The arrest and disappearance of activists investigating alleged labor violations at a factory producing Ivanka Trump branded shoes has shone a spotlight on worker conditions in China, though rights groups warn that arbitrary detentions are exceedingly common, possibly involving multiple big name brands that many Americans own right now.

On Tuesday, the New York-based NGO China Labor Watch (CLW) revealed that one of its team had been arrested and two others had gone missing during an investigation of Ganzhou Huajian International Shoe City Co., which makes shoes carrying the name of U.S. President Donald Trump’s eldest daughter. The firm has plants in the southern Chinese manufacturing hubs of Dongguan and Ganzhou.

CLW executive director Li Qiang told the AP that the three men — named Hua Haifeng, Li Zhao and Su Heng — “must be held either by the factory or the police.” A police officer telephoned Hua Haifeng’s wife on Tuesday afternoon to say that he had been arrested on charges of illegal surveillance; the whereabouts of the other pair remains unknown.

“When I heard the news I was devastated and I refused to believe it at first,” Hua’s wife, Deng Guilian, who relies solely on her husband’s income to support their two young children and three elderly relatives, told TIME by phone Wednesday. “I only know that my husband was on a business trip.”

CLW, which has investigated working conditions in China for 17 years, was due to release a report next month alleging excessive overtime, low pay, and the possible misuse of student interns at the company, which is run by the Huajian Group. Li worries that the extra attention brought by links to the U.S. First Family could have resulted in harsher treatment for the activists.

“I think they were detained because this factory makes products for Ivanka Trump, so now this situation has become political and very complicated,” Li told the U.K. Guardian. “I appeal to President Trump, Ivanka Trump herself, and to her brand to advocate and press for the release our activists.”

Still, labor abuses in China go much deeper that Ivanka Trump brand shoes, applying to many of the household products that U.S. consumers purchase on a daily basis.

Over the past six years, CLW uncovered various abuses including substandard living and working conditions, wage deduction, and withholding of government issued I.D. at factories supplying parts for Apple and Samsung smartphones. Late last year, CLW found a slew of labor violations at four factories that appear to produce toys for Mattel, Hasbro, Disney, McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. The firms all insist they abide by international labor laws.

“This is nothing new,” Keegan Elmer, a researcher for Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, an independent NGO doing work similar to CLW, says of the latest detentions. “We constantly find flagrant labor rights violations, and workers working hard to change their conditions, and it’s all the more disheartening to see global brands staying quiet when the police step in.”

Labor disputes have soared in China in recent years as workers become more aware of their rights, organizing to safeguard their interests despite strikes and independent labor unions being illegal in the ostensibly communist state. There were 1.77 million disputes in 2016, according to government figures, representing a rise of 10.4% in 2015 and 2.9% in 2016. China Labor Bulletin uncovered 5,000 strikes or worker protests across China during 2015-16.

Read More: The Men Investigating Ivanka Trump’s Shoe Producer in China Are Missing or Arrested

As a consequence, global brands have shifted production elsewhere — typically Cambodia and Bangladesh — eating into the profits of Chinese factory bosses at a time when the nation’s economy is slowing. State security services are increasingly unleashed to fight the industrial action.

Contacted by TIME, Wei Xuegang, assistant president of Huajian Group, said, “We’re not taking any interviews at the moment, unless it is arranged by the government.”

Late last year, four labor activists were convicted of “gathering a crowd to disturb public order” for their part in mediating in a labor dispute at Lide shoe factory, which produces footwear for Ralph Lauren, Coach and Calvin Klein. One, named Meng Han, remains in prison.

Workers outside the Huajian factory gate in Dongguan told the New York Times on Tuesday that they routinely work 10 or more hours a day for six days a week. China’s own labor law sets limits of eight hours work per day.

Out of office hours calls by TIME to the Ivanka Trump brand went unanswered at time of publication. However, a spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by the AP.

