Fast Fashion Exploitation: How the Clothes-Hanger Wars Escalated in Italy

When Zhang Dayong and Gong Xiaoqing came home for the last time, the killer was waiting at the front door. He fired at least six shots on that late evening in April in the Pigneto neighborhood of Rome. The bullets struck the victims in the head. Video footage shows a body lying in front of the graffiti-covered entrance of an apartment building. Officers covered it with a shimmering gold emergency blanket.

Why the 53-year-old and the 38-year-old had to die remains a mystery to this day. The killer apparently fled on foot and remains at large. Still, investigators are certain: This desolate corner of Rome, beside the concrete pillars of an elevated highway and streetcar tracks, was the site of a mafia murder in April.

Since then, the mafia has once again become a more frequent topic of conversation in Italy. But this is not about the Cosa Nostra, the Camorra or the 'Ndrangheta – rather, it concerns criminal groups of overseas Chinese. The "mafia cinese," the Chinese mafia, is thought to be behind the bloodshed.

The double murder in Rome is the climax of a violent conflict involving both physical assaults and arson attacks that has been underway for years in Chinese communities in Europe. It is a conflict that has escalated since 2024. And it did not get its start in Rome, but in a less well-known town in Tuscany.

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Luca Tescaroli, the chief public prosecutor of Prato, a medieval city in Tuscany with nearly 200,000 inhabitants, is intimately familiar with the development. A 60-year-old with black eyes, Tescaroli has only been in office for just over a year, but he has seen more in just the last several months than some colleagues have during their entire careers. When the former anti-mafia prosecutor took the job, the conflict exploded right in the middle of his jurisdiction.

Around 32,000 Chinese men and women call Prato home. Probably more. The city has been considered one of the most important centers of the European textile industry since the 19th century, and when globalization plunged Prato into crisis starting in the late 1990s, thousands of people from China moved into the vacant factories. Initially, most of them came from the city of Wenzhou in the southern Chinese province of Zhejiang.

Famous for their entrepreneurial spirit, which survived even the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, thousands of Wenzhounese set out starting in the 1980s, driven by the hope of economic success and inspired by China's opening to the world. In Prato, they saved the city from economic collapse and built what has since become Europe's largest center for fast fashion: Rapidly manufactured, low-priced clothing "Made in Italy." The municipality estimates total revenues from its fashion and textile industry at about 2 billion euros from exports alone. The majority of the fashion companies there are now Chinese owned.

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Now, though, a war is being waged over this wealth. "Within the Chinese community, a conflict between rival criminal entrepreneurs erupted in June 2024, including murders, attempted murders, arson and extortion," Tescaroli says. "The war started in Prato, but has now reached a national and even international dimension."

One of the men killed in Rome also lived in Prato until a few years ago. Zhang Dayong is thought to have been the right-hand man of the "boss of all bosses” of the Chinese underworld, as Zhang Naizhong has been described in the Italian media. A police photo shows him staring at the camera with a stony gaze. In 2018, Zhang Naizhong was arrested on suspicions of being the head of a mafia-like organization. According to the indictment, the group operated mainly in Italy, but also in France and Germany, and had secured control over the logistics around Prato's fashion center. The indictment included charges of extortion, usury and drug trafficking.

The start of the main trial against Zhang Naizhong – who is once again free – and 57 other defendants still hasn’t started, despite the investigation having come to an end several years ago. In the meantime, though, the alleged boss and his allies have become targets. In the months leading up to the murders in Rome, there were a number of violent assaults and arson attacks, primarily targeting logistics companies – including several firms that can be traced back to Zhang.

Most of those attacks took place in Tuscany. In February, unknown perpetrators remotely detonated incendiary packages at the locations of three logistics firms in Prato and two neighboring municipalities. One of the companies targeted is linked to Zhang’s son. A few weeks later, similar fires occurred near Paris and Madrid. The Italian daily La Repubblica has documented a total of 15 violent incidents in Prato and adjacent municipalities since June 2024.

