Overconsumption, planned obsolescence, resource depletion, pollution, disregard for human rights ---- The essential information in this article is taken from the ActionAid France report based on an investigation conducted in April 2025 jointly with the NGO China Labor Watch, that is, before Shein's recent troubles with French and European authorities; this text does not attempt to elaborate on the content of this 21-page report, which can be consulted on their website. This is a summary. ---- A worker sorts a pile of clothes on the floor. The Shein logo can be seen on some of them. © China Labor Watch ---- Exposing Shein's practices is crucial in the fight against globalized capitalism, in order to reveal that it is about more than simply regulating the sale of immodest goods or reducing regulations to a mere instrument of national, or even European, trade defense. Regulating Shein's practices is fundamental, as this company is the most prominent representative of globalized capitalism based on overconsumption and the depletion of natural resources. It is responsible for 26.2 million tons of CO2, exacerbating climate change, while operating with disregard for human rights. Fast fashion is responsible for 4% of global climate emissions.
Moreover, Shein didn't invent the concept; it simply promoted it.
Shein exports 5,000 tons of clothing by plane every day.
Emerging in the 1990s, fast fashion refers to this acceleration of fashion, designed to sell ever more. It has benefited from the development of e-commerce, which facilitates rapid online sales. Shein's global success has given it a new boost: ultra-fast fashion, which accounts for 72% of the increase in sales between 2023 and 2024 (an additional 100 million units).
Shein operates in 150 countries, with the exception of China, where it does not ship.
With an estimated revenue of $38 billion in 2024, Shein is one of the largest retailers in the sector. It benefits from hundreds of millions of orders, an unprecedented volume in the history of the textile industry.
Shein exports 5,000 tons of clothing by air every day, the equivalent of 22 million t-shirts. This would be enough to clothe the entire population of France in three days. The company emitted 26.2 million tons of CO2, a 23.1% increase compared to 2023.
An average of 7,000 new items are added to the brand's website every day, with peaks reaching up to 50,000 new additions.
In 2024, Shein became the brand "where the French spend the most".
In our country, the brand's turnover was estimated at 1.64 billion euros in 2023. According to a study conducted by the shopping application Joko, based on the anonymized banking data of 700,000 people, Shein became in 2024 the brand "where the French spend the most", with a 58% increase in its sales (which mainly concern those under thirty).
That same year, nearly a quarter of the parcels handled by the French postal service, La Poste, came from sales by Shein and Temu, the other major Chinese online sales platform. This has led to insurmountable problems, as the brand has the means to circumvent European regulatory attempts. It now lands cargo ships in Belgium and transports parcels by truck, thus increasing its carbon footprint. Furthermore, with the help of a European country, it has developed a gigantic warehouse in Poland (originally intended to temporarily store returned products until they were put back into circulation). This was done to avoid the EUR3 tax per parcel that the EU wanted to impose by eliminating the customs duty exemption granted to so-called "low-value" shipments, particularly within the European market, where the threshold is set at less than EUR150.
Providing a framework and regulations for the entire sector to prevent the emergence of other equally harmful and polluting models.
Regulating Shein's practices is not only essential, and, as we have clearly seen with the uncovering of sales of "illegal" products, whether "sex dolls", including those with pedopornographic implications or weapons of all kinds, it is fundamental, since this model has deleterious consequences at the environmental and societal level, because it plunders natural resources and acts on climate change and global warming, while operating in contempt of human rights.
The aim is not to focus (or even try to focus) solely on the Chinese brand, which would prove impossible for numerous reasons, particularly legal and extraterritorial ones, as we saw with the French government's bluster that went nowhere. Rather, the goal is to provide a framework for the entire sector to prevent the emergence of other equally polluting models and to allow for the development of "sustainable fashion," even if, for the moment, this seems unlikely without a fundamental societal upheaval.
Shein owes its success to the constant renewal of its product offerings.
Offering low-quality products with a limited lifespan, a free return policy that encourages overconsumption, and using artificial intelligence to generate a constant stream of new designs, Shein and its competitor Temu, endorsed by millions of consumers worldwide, have become, like the GAFAM companies, indispensable in globalized capitalist society.
Shein owes its success to a constant renewal of its offerings, based on "emotional obsolescence": this involves pushing consumers to no longer desire the clothes they bought the day before by constantly presenting them with new items, which is the foundation of the 21st-century hyper-consumer society.
Thanks to artificial intelligence tools, the offerings are therefore constantly adapted to consumers' "preferences." Depending on demand, production can be increased or halted almost instantly, as Shein orders clothing, fashion accessories, and home linens on a just-in-time basis from a myriad of small workshops. These workshops produce very small quantities of each item, with the stock being replenished daily at ridiculously low prices, thanks to the exploitation of an invisible workforce.
Poverty, urban segregation, and social and economic inequalities are rampant.
An investigation was conducted, among others, by a representative of the NGO China Labor Watch based in Kangle, over a period of more than two years, to build trust with the workers and document their daily lives.
At the heart of Shein's ultra-fast fashion empire lie the urban villages of Guangzhou, home to an underpaid and exploited migrant workforce.