Ganzhou Huajian International Shoe City Co. supplies 10,000 to 20,000 pairs of shoes a year for Ivanka Trump’s brand, though is just one of 15 Chinese factories contracted by the company, which is understood to sell 20 million pairs each year. A company statement said it requires subcontractors to “comply with all applicable laws and to maintain acceptable working conditions.”

“These international brands are generally hands off when it comes to these cases,” adds Keegan. “They are in good company in a very bad way.”

—With reporting by Zhang Chi / Beijing

Write to Charlie Campbell at charlie.campbell@time.com.</s>Three nonprofit workers investigating labor conditions at a Chinese factory making shoes for Ivanka Trump’s eponymous fashion brand have been arrested or gone missing.

Police arrested labor rights activist Hua Haifeng on suspicion of illegal surveillance, the man’s wife told the Associated Press yesterday (May 30). Hua and two colleagues lost contact with their employer China Labor Watch this past weekend, said Li Qiang, who heads the New York-based NGO. He believes authorities are holding all three men incommunicado. The Ivanka Trump brand declined to comment on the matter when contacted by the newswire.

The activists were investigating a Jiangxi province-based factory owned by Ganzhou Huajian International Shoe City, a subsidiary of the Huajian Group and one of the suppliers for Ivanka Trump’s fashion brand. According to Li, the men had documented excessive overtime and a base salary below minimum wage at the factory, and were attempting to confirm evidence of the illegal use of student interns. One of the activists, Su Heng, had been working undercover as an employee at the factory for a month.

The arrest and disappearances came amid an ongoing crackdown against foreign NGOs deemed a threat to China’s stability and national interests. A law enacted in January requires any such organization operating in China to find a government sponsor, register with the police, and submit annual reports on its financing, among other requirements. As a result, some foreign groups have closed their operations in China, while others are still struggling to navigate the red tape.

“Under president Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has promulgated new laws, as well as increased surveillance, to tighten control over these groups,” said Maya Wang, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The fact that they were investigating Ivanka Trump’s brand likely add to this heightened level of official scrutiny.”

According to Li, CLW has not been registered in China under the new law. Before this past weekend some of the group’s undercover investigations had been stopped by police after being reported by factory owners, but such instances hadn’t led to arrests.

The Huajian Group makes 10,000 to 20,000 pairs of shoes a year for Ivanka Trump’s brand, a fraction of the 20 million pairs it produces every year, AP noted. Repeated calls to Huajian made by Quartz went unanswered today (May 31).

Advocacy groups, foreign or not, are having a rough time in China. An LGBT event in the western city of Xi’an was forced to cancel this past weekend, with the organizers being held by police for eight hours. Last week Lee Ming-cheh, a Taiwanese human rights activist detained a few months ago in the southern city of Zhuhai, was formally arrested on the charge of subverting state power.</s>Following news that two labor activists went missing and another was arrested after investigating a Chinese company that produces Ivanka Trump shoes, numerous organizations have called for the president’s daughter to address the situation. “Ivanka’s brand should immediately cease its work with this supplier, and the Trump administration should reverse its current course and confront China on its human rights abuses,” Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said in a Wednesday statement. “For years, Ivanka Trump has ignored public reports of awful labor conditions at a factory that makes her shoes. Now, she must decide whether she can ignore the Chinese government’s apparent attempt to silence an investigation into those worker abuses.” Indeed, this isn’t the first time the Ivanka Trump brand has been embroiled in a labor scandal. In April, an inspection by the Fair Labor Association found that workers in a Chinese knitting factory that makes clothing for the brand were being underpaid, receiving just $62 weekly for up to 60 hours of work, or a little more than a dollar per hour. All together, the factory was found to be in violation of two dozen international labor standards.

