities and other interested groups, to audit Foxconn's practices.
And that's where you might have expected the story to end, except last week This American Life offered a public retraction of Daisey's story and an apology for airing it without proper factchecking. What followed was a painful interview between Glass and Daisey reminiscent of Oprah's public scolding of James Frey, the author who penned a memoir that turned out to be largely fiction. But unlike Frey's book, Daisey's storytelling was largely true and implicitly corroborated by similar reports from numerous reputable sources, including other U.S. news outlets, and most importantly, Apple itself. Apple's own report details some of the abusive labor practices its suppliers have engaged in, ranging from failing to provide at least one day off for every 7 worked to hiring underage workers. Some of the suppliers were repeat offenders, but Apple has severed ties with only one. Moreover, a spokesman for China Labour Bulletin, a workers' rights organization, stated "workers at Foxconn were still subject to a list of poor working conditions, including long working hours, strict management that sometimes borders on abusive practice, and unsafe work practices in some factories." Despite all that, Foxconn has claimed This American Life's retraction as vindication of its practices (although it has graciously agreed not to sue the producers).
Once again, we get lost in the non-story.

On February 29

On this day in ...
... 1860, "Mrs. Kwong Lee," identified as "the wife of the owner of the Kwong Lee Company," arrived in Victoria, British Columbia. (credit for photo of Victoria's "Chinatown," circa 1860) Not further identified in sources online, she was apparently married to a man in fact named Lee Chong, yet known as "Kwong Lee." The couple had 2 children. It's believed she's the 1st woman to emigrate from China to what's now known as Canada.

(Our only prior February 29 posts is here; today is, after all, Leap Year Day.)