[..] Our findings highlight mechanisms and practices that increase price pressure on garment suppliers and vendors. Additional harm is caused by unrelenting delivery speed requirements, which force suppliers to take on overstocking risks or incur penalties for delays. Manufacturers and vendors are finding it increasingly difficult to break even, let alone make a profit. To safeguard their businesses, they not only pay their employees less and force them to work longer hours, but they also adopt an increasingly non-committal management style that weakens job security, base wages, regulated working time, and occupational health and safety standards. Our research is based on social media posts, videos, online publications, and government documents that feature the voices, views, and actions of employees, vendors, manufacturers, industry experts, journalists, and officials. We connect the dots between thousands of posts and documents to create a comprehensive and systematic picture of how Chinese ultra-fast fashion giants operate and what this means for the rights and welfare of individuals who directly or indirectly work for them. In addition to these primary sources, we incorporate the work of civil society organisations and journalists that researched the social and environmental impact of Shein and Temu.

We conclude that Temu and Shein are spearheading a deeply concerning trend towards the reemergence of a sweatshop economy in which workers labour without formal contracts and under unregulated working hours. Worsening working conditions impact suppliers at lower tiers all over China. Due to intense competition in the fashion industry, more brands and producers will try to follow Shein’s and Temu’s lead. Regulators have little time left to act.