Tuesday’s incident is even more complex, given that an arrest was made and two men reman missing. At the time, the three activists were working with China Labor Watch, a New York-based nonprofit, to investigate factories owned by the Huajian Group in southern China. Two of the investigators, Hua Haifeng and Li Zhao, were working undercover at a shoe factory in Dongguan, while the third investigator, Su Heng, was working at another factory in Ganzhou. Together, the activists and China Labor Watch were planning to release a report next month accusing the factories of underpaying their workers and forcing them to work excessive overtime. Both Hua and Li were informed weeks earlier that they were suspected of criminal activity and would not be allowed to cross the border into Hong Kong. Hua was arrested on Tuesday on charges of illegal surveillance while investigating a vocational school in Jiangxi. The AP reported that his wife received a call from the police Tuesday afternoon, telling her that she would be unable to see, speak with, or receive money from her husband, and that she did not need to know the details concerning his arrest. While China Labor Watch has lost touch with the two missing men, the organization’s executive director, Li Qiang, suspects they are either being held by the factory or the police. On Tuesday, Li told Reuters the arrests were a first for his organization. In his 17 years of activism, he said, no member of China Labor Watch had ever been arrested on suspicion of criminal charges. The organization has since appealed to President Trump, Ivanka, and her brand “to advocate and press for the release” of their activists. Under China’s president Xi Jinping, it is not uncommon for labor activists to be detained or harassed.

Comments from both the Chinese and U.S. government on Wednesday offered little additional insight. White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks said questions regarding the matter should be directed to Ivanka Trump’s brand, which has declined to comment. At a Wednesday news briefing, Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said China had no information about the arrests. “We haven’t heard about this. We don’t know where you got your information,” Chunying said, adding that NGOs were welcome to conduct an investigation of their own. Still, Chunying said, they should “observe Chinese laws and regulations and don’t engage in any illegal actions or behavior.” According to Vox, Ivanka Trump’s brand previously received a letter from China Labor Watch informing the company of the alleged labor abuses. The president of the brand, Abigail Klem, did not respond to the allegations, other than to say the company requires manufacturers to “comply with all applicable laws and to maintain acceptable working conditions.” On Wednesday, the East Asia Director of Amnesty International, Nicholas Bequelin, questioned the Trump family’s connection to Chinese businesses. “The eagerness of members of the [Trump] family to do business in China while airbrushing very troubling human rights and labor rights records of the country is troubling,” Bequelin told the AP. He also wondered whether business interests outweighed consideration of the United States’s role “in promoting human rights, labor rights, and democracy.”</s>(SHANGHAI) — A man investigating working conditions at a Chinese company that produces Ivanka Trump-brand shoes has been arrested and two others are missing, the arrested man's wife and an advocacy group said Tuesday.

Hua Haifeng was accused of illegal surveillance, according to his wife, Deng Guilian, who said the police called her Tuesday afternoon. Deng said the caller told her she didn't need to know the details, only that she would not be able to see, speak with or receive money from her husband, the family's breadwinner.

China Labor Watch Executive Director Li Qiang said he lost contact with Hua Haifeng and the other two men, Li Zhao and Su Heng, over the weekend. By Tuesday, after dozens of unanswered calls, he had concluded: "They must be held either by the factory or the police to be unreachable."

China Labor Watch, a New York-based nonprofit, was planning to publish a report next month alleging low pay, excessive overtime and the possible misuse of student interns. It is unclear whether the undercover investigative methods used by the advocacy group are legal in China.

For 17 years, China Labor Watch has investigated working conditions at suppliers to some of the world's best-known companies, but Li said his work has never before attracted this level of scrutiny from China's state security apparatus.

"Our plan was to investigate the factory to improve the labor situation," Li said. "But now it has become more political."

Walt Disney Co. stopped working with a toy maker in Shenzhen last year after the group exposed labor violations. China Labor Watch has also published reports on child labor at Samsung suppliers and spent years investigating Apple Inc.'s China factories. In the past, the worst thing Li feared was having investigators kicked out of a factory or face a short police detention.

The arrest and disappearances come amid a crackdown on perceived threats to the stability of China's ruling Communist Party, particularly from sources with foreign ties such as China Labor Watch. Faced with rising labor unrest and a slowing economy, Beijing has also taken a stern approach to activism in southern China's manufacturing belt and to human rights advocates generally, sparking a wave of critical reports about disappearances, public confessions, forced repatriation and torture in custody.

Another difference is the target of China Labor Watch's investigation: a brand owned by the daughter of the president of the United States.

