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BYD ranks at the bottom for human rights. But interestingly, BYD’s proponents seem to brush it away. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-right

• eunos 9mo ago
  Never ever I saw people in real life making purchasing decision based on "human rights"
  • why-o-why 9mo ago
    Hello. I'm one. AMA.
    • Novosell 9mo ago
      What phone do you use? If not a Fairphone, why not?
      • why-o-why 9mo ago
        Excellent! This discussion will proceed as follows: you will present a laundry list of examples, and if I answer NO to any of them, you win. It will play out as the illustration of the fallacy of all or nothing: if I am not 100% pure, then I am 100% wrong. What you will fail to understand, is that in the real world "doing the best one can" still has an impact. So I might not answer 100% all of your questions, but it doesn't mean my decisions don't have any impact. The absurdity can be illustrated by rewording: "if we can't prevent all crime, we should stop enforcing it", or "if you can't feed all the hungry children, we shouldn't bother feeding any". Unfortunately for you, I will not play your purity test game so that you can feel smug, but I will say that I do my best and I pay attention, and whenever feasible I vote with my wallet to buy from or invest in companies with stated goals that align with human rights, and I will feel disappointment over not making the "best possible choice" at every opportunity, but that will position me to do better next time. Because perfection is the enemy of progress.
        • Lionga 9mo ago
          He just asked a single questions, and you seem to be unable to answer it.
          • why-o-why 9mo ago
            What didn't you understand? The point isn't whether I do specific thing A or specific thing B, the point is that when I can I do the best in the situation to improve the average. The specifics don't matter. It is the overall impact. OP is playing the "debate" game which is about winning, and not about the issue itself. It is because OP doesn't care to understand, they just want to score points, hence their desire to focus on specific instances. Had OP said something like "How can you make an informed decision congruent with your ethics when so many ubiquitous companies violate human rights?" that would have been a genuine question. Instead OP said "Tell me why you don't do X" and behind that is "because I win." That's arguing from bad faith (a polite way to describe OP).
            • Lionga 9mo ago
              You said AMA, he asked a very simple question. You can not answer that very simple questions. He wins because he is almost surely correct in his assumptions about you, not matter how much you weasel around it.
              • why-o-why 9mo ago
                I'm sorry you don't understand my answers. Like, at all. Maybe calm down and re-read my responses when you have a clear head? It's all spelled out multiple times.
                • throw1111221 9mo ago
                  So uhh what phone do you use?
          • heinternets 9mo ago
            Isn't there a spectrum of phone manufacturers which go from fairly bad on human rights to fairly good?
• nutjob2 9mo ago
  Why focus on BYD, China as a whole is effectively a totalitarian state that locks up millions because of their ethnicity and disappears or executes people who disagree with the government. They are also territoriality aggressive and routinely use trade as a weapon to pushing states that stand up to it. Buying anything from China is supporting that regime.
  • CapitalistCartr 9mo ago
    I could make a good case for the United States fitting that description, especially the bits about trade and agression.
    • nutjob2 9mo ago
      The inevitable whataboutism. Firstly it's not relevant to a discussion about China's behavior. Yes the US under Trump has become increasingly authoritarian, but besides being not as oppressive as China, the US remains a democracy and there is a chance to vote bad people out of the White House and more importantly reverse the direction of the country.
    • echelon 9mo ago
      The US is complex antihero type. While it definitely attacks threats and has perpetrated plenty of unjust deeds, it also is responsible for the food security of much of the world. It has lifted more people out of poverty than any other party. It has brought poor nations to the point of industrialization. The US has been a far greater force for good in the world than evil. The leadership changes frequently, so it's hard to point to any single responsible party. It's democratic, so its institutions are subject to scrutiny. The free press sheds light on corruption and rule breaking. Despite changing immigration narratives, the US has been an early and strong proponent of multiculturalism and welcoming people. With declining US hegemony, the world is likely to become a much more dangerous place. We'll see more economic strife, more war, higher costs, greater tensions.
      • newyankee 9mo ago
• g947o 9mo ago
  You can pretty much replace BYD with any Chinese company (and to some extent, almost any company in the world) and the sentence would still make sense. So I have mostly lost interest in the argument. Not that it is an incorrect or irrelevant argument, but none of that has really mattered.
  • gloryjulio 9mo ago
    This. Most of the Chinese products met the definition of dumping. They over produce with suppressed wages, currency exchange rate, and government subsidies. The current generations of Chinese workers do not benefit from this. To clarify, they have top products, some are well paid. But the general trend is dumping. I am curious when will other countries would actually start of defend their industries properly.
    • StopDisinfo910 9mo ago
      > They over produce with suppressed wages, currency exchange rate, and government subsidies I mean, so does Germany. Technically, the USA only has the massive subsidies part since the IRA came to be but they also have tariffs so, not doing too bad distortion-wise. At this point in time, pretty much everyone is already defending their industries. China is just playing its cards better than the others and with a head start when it comes to EV.
      • ericmay 9mo ago
        Tariffs aren’t the same thing as suppressing wages, overproduction, government subsidies, and managed currency to prevent deflation. In the case of the US with respect to China they are mostly a retaliation to the above anti-competitive practices. But I hear you on who is playing their cards better. I don’t think China is playing theirs very well. They pissed off both the US and EU, and even Mexico is enacting tariffs on Chinese products. American and European countries are taking action to stop Chinese anti-competitive practices. Nice factories you have there, too bad there’s nobody to sell those products to. I also don’t know what you mean when you say for example the US and Germany are suppressing wages. I’m interested in what you mean by that specifically.
• simianparrot 9mo ago
  "But Tesla bad so BYD is a necessary evil" seems to be a common sentiment.
