2026 has been a banner year for BYD.The EV juggernaut has overtaken Tesla as the globe’s top electric vehicle seller, opened new international factories and seen a huge boom in overseas sales amid spiking gasoline prices.

To cap things off, the company recently partnered with none other than 007 himself as a global ambassador, releasing ads for BYD’s luxury sub-brand Denza, featuring actor Daniel Craig waxing poetic about a new era of electric vehicles.

But this year has not been all roses for BYD. In March, the Washington Post uncovered court records alleging brutal conditions inside the car-maker’s Brazilian factory. That came just a few weeks before The World first reported on evidence of forced labor at the company’s new factory in Szeged, Hungary.

An investigation conducted by the labor rights group China Labor Watch said the electric vehicle maker used a complex web of subcontractors that flew in Chinese migrant laborers to build the plant, alleging laborers consistently faced excessive hours, seven-day work weeks, withheld wages and fear of retaliation.

The probe prompted Hungarian officials to conduct their own investigation. The findings haven’t yet been released, but a spokesperson for the county office where the BYD factory is located told The World in an email that authorities have sanctioned three companies associated with the factory’s construction and imposed a fine on one of them.

“The [Csongrád-Csanád County] Government Office continues to regularly monitor compliance with occupational safety regulations and the matters raised in the report by China Labor Watch, and will, if necessary, enforce lawful and safe working conditions through further proceedings,” the spokesperson said.

For labor rights experts, Hungary’s response to the forced labor allegations is the latest example of countries taking a firmer stance against Chinese businesses operating abroad.

“It’s really exciting to see governments trying to figure out, ‘how do we hold companies accountable for what they do within our borders?’” said Laura Murphy, a professor of human rights and contemporary slavery at Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom.

According to Murphy, Hungary’s investigation and recent actions by the Brazilian government — which sued BYD and officially added the company to the country’s forced labor list in response to labor issues discovered within the company’s Brazilian plant — mark a potential “sea change” in how nations are treating Chinese investment.

“With these kinds of migrant workers,” she said, “governments are realizing that they are responsible for those workers, and that, in fact, having exploited laborers from other countries undercuts the labor opportunities for their own workers, and also brings down the labor standards for the workers in their own countries.”

But it’s unclear what sort of effect these actions will actually have on BYD’s practices. In Brazil, authorities did shut down the company’s factory while it investigated conditions inside, but operations resumed months later. Construction at the Hungary plant is ongoing, and labor rights advocates say while they’ve received some encouraging news, workers are still facing major issues.

According to China Labor Watch’s Executive Director Li Chiang, contractors hired by BYD to build the Szeged factory have reduced seven-day work weeks to six days and have allowed workers in the country on improper visas to return home.

Chiang — who spoke with The World in Mandarin through an interpreter — has remained in touch with several workers at the Hungary plant after the release of his organization’s investigation. He said that while conditions have improved in some ways, workers remain fearful of retaliation.

“We’ve heard managers have been checking Chinese workers’ WeChat messaging accounts and social media to make sure they haven’t been talking about the conditions at the facility,” Chiang said. “And if they do, then they are subject to punishment and fines. Workers are not allowed to speak with NGOs or journalists.”

BYD did not respond to The World’s requests for comment on the conditions at its Hungarian facility.

According to the South China Morning Post, the company has asked all contractors building its Hungarian factory to sign pledges to comply with the country’s labor laws. It’s a move that may look good on paper. But according to Chinese labor expert Laura Murphy, such pledges aren’t worth much.

“These massive systemic problems cannot be addressed through a paper trail,” she said. “And increasingly, companies are producing these paper trails in order to hide from the real work of addressing the underlying causes of forced labor.”

According to Murphy, labor issues like those at BYD’s international plants are commonplace within China, and real change would have to come at the behest of local officials in Hungary — not Chinese companies themselves.

In recent weeks, there has been some indication that that could happen. Former Prime Minister Victor Orban, who cozied up to China and promoted BYD’s investment in the country, was ousted by voters in April.
The newly-elected Tisza party nowappears to be taking a firmer stance. Officials at the national level haven’t directly addressed labor issues at the BYD plant. But late last month, the country launched an environmental investigation into the factory that could pose a major problem for the company’s European expansion.