White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks referred questions to Ivanka Trump's brand. The Ivanka Trump brand declined to comment for this story.

Abigail Klem, who took over day-to-day management when the first daughter took on a White House role as presidential adviser, has said that the brand requires licensees and their manufacturers to "comply with all applicable laws and to maintain acceptable working conditions."

Li said China Labor Watch asked police about the three missing investigators on Monday but received no reply. Li added that a friend had tried to file a missing person report on Li Zhao in Jiangxi, where the factory is located, but was told he had to do so in the man's hometown.

AP was unable to reach the other investigators' families. China's Ministry of Public Security and police in Ganzhou city and Jiangxi province could not be reached for comment Tuesday, which was a national holiday in China.

All three men were investigating Ganzhou Huajian International Shoe City Co.'s factory in Jiangxi province, just north of Guangdong province. Su Heng had been working undercover at the factory since April, Li said. The parent company is known as Huajian Group.

In January, Liu Shiyuan, then spokesman for the Huajian Group, told AP the company makes 10,000 to 20,000 pairs of shoes a year for Ivanka Trump's brand — a fraction of the 20 million pairs the company produces a year. A current spokeswoman for the company, Long Shan, did not reply to questions Tuesday. "I told you I could not check until tomorrow," she said. "If your official letter contains a stamp and signature, we can confirm whether the media is real or not."

Li said investigators had seen Ivanka Trump-brand shoes in the factory, as well as production orders for Ivanka Trump, Marc Fisher, Nine West and Easy Spirit merchandise.

"We were unaware of the allegations and will look into them immediately," a spokeswoman for Marc Fisher, which manufactures Ivanka Trump, Easy Spirit and its own branded shoes, said in an email. Nine West did not respond to requests for comment.

Li Zhao and Hua Haifeng were blocked from leaving mainland China for Hong Kong in April and May — something that had never happened to his colleagues before, Li said. Hua Haifeng was stopped at the border May 25 and later questioned by police, Li said. During their final phone conversation on Saturday, Hua told Li that police had asked him to stop investigating the Huajian factory — another turn of events that Li said was unprecedented.

Li said the men had documented excessive overtime, with working days sometimes stretching longer than 18 hours, and a base salary below minimum wage. They were working to confirm evidence suggesting that student interns — some of whom allegedly quit in protest — were putting in excessive hours on work unrelated to their field of study, in violation of Chinese law, Li said. The use of student workers in China is legal, but meant to be strictly regulated. Rights groups and journalists have documented widespread abuse of the system over the years.

"It is the role of the police to prevent that kind of independent investigation," said Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia director for Amnesty International. "The threshold is much lower today than it was one year ago, two years ago, and if this is something that has a foreign diplomacy dimension, that would make national security personnel even more willing to stop it."

Hua's wife, Deng, meanwhile, has yet to tell the couple's children, ages 3 and 7, about their father's plight. But they seem to know anyway, she said.

"My son suddenly burst into tears. He said he missed Papa," Deng said by phone from her home in central China's Hubei province. "I said Papa would come home soon and buy you toys."

She said the child looked at her and answered: "Papa was taken away by a monster."</s>An activist investigating a company that manufactures shoes for Ivanka Trump and other Western brands has been detained by police in China -- and two of his colleagues remain unaccounted for.

The activists were working undercover at two factories in southern China, according to China Labor Watch, the New York-based advocacy group for which they were carrying out the investigation. It lost contact with them on Saturday.

The news comes amid a broader crackdown in China on independent groups pushing for better labor rights in the world's second-largest economy.

One of the activists, Hua Haifeng, was detained by local police in Jiangxi province for "illegal surveillance," said Li Qiang, the head of China Labor Watch. The other two activists, Li Zhao and Su Heng, are missing, he said.

The activists took jobs between March and May at two factories run by Chinese shoe manufacturer Huajian Group -- one in Jiangxi and the other in Guangdong -- in order to investigate labor practices at the company, Li said.