Poverty, urban segregation, and social and economic inequalities are the main characteristics of these "villages." They pose safety risks due to their extreme density; the urban fabric is composed of buildings crammed together, failing to meet safety standards, and consisting of unsanitary housing where living and working spaces are indistinguishable. They offer temporary and precarious shelter to workers in a city marked by social and economic inequalities. Some apartments are converted into clandestine textile workshops, unsanitary dwellings where living and working spaces are not separated, and where machines run day and night.
Coming from the rural regions of Hubei, Jiangxi, or Fujian, without city residence permits (the infamous "hukou"), these people, sometimes minors, are excluded from the most basic social protections, forming a reserve of disposable labor, trapped in poverty, and readily mobilized to absorb production peaks. then disappear when demand falls.
An 11-hour workday, 6 to 7 days a week, for an average price of EUR0.50 per item.
The urban village of Kangle (a district of Guangzhou) concentrates over 100,000 inhabitants in barely one square kilometer. Kangle is essential to fast-fashion brands; its dense network of hundreds of small workshops, subcontracting for subcontractors, allows for the production of clothing at an uninterrupted pace, chaining cutting, sewing, packaging, and shipping in just a few days.
On the street and in recruitment markets, workers wait outside the workshops, sometimes holding a sign indicating their availability.
It is not uncommon for a workday to last more than 10 hours, sometimes 12 hours, or even longer depending on the time of year. The workers interviewed reported being paid per item, depending on the complexity of the task, for amounts ranging from EUR0.06 to EUR0.27.
To earn a "good wage," one must work a minimum of 11 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week, at an average price of EUR0.50 per item; a worker would have to produce nearly 300 items per day to hope to reach 4,229 yuan (or EUR502), the average monthly cost of living.
Added to this is the significant instability of income, linked to fluctuations in demand. During peak sales periods, such as Black Friday or Christmas, orders flood in, working hours lengthen, and the days become more intense; then demand decreases, wages plummet, and workers, most of whom are without contracts, can find themselves unemployed overnight.
In short, Shein's ability to offer up to 50,000 new items per day at rock-bottom prices relies on the systematic exploitation of an invisible workforce. Decentralized, unregulated, and ultra-flexible: Shein's production chain is designed to allow the brand to evade all responsibility. But behind the "shock prices" lie millions of invisible hours of labor, worn-out bodies, and violated rights.
Unsustainable work rates, piece-rate wages, and unrealistic profitability targets: these conditions are not exceptions in the informal workshops that supply Shein, but the norm. Fast fashion thrives not despite human rights violations, but because of them.
Women on the front lines:
Women are systematically at the bottom of the ladder. Although they make up the majority of production lines, they are relegated to the most precarious and lowest-paid positions, while men retain privileged access to the most desirable roles.
The practice of unpaid labor for women has become widespread, as reported by several individuals. Recruitment by couples, where the woman's work is not independently compensated, appears to be the preferred method. In China, as elsewhere, gender norms continue to assign primary responsibility for children to mothers. Some mothers have no other option than to take their young children with them to the workshops, exposing them to social isolation and physical risks, like all workers, due to the lack of personal protective equipment, such as gloves or masks, in environments where synthetic microparticles are ubiquitous. This has repercussions for their health, as no medical follow-up is provided.
Other mothers have made a different choice, entrusting their children to family members living in the countryside where they are from, far from urban villages and distant from supply chains.<sup>1</sup>
Furthermore, female workers reported experiencing sexist and sexual violence in the workshops, particularly verbal abuse.
Cotton, Xinjiang, Uyghurs, forced labor:
The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the main territory inhabited by the Uyghur population. It plays a central role in the Chinese textile economy, supplying more than 80% of the country's cotton production and 20% of global production. Forced labor, mass internment, and widespread surveillance are established practices there.
According to the NGO End Uyghur Forced Labour, one in five cotton garments worldwide is linked to the forced labor of Uyghurs.
Shein maintains partnerships with several industrial and logistics parks, notably the Guangqing Textile Park, and could gradually integrate Xinjiang cotton into all of its Guangdong workshops, accelerating its integration into globalized value chains.
According to research commissioned by Stop Uyghur Genocide, it is highly likely that the park received investment and financial support from the brand. In May 2024, four companies from Xinjiang, some of which are sanctioned by US authorities under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) due to their alleged links to forced labor, signed an agreement to establish themselves in the Guangzhou North Zhongda Fashion Technology City. There is a tangible risk that cotton products from the region have entered Shein's supply chain.
"ActionAid France advocates for strengthening the European directive on due diligence, not weakening it in the name of 'business competitiveness,' and for the adoption of a law that regulates the entire fashion industry by imposing compliance with international labor standards."
This conclusion from ActionAid France-regulation in the textile sector, and in particular a European directive-is only a bare minimum demand.
A fundamental change is needed, through joint action: citizens putting pressure on institutions, economic actors, and, above all, in short, a societal shift!
Berny F.
1. This is one of the themes of the magnificent *The Time of Harvests*. https://www.avoir-alire.com/le-temps-des-moissons-huo-meng-critique
https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=8950
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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