Working conditions in Taiwan: Research shows progress in the bicycle industry

Danish investigative journalist Peter Bengtsen has spent years of research (2022-2025) uncovering forced labour and debt bondage of migrants in the Taiwanese export industry. His allegations shook the bicycle industry and led, among other things, to a ban on imports of Giant products manufactured in Taiwan to the USA. Bengtsen has now published an update on his ongoing research under the title "Speeding up". The core problem described: labour brokers in Southeast Asian countries placed migrant workers in Taiwan for a fee. The workers took out loans for the placement fee and fell into a spiral of debt and thus into debt bondage.

The bicycle industry reacts most strongly

In his update, Bengtsen praises the bicycle industry and criticises the fact that other industries have barely reacted. Within Taiwan's manufacturing industries, it is primarily the bicycle industry that has become active. "Since the release of Speed Up!, the bicycle industry has picked up speed considerably. This is in contrast to the apparent lack of comparable industry-wide efforts in the electronics, automotive or other manufacturing industries in Taiwan," concludes Bengtson. With a share of around 40 per cent, Taiwan is the largest bicycle exporter to Europe and also supplies the US market as its most important sales market. In addition to the US import ban, the main drivers of change were an investigative article in Le Monde diplomatique (February 2025) entitled "The Bicycle Industry's Dirty Secret" and the widespread attention that the import ban generated in Taiwanese media and politics.

New structures and dialogues in Taiwan

As an institutional response, the Taiwan Bicycle Association (TBA) founded an industry-wide initiative on human rights due diligence in the supply chain in the fourth quarter of 2025. Since then, regular meetings have been held between TBA, the Bicycling Alliance for Sustainability (BAS) and Peter Bengtsen to discuss topics such as supply chain transparency and grievance mechanisms. From the first quarter of 2026, local civil society groups were also involved in order to promote dialogue between the workers and the company. According to TBA, all major manufacturers are now participating in the initiative, which together represent 85 per cent of the member companies' production capacity. A public tracker and a survey of more than 30 bicycle and component manufacturers have also been introduced to monitor progress. The tracker will be updated regularly. Random checks through direct worker contact are also planned, with companies that do not respond to enquiries being prioritised. As a result of the investigations, more than 15 million US dollars have been repaid to migrant workers so far, plus millions more in the form of waived fees.

Background: Taiwan and its migrant workers

Taiwan is one of the 25 largest economies in the world and is known for its strong electronics industry as well as other manufacturing sectors such as bicycles and automotive parts. Taiwan's approximately 750,000 registered migrant workers are employed in these industries. Most of them come from Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand. According to Bengtsen, debt bondage is not an isolated case for them, but a structural problem: many have to pay high recruitment fees before starting work, which drives them into financial dependency. Vietnamese workers pay the most to recruitment agencies, often up to USD 6,500, which is equivalent to around three years of the minimum wage in Vietnam and often results in family land being mortgaged to obtain a bank loan to finance the fees. Filipino workers pay less, but often have to pay back double the amount borrowed due to high interest rates. Taiwanese civil society groups have been fighting against these abuses for decades, but hardly any cases from the factory world have been publicised internationally.

In March 2025, the results were summarised in the report "Speed Up! - Addressing forced labour risks in Taiwan's car, bicycle and electronics industries" and also published on the website of the US Department of Labor. The aim of the report was to show that the working conditions of Taiwanese migrant workers are directly linked to international companies and consumers worldwide - and that improvements are possible even with limited resources.

The investigative research by journalist Peter Bengtsen and his team was conducted between 2022 and 2025. In around 200 interviews with migrant workers, they documented systematic violations of labour rights in Taiwan's electronics, automotive and bicycle industries. The cases concerned both Taiwanese producers and global brands that manufacture there - including well-known bicycle manufacturers such as Giant, Merida and Maxxis as well as brands such as Trek, Specialized, Canyon and others.

The US import ban as a turning point

A decisive turning point was the US import ban against Giant Manufacturing in the third quarter of 2025. The US banned the import of products that Giant had manufactured in Taiwan - a measure that triggered immediate reactions: Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs responded on the same day, the Ministry of Labour raised the issue of migrant worker recruitment in parliament, and local media reported widely on the case as well as on all 17 companies documented in the "Speed Up!" report. By the end of 2025, Giant, Merida and Maxxis had already paid an estimated 8 to 9 million US dollars to affected workers.

The import ban also had consequences at a political level: In the first quarter of 2026, Taiwan committed to banning labour brokerage fees as part of a new trade agreement with the US. In the second quarter of 2026, the "Control Yuan" monitoring body found that both the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Economic Affairs still have a lot of catching up to do in terms of combating forced labour risks. No law against recruitment fees has yet been passed. Bengtsen emphasises that some of the announced steps still need to be implemented. Moreover, not all companies responded to his questionnaire in April 2026.