Su, who was working at the factory in Jiangxi, found evidence of violations of workers' rights during the production of Ivanka Trump shoes, according to Li. They included employees working for as many as 18 hours a day for pay below the minimum wage, he said.

Huajian didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for Ivanka Trump's company declined to comment.

A spokeswoman for Marc Fisher Footwear, which licenses the Ivanka Trump brand for shoes, said the firm was unaware of the allegations and would look into them immediately. Two other shoe brands under the company's umbrella -- Marc Fisher and Kylie + Kendall -- were also being made at the Huaijian factories, according to China Labor Watch.

Huajian makes millions of shoes for Western brands every year.

Other customers supplied by the two factories under investigation by China Labor Watch include Coach, Alain Delon, Nine West and Karl Lagerfeld, the advocacy group said. The companies didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Li said he is sending video footage shot by Su at the Jiangxi factory to Ivanka Trump's company.

"We appeal to President Trump, Ivanka Trump herself, and to her related brand company to advocate and press for the release our activists," he said.

There's nothing to suggest that Ivanka Trump has any connection to what happened to the China Labor Watch investigators. She resigned from her management role at the clothing and accessories company when she took a job in her father's administration, but she still owns part of the business.

Hua's wife, Deng Guilian, told CNN that she received a call Tuesday from police in Jiangxi telling her that her husband has been detained for conducting illegal surveillance and that she should expect to receive a formal notice in the mail soon.

Deng said the news came as a shock. And with family's only breadwinner now in police detention, she said she's worried about their financial situation.

The families of Li and Su couldn't be reached for comment.

Officials at the local police department in Jiangxi said they weren't aware of any cases involving China Labor Watch activists.

The detention and disappearances of the activists were first reported by The Associated Press.

The Chinese government has stepped up its clamping down on independent labor groups in recent years. Since 2015, dozens of activists and lawyers have been detained, arrested and harassed.

Related: On the front lines of China's record-level labor unrest

"The government is taking a harsher line towards activists, especially those working for overseas organizations," said William Nee, China researcher at Amnesty International. "With the tightening economic situation, authorities could be looking to protect local manufacturing industries at all costs, even if that includes detaining activists bringing up labor issues."

But Li said it's the first time in 17 years of investigating labor rights violations in China that any of China Labor Watch's investigators had been detained by police.

"The accusation from Jiangxi police has no factual basis," he said.

-- Serenitie Wang, Serena Dong, Juila Horowitz, Yazhou Sun, Jethro Mullen and Felicia Wong contributed to this report.</s>A Chinese labor activist has been arrested and two others have disappeared after investigating alleged labor abuses at a factory that makes shoes for several major brands — including Ivanka Trump's.

Hua Haifeng disappeared sometime Sunday while en route to the Huajian International shoe factory in southern China's Jiangxi province.

On Tuesday, police in the province called Hua's wife, Deng Guimian.

"They said, 'You only need to know that your husband has been arrested on criminal charges,' " Deng told NPR by phone from her home in Hubei province. "'You don't need to know anything other than that.' "

Hua Haifeng works for China Labor Watch, a New York-based group that investigates violations of workers' rights. China Labor Watch says two of Hua's colleagues are also missing and presumed detained.

Deng says she has not informed the couple's two young children, her own parents or Hua's, about the incident. She wants to keep from upsetting them. And she says she is indignant at how police have treated her husband.

"I understand and support my husband's work," she says. "I feel his work is legal and meaningful, so why should they arrest him?"

The Huajian factory makes as many as 20,000 pairs of shoes a year for the Ivanka Trump brand. They make millions more for others, including Coach and Nine West. Factory managers couldn't be reached for comment by phone.

China Labor Watch director Li Qiang says his investigators worked undercover in the factory for more than a month and shot some eight hours of video footage.

He says he has evidence that workers at the factory were forced to work overtime without pay. One instance happened, he says, after a batch of shoes was found to have defects.

"The workers all wanted to leave," he says, "but they couldn't, because if they did, they'd be fired. So they were forced to work until 1:30 a.m., and they had to go back to work the same morning at 7:10 a.m."