  • liotier 9mo ago
    The European Union can't fight everyone at once - we need partners, hence trying to mend fences with MERCOSUR, toning down the struggle for human rights in China and tolerating India's authoritarian drift. For now the utmost priorities are defeating Russia and achieving actual strategic autonomy by decoupling from the traitorous USA. So yes, better BYD than Tesla.
    • tonyhart7 9mo ago
      "decoupling from the traitorous USA" wow, seems like US must pull from the NATO fast
      • ulfw 9mo ago
        Nobody but the new US is threatening to pull from NATO
        • tonyhart7 9mo ago
          US threatening to pull from NATO because EU didn't even have proper military readiness that's why we have russo-ukrainian war right now, if EU is strong enough to counter russian, that wouldn't happen
          • ulfw 9mo ago
            If my grandma had wheels she'd be a bicycle
          • okanat 9mo ago
            If Russia wanted to invade Ukraine, it wouldn't matter. Ukraine isn't NATO. US was involved in Bosnia and Kuwait. If they pleased they would be involved in Ukraine. But US got the fascist mind virus. It WAS US policy to play the protector role for EU and other West Aligned nations. Such that they traded with US and bought weapons from the US. If US pulls out, they will be replaced by other players in the game.
• monerozcash 9mo ago
  >But interestingly, BYD’s proponents seem to brush it away. This feels like a rather lazy strawman to debate against. Not sure there's anything interesting about it.
• blell 9mo ago
  Are BYD proponents allowed to say that this doesn’t matter much to them, or are they expected to measure themselves by your political views because they are the only correct ones?
  • newsclues 9mo ago
    Shouldn’t human rights factor into consumers choices?
    • blell 9mo ago
      I don’t think anything in particular “should” factor into everybody’s choices. Some are sensitive to price, some are sensitive to design, others to autonomy, others to speed, and then, yes, some will buy depending on human rights records.
• skinnymuch 9mo ago
  That report is basically made up. Why would non western companies be “transparent” with western organizations? A lot of it is self reports. This is like looking at the freedom indexes and concluding that in the US women have the freedom to walk safely at night in cities because it ranks high on western freedom orgs but not in actually safe places like China.
• rapidfl 9mo ago
  Like many sibling comments, many companies are on a range that is on the bad side. There is a part of EV supply chain that is particularly bad and that is for all companies. But what about the environmental costs that are being externalized? EV car production is likely worse or equal to ICE car production at each step. And the only arg seems to be that some day all EVs will be powered by solar/clean energy somehow.
  • rapidfl 9mo ago
    > EV car production is likely worse or equal to ICE car production at each step Does anyone feel otherwise? Is the net carbon and environmental footprint really lower over the entire lifecycle per car for an EV? Not today
    • AlotOfReading 9mo ago
      You're severely misinformed if you think the cradle-to-grave footprint of BEVs is higher than ICEs today. Feel free to pick the study of your choice. They're pretty unanimous at this point and the comparison isn't particularly close. Here's a particularly comprehensive study from Argonne: https://greet.anl.gov/publication-c2g_lca_us_ldv https://greet.anl.gov/publication-c2g_lca_us_ldv
• culi 9mo ago
  > BYD's 2023 Corporate Social Responsibility Report initially lacked a human rights policy. However, the company later published a 2024 Human Rights Policy Statement.[67] This new policy also shows enhanced commitment to supply chain due diligence, including recognition of OECD Guidelines. Despite these improvements, the policy lacks details on battery material sourcing. > BYD’s policies do not address gender-responsive due diligence. BYD states that it engages with stakeholders. However, it does not provide policies for engaging with communities affected by the battery supply chain or incorporating their views into decision-making processes. There is no reference to Indigenous Peoples or their rights in BYD’s reports.[68] https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ACT30/8544/2024/en/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ACT30/8544/2024/en/ I don't at all disagree with the importance of these topics and I'm glad to see them addressed but this entire metric seems to be based on specific language/terminology in a company's public commitments. And this terminology seems to be biased towards a western audience. For example, the United States (a settler-colonial nation) is ofc going to have more discourse around the rights of indigenous people. Whereas the term "indigenous" isn't used very much at all in China. I also feel like you've buried the lead here. Yes BYD ranks the lowest of the 13 brands they looked at but not by much and they also explicitly state that ALL of the brands they looked at failed to meet their minimum baselines. The report is more of a critique of the industry as a whole than any individual actor
• JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
  > BYD’s proponents seem to brush it away At the end of the day, you aren’t going to convince consumers in Southeast Asia, South America or Africa to buy more-expensive American or European cars on account of human rights. Not while they’re middle-income economies.
• cryptoegorophy 9mo ago
  Anything that is not Elon Musk is considered to be good
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
  • cindyllm 9mo ago
    [dead]
• WhereIsTheTruth 9mo ago
  Actually, credible ESG ratings like thee ones from Sustainalytics or MSCI show BYD scoring above average for human rights governance in the automotive sector, not at the bottom More importantly, this highlights a pattern of selective scrutiny: - When Western companies (like Tesla) source batteries from the same regions (or use batteries from BYD or CATL), human rights concerns rarely drive mainstream criticism or policy actions - When industries dominated by Western monopolies (eg: Big Tech's app stores or cloud services) face human rights allegations (like labor abuses in global supply chains or censorship complicity)= the backlash is often muted or just silenced - But when a non Western competitor like BYD gains traction, human rights rhetoric suddenly intensifies, even without evidence matching the severity of claims against established Western companies It's geopolitically convenient criticism, FUD against what threatens a western monopolistic ecosystem