Chinese shoe factory fire kills 28, raising questions for Italian leather exporters

A fire at a shoe factory in the southeastern Chinese city of Jinjiang killed at least 28 people on Thursday, according to the BBC and Manufacturing.net. Dramatic footage showed flames and thick plumes of black smoke rising from the building, with people appearing to be trapped on the roof. The shoe factory owner was taken into custody, the reports said, as authorities launched an investigation into the cause.

The disaster underscores the risks embedded in global footwear supply chains, where a single production hub can house hundreds of workers and represent critical capacity for multiple brands. Jinjiang, in Fujian province, is one of the world's largest footwear manufacturing clusters, producing shoes for domestic and international markets. The concentration of production in a few Chinese cities—and the industrial conditions that sometimes characterise those zones—has long been a concern for international labour and safety advocates.