Li says he also found evidence that workers were threatened with dismissal if they took sick leave and that they were forced to sign falsified time sheets.

Li says he investigated the Huajian shoe factory precisely because it was making shoes for the Ivanka Trump brand, and he thought he could leverage that to help the workers.

"We're helping Ivanka to discover labor abuses at the factories that supply her," he says. "That way, she can improve her supply chain. We also hope that through her influence, we can reduce labor abuses on the production lines of multinational corporations."

Li says he's going to submit his video footage to Ivanka Trump's company.

He believes that the police are trying to protect this factory because it makes shoes for Ivanka Trump. While he has no hard proof of this, he says he has investigated hundreds of factories in China — and while his staff have often been caught and kicked out, they have never been arrested until now.

He also rejects the police charges that Hua Haifeng and his colleagues were using illegal surveillance gear in the Huajian shoe factory. Li says all they had were cellphones.

When the factory became the subject of critical reports earlier this year, the state-run Global Times tabloid leaped to its defense, accusing Western media of "maligning the reputation of the Trump family by publishing distorted reports."

Analysts say China's government has not hesitated to avail itself of the back channel to the White House provided by Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.

"China has no other choice," Renmin University international relations scholar Shi Yinhong said of Kushner in an interview ahead of last month's meeting between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. "Since Trump took office, U.S.-China relations have faced a rather dangerous situation. Luckily, China discovered someone they can talk to who has direct access to the president."

As the Trump and Xi families gathered at Trump's Florida resort, China's government approved three new trademarks to sell Ivanka Trump-branded products in China, although Beijing insists it gave her no preferential treatment.</s>One man has been arrested and two others are missing in southern China after conducting an investigation into a Chinese factory making Ivanka Trump-branded shoes, China Labor Watch, a New York-based advocacy group, said on Wednesday.

"We appeal to President Trump, Ivanka Trump herself, and to her related brand company to advocate and press for the release our activists," China Labor Watch said in an email to Reuters.

Labor activist Hua Haifeng was arrested in the southern province of Jiangxi on suspicion of illegally using eavesdropping equipment, according to Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch.

The three men had been investigating a factory which makes shoes for the Ivanka Trump brand and other Western brands, he said in an email.</s>One man has been arrested and two others are missing in southern China after conducting an investigation into a Chinese factory making Ivanka Trump-branded shoes, China Labor Watch, a New York-based advocacy group, said on Wednesday.

SHANGHAI: One man has been arrested and two others are missing in southern China after conducting an investigation into a Chinese factory making Ivanka Trump-branded shoes, China Labor Watch, a New York-based advocacy group, said on Wednesday.

"We appeal to President Trump, Ivanka Trump herself, and to her related brand company to advocate and press for the release our activists," China Labor Watch said in an email to Reuters.

Labour activist Hua Haifeng was arrested in the southern province of Jiangxi on suspicion of illegally using eavesdropping equipment, according to Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch.

The three men had been investigating a factory which makes shoes for the Ivanka Trump brand and other Western brands, he said in an email.</s>SHANGHAI — The arrest and disappearance of three labor activists investigating a Chinese company that produces Ivanka Trump-branded shoes in China prompted a call for her brand to cease working with the supplier and raised questions about whether the first family's commercial interests would muddy U.S. leadership on human rights.

The men were working with a U.S. nonprofit to publish a report next month alleging low pay, excessive overtime and possible misuse of student labor, according to China Labor Watch executive director Li Qiang, who lost contact with the investigators over the weekend. China Labor Watch has been exposing poor working conditions at suppliers to some of the world's best-known companies for nearly two decades, but Li said his work has never before attracted this level of scrutiny from China's state security apparatus.

The arrest and disappearances come amid a crackdown on perceived threats to the stability of China's ruling Communist Party, particularly from sources with foreign ties such as China Labor Watch. Faced with rising labor unrest and a slowing economy, Beijing has taken a stern approach to activism in southern China's manufacturing belt and to human rights advocates generally, sparking a wave of critical reports about disappearances, public confessions, forced repatriation and torture in custody.

