A little over a year ago, a group of researchers at Sheffield Hallam University in England published a report documenting a Chinese clothing company’s potential ties to forced labor. Members of the British Parliament cited the report ahead of a November debate that criticized China for “slavery and forced labor from another era.”

一年多前，英国谢菲尔德哈勒姆大学的一组研究人员发表了一份报告，记录了一家中国服装公司与强迫劳动可能存在关联。英国议会议员在去年11月的一场辩论前引用了这份报告，批评中国实行“仿佛来自于另一个时代的奴隶制和强迫劳动”。

But Smart Shirts, which is a subsidiary of the manufacturer and makes clothing for major labels, filed a defamation lawsuit. And in December, a British judge delivered a ruling: The case would move forward, which could result in the university’s paying damages.

但该服装公司的子公司、为各大品牌生产服装的盛泰智造提起了诽谤诉讼。12月，英国一名法官做出了裁决：该案将继续审理，这可能导致谢菲尔德哈勒姆大学被判支付赔偿金。

The preliminary finding in the case against the university is the latest in a series of legal challenges roiling the think tanks and universities that research human rights abuses and security violations by Chinese companies. To stop the unfavorable reports, which have led to political debate and in some cases export restrictions, the companies are firing back with defamation accusations.

针对研究中国公司侵犯人权和安全问题的智库和大学出现了一系列法律挑战，该初步裁决是最新一例。为了阻止不利报道，一些公司以诽谤指控进行反击。这些报道引发了政治争论，有时甚至导致出口限制。

Chinese companies have sued or sent threatening legal letters to researchers in the United States, Europe and Australia close to a dozen times in recent years in an attempt to quash negative information, with half of those coming in the past two years. The unusual tactic borrows from a playbook used by corporations and celebrities to discourage damaging news coverage in the media.

近年来，中国公司向美国、欧洲和澳大利亚的研究人员提出诉讼或发出威胁性律师函，试图压制负面信息的情况已有十宗左右，其中一半是在过去两年内发生的。这种不寻常的策略借鉴了企业和名人用来阻止媒体报道负面新闻的伎俩。

The budding legal tactic by Chinese firms could silence critics who shed light on problematic business practices inside one of the most powerful countries in the world, researchers warn. The legal action is having a chilling affect on their work, they say, and in many cases straining the finances of their organizations.

研究人员警告，中国公司正在越来越多采用的法律策略，可能会让那些揭露这个世界上最强大国家之一内部问题重重的商业行为的批评者噤声。他们表示，法律行动对他们的工作产生了寒蝉效应，在许多情况下给他们的组织带来了财务压力。

The problem has become so pronounced, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party held a hearing on the issue in September.

这一问题变得愈发突出，美国众议院中共问题特别委员会于9月就此举行了听证会。

The researchers in these cases “are faced with a choice: Be silent and back down against the C.C.P.’s pressure campaign or continue to tell the truth and face the tremendous reputational and financial costs of these lawsuits alone,” the committee’s chair, Representative John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said at the hearing.

该委员会主席、密歇根州共和党众议员约翰·莫勒纳尔在听证会上表示，卷入诉讼的研究人员“要么保持沉默，在中国共产党的施压行动下退缩；要么继续讲出真相，独自承担这些诉讼带来的巨大声誉和财务成本”。

He added, “The Chinese Communist Party uses the American legal system to silence those who might expose them in America.”

他还表示：“中国共产党利用美国的法律体系让那些可能在美国揭露他们的人噤声。”

新华社发布的一张宣传图片显示，2020年新冠疫情期间，华大基因的一间充气检测实验室。

The battle between Chinese companies and critical researchers has escalated as tensions have mounted between the United States and China over trade, technology and territory.

随着美中在贸易、技术和领土问题上的紧张关系加剧，中国企业与批判性研究人员之间的斗争也不断升级。

Washington has taken steps to limit China’s access to resources like chips needed for artificial intelligence, and in recent days the Trump administration imposed a 10 percent tariff on all Chinese imports. Beijing countered with measures including limits on the export of rare earth minerals and an antimonopoly investigation into Google.

