Did Chinese Prisoners Make Cup Balls?

HONG KONG —  As millions of fans cheered the kickoff of the World Cup, one man was crying foul.

Bao Ge, a Chinese dissident who was released from prison a year ago, alleges that he was forced to stitch together Adidas World Cup ’98 soccer balls while in a labor education camp. Bao filed a lawsuit against Adidas last week claiming that the company was liable for the prisoners’ suffering. Adidas denies that the balls were theirs.

Bao, 34, a political activist who served three years at a labor camp near Shanghai for “causing social uncertainties,” said the prisoners started making the balls in December 1995. The brands included Adidas, Brine, Molten and Pelada, he said, and some balls were marked “France ’98 FIFA World Cup, Official Championship Ball.”

Prisoners were forced to work 15 hours a day and were beaten if they didn’t finish their daily quota, Bao said, pointing out that such practices violate both Chinese and international labor laws.

Bao traced the balls from the prison, the First Shanghai Labor Education Camp, to a nearby manufacturer, the Sheyang County Jiangsu Province Manufacturer, which was connected to the Shanghai Ball Manufacturing Co. He said he believes the Shanghai company was a subcontractor for a company that had received an order from Adidas’ German headquarters, making the prison four levels down the production chain.

But distance should not mean dispensation, said Bao, who also plans to lodge lawsuits in the U.S., France and Germany in the coming weeks.

Adidas has another explanation: The soccer balls were counterfeit.

“They were definitely not our balls,” company spokesman Peter Csanadi said on his mobile phone from France. “We checked, and we don’t even work with that company. We have enough control of our subcontractors to know who they are working with.”

Adidas’ World Cup match balls are made in Morocco, he added, and do not bear a special logo.

Csanadi said that the company investigated Bao’s claim when he was released from prison last June--and checked again when he filed his lawsuit--and were satisfied they had no connection to the prison labor.

“We think we know what kind of balls these were. We think we know what went wrong, and the balls are not ours,” he said but added that he could not elaborate while the firm is dealing with the lawsuit.

The issue of responsibility for subcontractors’ sins has haunted the sporting goods industry and other manufacturers that have moved production to developing countries to cut costs.

Adidas transferred some soccer-ball manufacturing to Vietnam and China after problems with child labor and overcapacity in Pakistan, Csanadi said. The company’s code of conduct explicitly forbids “contractors, subcontractors and others” to use prisoners or children under 15 as workers.

Adidas and 57 other soccer-related companies pledged in February to buy equipment made in Pakistan only from factories under the supervision of the International Labor Organization.

Sports shoe giants Nike and Reebok have faced allegations of substandard labor practices at their subcontractors’ plants in China and bolstered their own codes of conduct and wage scales as a result.

In April, Levi Strauss & Co. announced plans to return to China after pulling most of its manufacturing out of the country in 1993 because of pervasive human rights abuses. Its Hong Kong subsidiary however, continued to farm out production to factories in China’s neighboring Guangdong province.

Bao said that he had heard from a recently released inmate that the labor camp prisoners have stopped making the balls and have been transferred to the fields for the summer harvest. But during the World Cup, when fans hear the soft thump of a cleat against a ball, Bao said, he hopes they will think of those still in the camp.

“I want to tell the world: Football games do not always bring happiness to all the people,” Bao said. “At this time, I miss my cellmates in prison.”