China Labor Watch's investigation also had an unusual target: a brand owned by the daughter of the president of the United States.

"Ivanka's brand should immediately cease its work with this supplier, and the Trump administration should reverse its current course and confront China on its human rights abuses," Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said in a Wednesday email. Ivanka Trump must decide, she added, "whether she can ignore the Chinese government's apparent attempt to silence an investigation into those worker abuses."

Ivanka Trump's lifestyle brand imports most of its merchandise from China, trade data show. She and her father both have extensive trademark portfolios in China, though neither has managed to build up a large retail or real estate presence here. The sister of Jared Kushner, a Trump adviser and husband of Ivanka, travelled to China this past month to court investment from Chinese families for a real estate project in New Jersey.

"The eagerness of members of the family to do business in China while airbrushing very troubling human rights and labor rights records of the country is troubling," said Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia director for Amnesty International. We'll have to wait and see, he added, "to what extent business is trumping any kind of consideration of the diplomatic capital of the U.S. in promoting human rights, labor rights and democracy."

White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks referred questions to Ivanka Trump's brand. The Ivanka Trump brand declined to comment for this story Tuesday.

Abigail Klem, who took over day-to-day management when the first daughter became a White House presidential adviser, has said the brand requires licensees and their manufacturers to "comply with all applicable laws and to maintain acceptable working conditions."

One of the investigators, Hua Haifeng, was accused of illegal surveillance, according to his wife, Deng Guilian, who said the police called her Tuesday afternoon. Deng said the caller told her she didn't need to know the details, only that she would not be able to see, speak with or receive money from her husband, the family's breadwinner.

Li said China Labor Watch asked police about the Deng and the two other investigators, Li Zhao and Su Heng, on Monday but received no reply. Li added that a friend had tried to file a missing person report on Li Zhao in Jiangxi province, but was told he had to do so in the man's hometown.

AP was unable to reach the other investigators' families. China's Ministry of Public Security and police could not be reached for comment Tuesday, which was a national holiday in China. Calls went unanswered Wednesday morning.

The men were investigating Huajian Group factories in the southern Chinese cities of Ganzhou and Dongguan. Su Heng had been working undercover at the Ganzhou factory since April, Li said.

In January, Liu Shiyuan, then spokesman for the Huajian Group, told AP the company makes 10,000 to 20,000 pairs of shoes a year for Ivanka Trump's brand — a fraction of the 20 million pairs the company produces a year. A current spokeswoman for the company, Long Shan, did not reply to questions Tuesday or Wednesday morning.

Li said investigators had seen Ivanka Trump-brand merchandise, as well as production orders for Ivanka Trump, Marc Fisher, Nine West and Easy Spirit.

"We were unaware of the allegations and will look into them immediately," a spokeswoman for Marc Fisher, which manufactures Ivanka Trump, Easy Spirit and its own branded shoes, said in an email Tuesday. Nine West did not respond to requests for comment.

Li Zhao and Hua Haifeng were blocked from leaving mainland China for Hong Kong in April and May — something that had never happened to his colleagues before, Li said. Hua Haifeng was stopped at the border May 25 and later questioned by police, Li said. During their final phone conversation on Saturday, Hua told Li that police had asked him to stop investigating the Huajian factory — another turn of events that Li said was unprecedented.

Li said the men had documented excessive overtime, with working days sometimes stretching longer than 18 hours, and a base salary below minimum wage. They were working to confirm evidence suggesting that student interns — some of whom allegedly quit in protest — were putting in excessive hours on work unrelated to their field of study, in violation of Chinese law, Li said.

Hua's wife, Deng, meanwhile, has yet to tell the couple's children, ages 3 and 7, about their father's plight. But they seem to know anyway, she said.

"My son suddenly burst into tears. He said he missed Papa," Deng said by phone from her home in central China's Hubei province. "I said Papa would come home soon and buy you toys."