"The conflict centers on price wars in the transport of materials and in the manufacture of clothes hangers," says Tescaroli, the public prosecutor. The business is often conducted underground: "There is an illegal business system in Prato that operates in parallel to legal ones," Tescaroli says.

But who dares to challenge the power of the "boss of all bosses"? Zhang has kept silent. In response to a query, one of his lawyers responded that Zhang has "no interest in an interview.” He did say, however, that his client had nothing to do with the murder in Rome.

The authorities have found it challenging to penetrate the underworld of overseas Chinese. The language barrier alone has proven impermeable at times: In the phone conversations tapped during the investigations into Zhang, at least six different Chinese dialects were identified. Tescaroli speaks of a "wall of omertà" surrounding the Chinese underworld in Prato. The word is usually used to describe the code of silence adhered to by the Italian mafia.

The prosecutor, though, was able to partially break through this wall of silence. The first to talk was the entrepreneur Chang Meng Zhang, who, according to Italian media, produced clothes hangers for the fashion companies in Prato at particularly low prices. He barely survived a brutal knife attack in July 2024 and subsequently cooperated with the authorities.

"We have succeeded in breaking the silence. Now five entrepreneurs and 154 workers are cooperating with us," Prosecutor Tescaroli says proudly. He attributes this first and foremost to his communication strategy, including detailed press releases informing the public about the conflict – which local media have branded the "war of the clothes hangers.” "We want to show all those involved – especially the Chinese community – that we are here," he explains. It has apparently had the desired effect: Even Zhang Naizhong’s son got in touch with Prato's prosecutor's office, Tescaroli says.

Such steps can change the city and an entire economic system. The Chinese community in Prato is an integral part of the city, with the businesses they run forming the economic backbone of the municipality – though often with questionable methods, even beyond those laid bare in the clothes hanger war.

Tescaroli describes a "parallel economic system" whose members are willing to do anything to maximize profit and where virtually no laws apply. He speaks of raw materials for clothing production that, thanks to a tax trick, reach Prato and other Chinese factories in Italy from China via Eastern Europe practically duty-free. Of multimillion-euro profits that return to China through illegal banks and crypto platforms. Of rampant illegal labor in the factories. The guiding principle of the fast fashion industry: the highest possible profits through the lowest possible production costs. Others must foot the bill.

Attique Muhammad says the shame is the worst part. Worse than the 14 hours of work each day, including Sundays, with just a single break of only 10 to 15 minutes. Worse than the cold in winter, which forced him to work in a jacket in front of his sewing machine. None of that is comparable to the feeling of not being able to support his parents and his wife in Pakistan. "They say I should just find a new job. But first I need money for a new room," he says, sadness filling his voice.

Workers and union activists in an occupied factory in Prato.

The 30-year-old Pakistani is wearing a fake Dior T-shirt, his full beard elegantly trimmed, as he gives a tour of the red-brick factory hall where he once worked, including the dusty stool in front of a sewing machine illuminated by harsh neon light from the ceiling. Muhammad counts the days on his fingers: He hasn't received a salary for over two months. For about four weeks, he and other employees have been occupying the factory, which his former boss, a Chinese man, suddenly left just hours after an inspection by the local health authorities. "He loaded the most valuable machines into a van and drove off," Muhammad recounts.

"Apri e chiudi," open and close, is the name for this system practiced by the most ruthless Chinese companies in Prato. If penalties threaten after an official inspection or if debts to the Italian tax authorities become too high, the companies close their doors, only to reopen a short time later under the name of a front man.

Muhammad is among the people who toil in such factories. While Chinese entrepreneurs used to hire almost exclusively compatriots, today many low-wage workers from South Asia also sit in front of the sewing machines.