华盛顿已采取措施限制中国获取人工智能所需的芯片等资源，最近几天，特朗普政府对所有中国进口产品加征了10%的关税。北京则采取了反击措施，包括限制稀土矿物出口、对谷歌进行反垄断调查等。

Over the past decade, researchers — relying primarily on publicly available records and photographs and videos — have documented problematic business practices in China. Those reports have helped show how products made for American and European companies benefited from an epidemic of forced labor by minority ethnic Uyghurs in China. Researchers have also shed light on potential security flaws, raising national security concerns, as well as problematic connections between companies and the government.

过去十年，研究人员主要依靠公开的记录、照片和视频记录了中国存在问题的商业行为。这些报告有助于揭示为美国和欧洲公司生产的产品如何受益于中国少数民族维吾尔族中广泛存在的强迫劳动。研究人员还揭示了潜在的安全漏洞，引发了国家安全担忧，以及企业与政府之间存在争议的关系。

Now, Chinese corporations are increasingly hiring Western lawyers to combat those types of reports over allegations of defamation.

如今，越来越多的中国企业雇佣西方法律团队，以诽谤为由来对抗此类报告。

One of the first examples occurred in 2019 when Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications giant, threatened to sue the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, an Australian think tank. ASPI had released a report containing allegations that servers provided by Huawei to a coalition of African nations were sending data to Shanghai.

最早的案例之一发生在2019年，当时中国电信巨头华为威胁起诉澳大利亚战略政策研究所(ASPI)，这是一家澳大利亚智库。ASPI此前发布了一份报告，指控华为为一个非洲国家联盟提供的服务器将数据发送到上海。

China’s embassy in 2020 gave the Australian government a list of 14 complaints that it wanted addressed to improve relations between the countries. Grievances included Australia’s funding of ASPI, something Huawei had lobbied to stop after its report. (As of 2024, the Australian government continued to fund the organization, according to the group’s latest disclosures.)

2020年，中国驻澳大利亚大使馆向澳大利亚政府提出了一份包含14项投诉的清单，希望解决这些问题以改善两国关系。这些包括澳大利亚对ASPI的资助，华为在报告发布后曾游说停止这一资助。（根据该机构最新的披露，截至2024年，澳大利亚政府仍在继续对其进行资助。）

Huawei and China’s embassy did not respond to requests for comment.

华为和中国驻澳大利亚大使馆未回应置评请求。

ASPI remains a target of Chinese company threats over its research into topics including the use of forced labor. The think tank’s legal costs, including staff time on Chinese-related legal matters, have risen from zero in 2018 to 219,000 Australian dollars, nearly 2 percent of its 12.5-million-dollar annual budget.

ASPI仍然是中国公司针对其研究课题（包括强迫劳动的使用等问题）进行威胁的目标。该智库的法律费用，包括处理与中国相关的法律事务上花费的时间成本，已从2018年的零元增至21.9万澳元，几乎占其1250万澳元年预算的2%。

“It’s mountains of legal letters, hassling, going around saying, ‘We’re going to sue,’” said Danielle Cave, a director at ASPI. “It’s quite stressful, and it’s designed to distract you.”

“大量的法律信件，骚扰，不停到处宣称‘我们要起诉你，’”ASPI主任丹妮尔·凯夫说。“这非常有压力，而且目的就是让你分心。”

“这非常有压力，而且目的就是让你分心，”ASPI主任丹妮尔·凯夫说，这家智库因其研究报告成为了中国公司威胁的对象。

More recently, companies have issued similar threats to researchers in the United States and Britain.

最近，一些公司也对美国和英国的研究人员发出了类似的威胁。

Eric Sayers, who focuses on U.S.-Chinese technology policy at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, received a letter in September from lawyers demanding that he take down an opinion article he co-wrote about a Chinese drone company, Autel Robotics. The article, which was published by Defense News, a trade publication, said Chinese-made drones posed a national security risk because they could map American infrastructure.

埃里克·塞尔斯是美国企业研究所专注于美中技术政策的研究员，他曾在9月收到律师函，要求他撤下他与人共同撰写的一篇关于中国无人机公司奥特尔机器人的评论文章。这篇文章在行业刊物《国防新闻》上发表，称中国制造的无人机构成国家安全风险，因为它们可以绘制美国基础设施地图。

Autel’s representatives called the article “defamatory and damaging” and threatened to sue if it wasn’t removed, although they eventually dropped the matter.

奥特尔公司的代表称该文章“诽谤且有害”，并威胁如果不撤下将提起诉讼，尽管他们最终放弃了此事。

Mr. Sayers posted the letter on X as a warning to other researchers. He wrote that it was what Chinese government “lawfare inside our democracy looks like.”

