Two French journalists are under fire after airing a hard-hitting investigation into alleged forced labor in Chinese factories linked to major Western brands. Since mid-March, the pair has faced a coordinated online smear campaign and death threats, believed to be fueled by Chinese state propaganda outlets
The report, co-produced with investigative outlet Disclose, aired in early February and included a segment on Decathlon — one of France’s largest multinational companies.
Using hidden cameras and posing as travel influencers, the journalists infiltrated a textile supplier in China linked to Decathlon. The factory, part of the Qingdao Jifa Group, has been flagged by U.S. lawmakers for suspected involvement in forced labor and for sourcing cotton from Xinjiang — a region where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been accused of detaining Uyghurs and other minorities in re-education camps and forcing them to perform manual labor for little to no pay.
Forced labor exposed
The exposé sparked fierce backlash from China’s state-run media. On March 16, China’s official news agency Xinhua denounced the documentary, accusing the journalists of “fabricating lies through deceptive means” and collaborating with “anti-China forces.” The Chinese embassy in France even amplified this narrative by reposting the Xinhua statement on its official WeChat account, a popular blogging and social media app in China.
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But what followed was even more alarming: A full-on campaign of digital harassment and threats, some of which included death threats and sexist slurs aimed at the journalists.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) issued a statement on March 19, condemning what it called “a wave of online violence including death threats” and called for French authorities to launch an investigation. “Since March 1, thousands of messages have circulated across social media, ranging from insults to violent threats,” the RSF note read.
The attack appears to be part of a coordinated disinformation effort. Xinhua and other Chinese outlets escalated their smear tactics beginning mid-March, coinciding with a wave of YouTube and TikTok videos recycling the same talking points. According to RSF, many of the accounts posting these attacks were previously dormant, suggesting a possible bot network or state-linked mobilization.
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Digital death threats
One of the most vocal critics is Andy Boreham, a pro-Beijing YouTuber from New Zealand who works for the Shanghai Daily. Boreham posted a video titled “Two anti-China French ‘journalists’ caught lying,” which has garnered over 130,000 views. The video was reposted by several influencers aligned with Beijing’s narrative, further fueling the online harassment.
Beneath these re-posts are chilling comments such as:
This digital onslaught has also reached the journalists’ personal social media accounts, particularly their X (formerly Twitter) profiles, where waves of Simplified Chinese insults and threats continue to flood in. As a result of the intensity of the campaign, France 2 has taken down the segment involving the Decathlon factory in China from its YouTube channel. However, the full documentary remains available on the network’s official website and Disclose’s YouTube channel.
The smear campaign also fixates on three controversial scenes from the documentary — ones that Chinese commenters have used to discredit the journalists.
A systematic campaign
The first involves footage of a 12-year-old girl working in the factory. Chinese internet users claim she was merely waiting for her mother and accuse the journalists of coaxing her into pretending to work. However, users on Reddit have countered this claim, noting that the girl clearly says she helps out at the factory when not in school. Her “confident and practiced way” of sewing buttons on camera also further suggests she had done this before, users noted.
Another point of contention involves audio clips where French journalists mention factory “bonuses” in a regional dialect. These were allegedly mistranslated as “Xinjiang” and “ethnic Koreans” fueling accusations of intentional distortion. Finally, a factory manager admitted in the documentary that some cotton did come from Xinjiang.
Though critics argue this doesn’t necessarily mean the factory used forced labor, the admission itself is significant given Decathlon’s sourcing policies. RSF insists that the incident underscores the extreme risks journalists face when investigating sensitive topics related to China. In its 2024 World Press Freedom Index, China ranked 172nd out of 180 countries.
“China not only imprisons more journalists than any other country,” the RSF statement read, adding, “but also strictly censors information, surveils online content, and silences anything deemed politically sensitive.”
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