She said the child looked at her and answered: "Papa was taken away by a monster."</s>An activist investigating working conditions at a supplier for Ivanka Trump’s fashion brand in China has been detained, his NGO said Wednesday, putting a fresh spotlight on Chinese business activities linked to the US presidential family.

Two other men working on the investigation have been missing since Sunday, according to China Labor Watch, a New York-based non-government-organisation.

“In 17 years (since our organisation was founded), we have done countless such investigations and have never had any problems,” the group’s director, Li Qiang, told AFP.

“But this is the first time we’ve investigated Ivanka Trump (manufacturers), so it may very well be related to the brand.”

Ivanka Trump is US President Donald Trump’s daughter and a White House adviser, whose fashion brand sells clothing, footwear and accessories.

Her husband, Jared Kushner, has joined her as a top aide to the US president and his own family business has come under scrutiny over its financial dealings in China.

Trump lambasted Beijing over its trade practices during the US presidential campaign, but he has established a friendly rapport with President Xi Jinping since they met at the US leader’s Mar-a-Lago resort in April along with Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

“We appeal to President Trump, Ivanka Trump herself, and to her related brand company to advocate and press for the release of our activists,” Li said.

Hua Haifeng, 36, has been held by police and accused of illegally using “eavesdropping equipment,” said Li, who rejected the accusation.

The father-of-two was working undercover with the two other men, Li Zhao and Su Heng, in Jiangxi province.

Deng Guilian, Hua’s wife, told AFP her husband had planned to return to their home for a holiday earlier this week.

She said she was notified of his arrest, but not where he was being held, on Tuesday in a phone call from a Jiangxi public security bureau.

Amnesty International said Hua was detained by mainland police last week after he tried to travel to Hong Kong to publicise the findings of his investigation.

“The trio appear to be the latest to fall foul of the Chinese authorities’ aggressive campaign against human rights activists who have any ties to overseas organisations, using the pretence of ‘national security,'” said William Nee, China researcher at the human rights group.

Li said the activists were probing two factories owned by major footwear producer Huajian Group — one in the city of Dongguan in southern Guangdong province, the other in Jiangxi’s Ganzhou.

They discovered that employees were required to work overtime while being paid less than the minimum wage, according to Li, who alleged that the factory issued fake pay slips that showed wages greater than the workers’ actual compensation.

Aside from Ivanka Trump, the factory also manufactures products for Coach, Nine West, Karl Lagerfeld, and Kendall + Kylie, Li said.

Huajian Group, the Ivanka Trump brand and police in Ganzhou did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A spokesman for the company told AFP in October that it had made about 100,000 pairs of Ivanka Trump-branded shoes over the years.

Huajian president Zhang Huarong also told AFP at the time that the company was moving production to Africa, saying “some manufacturers can’t even survive in China anymore”.

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular press briefing she was “not aware” of the arrest.

But in general, she said, “we also hope that NGOs can also observe China’s laws and not engage in any illegal activities.”

The arrest highlights again the business dealings of the Trump family in China.

Last month, the Kushner family’s real estate company sparked an uproar after his sister, Nicole Kushner Meyer, headlined events in Beijing and Shanghai to seek more than $150 million in investment in a US luxury apartment complex through a controversial US visa programme.

While Trump in January pledged to “buy American”, US Customs bills of lading examined by AFP revealed that more than 50 tonnes of Ivanka Trump-branded items were streaming towards American ports from China even as he spoke.

Trump has himself sought dozens of trademarks in China.

Xi has overseen a tightening of controls on civil society since assuming power in 2012, with arrests that have drawn international condemnation.

Li said on separate occasions this month and in April, Hua and one of the other activists, Li Zhao, had attempted to meet him in Hong Kong but were turned away because they were “suspected of criminal activity.”

Deng said her husband had been a labour activist for more than a decade.

“So many people don’t understand factory workers’ plight,” Deng said. “No matter our financial struggles, I never questioned the importance of my husband’s work.”
China Labor Watch says one of its team was arrested and two others are missing when they were investigating labor practices at Ganzhou Huajian International Shoe City Co., whose products include Ivanka Trump-branded shoes.