France leads charge against Chinese giant Shein amid sex doll scandal

London: French ministers are piling more pressure on retail giant Shein after protesters picketed its new store in Paris and regulators halted its online sales in a growing clash over Chinese expansion and European standards.

Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called on the European Union to act against Shein after the discovery of childlike sex dolls on its online marketplace, sparking an uproar over the fast-fashion powerhouse founded in China.

The move threatens to expand the sanctions on Shein beyond France, if European officials believe the company has breached European Union rules on digital standards, adding to earlier measures that targeted Chinese companies out of concern at the damage to the environment from fast fashion.

“The European Commission must take action. It can no longer wait,” Barrot told broadcaster France Info. “The commission has conducted certain investigations. It must now accompany them with sanctions.”

The immediate dispute centres on the sale of sex dolls resembling children on the Shein site, which the company halted after French newspaper Le Parisien published a photo of a doll holding a teddy bear and stating it was sold for sexual purposes.

Shein said it had suspended all third-party sales on its site and was working with authorities while it reviewed how those vendors operated on it.

“Our priority is customer safety and marketplace integrity,” Shein’s head of public affairs in France, Quentin Ruffat, said.

“This suspension enables us to strengthen accountability and ensure every product meets our standards and legal obligations.”

The dispute comes in the week Shein opened its first bricks-and-mortar store in Paris, highlighting the contrast between its fast fashion business model and the boutique approach of many European brands.

The new store, housed in the BHV department store in the Marais district of the French capital, triggered protests from environmental groups who argue the mass-production of low-cost clothing is increasing waste and hurting the planet.

The French junior minister for digital platforms, Anne Le Henanff, also called on the EU to punish the company, in a joint letter with Finance Minister Roland Lescure.

Le Henanff took to social media on Thursday to say that fraud investigators had identified the sale of the sex dolls last week and notified public prosecutors.

“In parallel, an investigation is under way to severely punish the sellers and buyers of these products,” she said, according to a translation of her post on LinkedIn.

“They face sentences of up to five years and a €75,000 [$133,000] fine.

“With Roland Lescure, I have written to the European Commission requesting that an investigation also be launched at the European level ... We will see this through to the end.”

EU official Thomas Regnier told the media the sale of the dolls was “extremely concerning” and the EU did not want the products being offered to customers.

The investigations and media attention come at a sensitive time for Shein, which has been seeking to go public on the London or Hong Kong sharemarket after posting enormous growth in global sales.

The company was founded in Nanjing in China in 2008 but is now based in Singapore. It is estimated to have an annual revenue of about $US45 billion ($70 billion). Its name comes from its original brand, SheInside, and is pronounced “she in”.

Activists in the Marais district urged customers to avoid the Shein store because they said the company used forced labour and contributed to waste.

Shein has responded by adopting policies against wasteful packaging and modern slavery and insisting it supports human rights.

But the company’s assurances have not swayed the French ministers, amid growing media attention on the investigation.

Ministers visited the Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris on Thursday to demonstrate the authorities were halting millions of Shein packages arriving by air. The government said it was blocking 200,000 parcels to ensure they would be examined by customs officials.

The EU designated Shein as a “very large online platform” in April last year because it had more than 45 million monthly users from EU member nations. This brought the company under tighter regulations due to its size. Shein has since estimated it had 145.7 million monthly active users in EU member states over the period from February last year to July this year.

A spokesperson for Shein in Australia said it was fully committed to complying with all laws and regulations.

“Our platform has strict policies and control measures in place to prevent the sale of prohibited and illegal items,” the spokesperson said.

“Any listing that does not meet applicable requirements is promptly removed, and we continuously review and strengthen our controls.”

Australia’s national consumer watchdog the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said it was not able to comment on complaints received or steps taken to investigate them.

“The ACCC administers a range of mandatory standards for certain products to reduce the risk of injury or death, however our role does not extend to regulating weapons or sex dolls,” it said.

The Australian Federal Police directed inquiries to the Australian Border Force, which has been contacted for comment.

With Jessica Yun

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