Volkswagen’s audit of its joint venture factory in Xinjiang – where human rights groups accuse it of using forced Uyghur labor – contains flaws that make it unreliable, said an expert who obtained a confidential copy of the audit.
The German automaker said in December that an audit of the plant, a joint venture with Chinese state-owned SAIC Motor Corp., showed no signs of human rights violations.
But after analyzing the leaked audit report, Adrian Zenz, a senior researcher at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, found that contrary to his claims, the audit had not used international standards and was therefore “inadequate to meaningfully assess the presence or absence of forced labor at the factory.”
“The audit methodology was extremely flawed and insufficient,” he told Radio Free Asia in an interview.
Zenz also encountered problems with the listeners themselves.
Last year, Volkswagen hired Berlin-based consultancy Löning-Human Rights & Responsible Business GmbH to carry out the audit. Löning in turn commissioned the Shenzhen-based law firm Laingma, which has ties to the Chinese Communist Party, to carry out the actual review.
But Zenz found that neither Liangma nor his expert, Briton Clive Greenwood, had any experience in carrying out social audits or SA8000 certifications based on internationally recognized decent work standards.
“Liangma’s audit did not meet the SA8000 standard it purported to assess,” Zenz wrote in the 24-page report released Thursday and posted on the website of the Jamestown Foundation, a conservative defense policy think tank based in Washington.
“Deficiencies in the audit methodology and implementation meant that it was unable to adequately assess the risks of forced labor,” he wrote.
Inconsistencies
Löning, which called for the application of SA8000 auditing principles, neglected key aspects of this standard and ignored the region’s repressive political environment, Zenz found.
Additionally, Liangma’s website does not advertise audit services or indicate that the firm has expertise in performing them. And the audit did not assess all indicators of possible forced labor, he later told RFA in a telephone interview.
Zenz also found that two Chinese lawyers Han and Greenwood conducted the audit but did not ask employees questions about possible forced labor, and did not follow standards for interviewing workers, he said.
Listeners live-streamed interviews with workers from their home offices, giving workers no privacy and risking interception via the Internet by the Chinese government, he said.
By reading the leaked audit document, one can “assess the discrepancy between Volkswagen’s final statement regarding the audit and what the audit itself actually said,” Zenz said.
Volkswagen defended the audit, saying it “always adheres to legal requirements in its communications,” a company spokesperson told RFA in an email, asking not to be identified by name. “At no time was there any deception of investors or the public.”
Calls to withdraw
News of the leaked audit prompted the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China to issue a statement Friday saying it was dismayed by its contents.
“It is completely unacceptable that a major company like Volkswagen continues to operate a factory where assimilationist policies are promoted, and it is unacceptable that claims about the integrity of its supply chain due diligence appear to be false,” said the statement released by lawmakers from various democratic countries focused on relations with China.
The group called on Volkswagen to withdraw from Xinjiang and provide a full explanation in response to the audit reports.
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The audit also said the factory held staff activities aimed at promoting “ethnic unity” and ensuring “harmony,” although those activities were associated with forced assimilation, Zenz’s report noted.
“This raises serious ethical concerns about Volkswagen’s continued presence in the region,” Zenz wrote.
“A review of the audit shows that it did not attempt to assess forced labor according to international standards,” Zenz said. “It simply asserts that there is no forced labor, based on a visual inspection of the factory and a review of workers’ contracts.”
Additionally, Greenwood, who joined Liangma in September 2023, shortly before the audit to participate, publicly stated that SA8000 audits are worthless in China, the report said.
“Mr. Greenwood’s enigmatic and partly very obscure journey is marked by twists and turns, contradictions and obfuscations,” Zenz said in the report.
“Profit from exploitation”
Uyghur rights groups have repeatedly called on Volkswagen to withdraw its presence and supply chains from Xinjiang and close its joint venture in Urumqi.
The World Uighur Congress, or WUC, headquartered in Germany, said Volkswagen had “long demonstrated its complicity in the Chinese government’s genocide of the Uighurs.”
“Credible, independent audits are not possible in a repressive environment, where millions of Uyghurs are under close surveillance, arbitrarily detained and tortured for comments or appearances that do not conform to the ideals of the Communist Party,” Gheyyur Qurban, the group’s director of German Advocacy, said in a statement.
“It’s high time for VW to go,” he said.
Rushan Abbas, executive director of the Campaign for Uighurs, or CFU, said the leaked audit report showed “not mere surveillance” but a “deliberate and cold-blooded betrayal of basic human dignity.”
The CFU said it had received a copy of the audit report disclosed in August and that its findings had been shared with Financial Times, The Spiegeland the German television channel ZDF.
“Profiting from the exploitation and suffering of innocent people is the height of moral bankruptcy,” Abbas said in a statement. “Volkswagen must leave Uyghur territory now and take a definitive stand against the genocide.
“This is not a flawed audit, but a company knowingly prioritizing profits over the lives of Uyghurs,” she said.
Edited by Malcolm Foster.