塞尔斯将这封信发布在X平台上，作为对其他研究人员的提醒。他写道，这就是中国政府“在我们的民主制度内部进行的法律战”。

In May, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University published a report by Anna Puglisi, a researcher who had recently departed. The report said the Chinese government was most likely involved in funding the growth of BGI, a Chinese biotechnology company.

在五月份，乔治城大学的安全与新兴技术中心发布了一份由最近离职的研究员安娜·普吉利西撰写的报告。报告指出，中国政府很可能参与资助中国生物技术公司华大基因的发展。

In a June letter, BGI accused Ms. Puglisi of making defamatory claims and demanded that she retract the report.

去年6月，华大基因在一封信中指控普吉利西做出了诽谤性陈述，并要求她撤回报告。

“We remain disappointed by Ms. Puglisi’s report, especially the numerous mistakes therein,” BGI said in a statement to The New York Times.

华大基因在一份声明中对《纽约时报》表示：“我们对普吉利西女士的报告感到失望，尤其是因为其中有许多错误。”

Ms. Puglisi went public with her experience during testimony before the House committee in September.

普吉利西在9月向众议院委员会作证时公开了她的经历。

“Speaking out today may put me in further jeopardy,” Ms. Puglisi told the committee, “but I feel that if we begin to self-censor ourselves because of the actions of an authoritarian regime, we become more like them and less like an open democracy.”

她对委员会表示：“今天发声可能会让我面临更大的风险，但我觉得，如果我们因为一个独裁政权的行为而开始自我审查，我们就会变得更像他们，而不像一个开放的民主社会。”

After Ms. Puglisi testified, Dewey Murdick, the executive director of her former think tank at Georgetown, said the organization stood behind her research.

在普吉利西作证后，她曾效力的乔治城大学的智库的执行董事杜威·穆尔迪克表示，该组织支持她的研究。

“We conducted a careful review and found no evidence to contradict the report’s findings or conclusions,” he said in a post on LinkedIn. BGI has not taken legal action against Ms. Puglisi.

他在LinkedIn上的一篇帖子中表示：“我们进行了仔细的审查，未发现任何证据反驳报告的发现或结论。”华大基因没有对普吉利西采取法律行动。

In England, Sheffield Hallam University researchers contacted Smart Shirts in November 2023 as they prepared the report tying its parent company to forced-labor practices, according to legal documents. After some back-and-forth, during which the company denied the allegations, the university published the report in December.

根据法律文件，2023年11月，谢菲尔德哈勒姆大学的研究人员曾联系过盛泰智造，他们当时正在准备一份将其母公司与强迫劳动行为联系起来的报告。经过一番来回沟通，在该公司否认这些指控后，谢菲尔德哈勒姆大学于12月发布了该报告。

In a complaint filed with the British High Court that month, Smart Shirts said the report was false and jeopardized its business making shirts for brands like Hugo Boss, Ralph Lauren and Burberry. Smart Shirts said it believed that the allegations “have spread via the grapevine effect” among its customers.

盛泰智造在同月向英国高等法院提起的诉状中表示，该报告是虚假的，并且危及了其为Hugo Boss、Ralph Lauren和Burberry等品牌生产衬衫的业务。盛泰智造表示，它认为这些指控通过“口耳相传效应”在其客户中传播开来。

British defamation laws are more favorable to plaintiffs than the laws in the United States are, making Britain a popular place for individuals to sue news outlets and others over things that they write.

英国的诽谤法比美国的法律更有利于原告，这使得英国成为个人因内容而起诉新闻机构和其他人的热门地点。

The university declined to comment.

谢菲尔德哈勒姆大学拒绝发表评论。

In a statement to The Times, Smart Shirts said it welcomed supply chain research, but was disappointed that Sheffield Hallam had published the report without first allowing the company to correct inaccuracies.

在给《纽约时报》的声明中，盛泰智造表示欢迎供应链研究，但对谢菲尔德哈勒姆大学在未先允许公司纠正不准确之处的情况下发布报告表示失望。

“Our suit is aimed at addressing the material damage to our business arising from their misleading report,” the company said. “It is not aimed at suppressing the important work of researchers in general.”

“我们的诉讼旨在解决因他们的误导性报告对公司业务造成的实质性损害，”该公司表示。“我们的诉讼并非旨在从整体上压制研究人员的重要工作。”