Muhammad says he has been sewing clothes since he was 15, first in Pakistan, then in Turkey. In between, he briefly worked in an Italian restaurant in Bavaria. "Germany is beautiful," he says in German, a smile on his face. He says he liked it better there than in Italy, in part because of the colder air, which is so different from back home in Pakistan's Punjab. After his asylum application was rejected in Germany, he says, Prato became his Plan B. The work would be hard, he knew, but it would provide a secure paycheck so he could help the family back home and slowly build a future in Europe. He earned around 1,600 euros a month through his shifts, with the "capo," the boss, having arranged a place to sleep for him not far from the factory – a kind of shared apartment with a dozen others. When the boss disappeared, though, heating and electricity in the apartment were turned off.

In July, Muhammad decided that enough was enough. He and numerous other workers are fighting back against the factory owners through strikes, demonstrations and factory occupations. They have found support from a group of young Italians from the region.

Arturo Gambassi emerges from a corner of the factory hall. He spent the night here with the workers, who sleep on mattresses or cushions laid out on the floor. A 22-year-old history student, Gambassi belongs to the union Sudd Cobas. The group’s banner hangs at the entrance to the factory floor, reading: "There is power in the union.”

Arturo Gambassi, a university student and union activist.

"It's absurd that such conditions exist only 20 minutes from a world-famous tourist destination like Florence," says Gambassi, who comes from the Tuscan capital.

In Prato, about 20 young adults and teenagers have managed to mobilize some of the exploited workers. As a result of the strikes, dozens of them received regular contracts.

"With our strikes, we want to change the city," Gambassi says with a determined look as he lights a cigarette. His next goal: getting Chinese workers to join the strikes. Thus far, the organization efforts have mostly found resonance with workers from South Asia and Africa. "The Chinese are much more exposed to extortion by the factory owners, who often come from their home region," Gambassi explains. He is convinced, though, that "strikes by Chinese workers would blow up the system of illegality."

Just how bothersome to the factory owners such actions by Sudd Cobas can be was made clear most recently in mid-November. About 15 Chinese attacked a picket line, injuring two plainclothes officers. Days before, a call had circulated on Chinese social media to file complaints against the union with the Italian police and the Chinese consulate.

"Work hard, endure bitterness" is a Chinese proverb that describes putting up with difficulties on the path to success. It is a motto adhered to by hundreds of Chinese men and women who continue to move to Prato. "Those who arrive there from China know exactly what they're getting into: hard work, but also the promise of a stable income," says Zheng Ningyuan.

The 36-year-old artist is sitting in a Chinese restaurant in the train station district of Bologna, just over an hour's train ride north of Prato. Zheng has lived in Italy for many years, and his art often revolves around the Chinese diaspora in the country.

He has used his art in Prato to enter the social debate: As part of an art project a few years ago, he covered over the stickers with the cell phone numbers of Chinese prostitutes that are ubiquitous in Prato's Chinatown with motivational sayings: "A beautiful book" instead of "big tits."

"The Chinese in Prato are often perceived as a self-contained monolith, but that's not the case. There are the exploiters and the exploited. Listening to the voice of the workers would change everything," Zheng says.

Sudd Cobas banner at the entrance to a factory that was occupied by workers for several weeks.

A memorial for the Chinese workers who died in Prato.

On Via Toscana in Prato's industrial district of Macrolotto, fashion company factories and warehouses bearing names in both Chinese and Italian are lined up, one after the other. Here, in an inconspicuous red brick building, seven Chinese men and women died in a fire on December 1, 2013. They were living in the factory where they worked.

The young people of Sudd Cobas have since installed a silver plaque in the forecourt in memory of the victims, their names etched in both Latin and Chinese characters. In front of a nearby fashion factory, a Chinese worker takes a break. What does she think about the plaque? She didn't live in Prato back then, she says briefly, adding that the "laoban," the boss, "isn't here."

She nevertheless offers an adjective to describe the memorial: "important."