> 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/

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

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.

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.

> 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.

>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.

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?

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.

"But Tesla bad so BYD is a necessary evil" seems to be a common sentiment.

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.