All Reading
This section contains a curated list of useful articles, investigations, books and other reading materials. The list is updated on a weekly basis and suggestions for additions are welcome.
Starting Points:
US blacklists five more Chinese firms over Uyghur slavery
The companies produce magnesium and copper for export, and are accused of profiting from the slave labor of Uyghurs trapped in what Beijing calls “poverty alleviation” programs.
Asleep at the Wheel - Car Companies’ Complicity in Forced Labour in China
In this report, Human Rights Watch outlines how global carmakers are failing to minimize the risk of Uyghur forced labor being used in their aluminum supply chains.
‘Substantial volume’ of clothing tied to Uyghur forced labour entering EU, says study
The report identifies dozens of well-known brands as having “significant ties” to Xinjiang, via Chinese companies involved in forced labour transfer programmes.
Driving Force - Automotive Supply Chains and Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region
This report is the result of a six-month investigation analysing publicly available documents, which revealed massive and expanding links between western car brands and Uyghur abuses.
Passively Funding Crimes Against Humanity
This report by Hong Kong Watch explores how many firms on three major global index funds actively use Uyghur forced labor or source from suppliers that do.
Confronting the Solar Manufacturing Industry's Human Rights Problem
This new report examines the links between the global solar PV sector and the participation of solar commodity factories in Xinjiang in state-sponsored labor initiatives that target minoritized Muslim groups in Xinjiang.
Until Nothing is Left: China’s Settler Corporation and its Human Rights Violations in the Uyghur Region
This report documents the human rights violations of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a state-run paramilitary organisation.
Making Xinjiang Sanctions Work - Forced Labour Policy Brief
Can economic sanctions address Xinjiang forced labour? This Policy Brief from the Xinjiang Sanctions research project summarises key findings from the research, contextualising state-sponsored forced labour within Beijing’s governmental strategies for the region.
Built on Repression
This report investigates the increased manufacturing of PVC through state-sponsored labour transfers in China’s Uyghur Region and the routes by which the resulting building materials make their way into international markets, providing a road map for understanding the violations occurring in Xinjiang and how the products of those abuses pervade supply chains.
How Vinyl Flooring Made With Uyghur Forced Labor Ends Up at Big Box Stores
A new report details the toll taken by the flooring industry, painting a devastating picture of oppression and pollution in the Uyghur region.
Unemployment Monitoring and Early Warning: New Trends in Xinjiang’s Coercive Labor Placement Systems
This new report charts concerning new trends in Xinjiang forced labor as the region now mandates "every able-bodied person to achieve stable employment," and keeps transferred Uyghurs in their place through an unemployment monitoring/surveillance system.
China Can Lock Up A Million Muslims In Xinjiang At Once
This investigation reveals the full capacity of China's previously secret network of prisons and detention camps in Xinjiang: enough space to detain more than 1 million people.
Coercive Labor and Forced Displacement in Xinjiang’s Cross-Regional Labor Transfer Program
This report provides new evidence from Chinese sources that Xinjiang’s labor transfers to other regions or provinces in China meet the forced labor definition of the International Labor Organization (ILO). The report develops a process-focused evaluation model for evaluating coercion at each stage of the labor transfer program. The Nankai Report, along with other Chinese academic sources, indicates that labor transfers are not just serving economic purposes, but are implemented with the intention to forcibly displace ethnic minority populations from their heartlands, intentionally reducing their population density, and tearing apart homogeneous communities.
Coercive Labor in Xinjiang: Labor Transfer and the Mobilization of Ethnic Minorities to Pick Cotton
Xinjiang produces 85 percent of China’s and 20 percent of the world’s cotton. Chinese cotton products, in turn, constitute an important basis for garment production in numerous other Asian countries. New evidence shows that hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority laborers in Xinjiang are being forced to pick cotton by hand through a coercive state-mandated labour transfer and “poverty alleviation” scheme, potentially affecting all global supply chains that involve Xinjiang cotton as a raw material.
China’s ‘tainted’ cotton
China is forcing hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other minorities into hard, manual labour in the vast cotton fields of its western region of Xinjiang, according to new research seen by the BBC. Based on newly discovered online documents, it provides the first clear picture of the potential scale of forced labour in the picking of a crop that accounts for a fifth of the world’s cotton supply and is used widely throughout the global fashion industry.
Addressing Forced Labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region: Toward a Shared Agenda
The forced labor of ethnic and religious minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), as part of a broader pattern of severe human rights abuses, is a significant and growing concern that demands the attention of governments and private-sector actors across the world. Products entering the United States, Europe, and other democracies are at risk of being affected by these forced labor practices, which often occur several steps away from global brands in supply chains.
This brief explores what the XUAR produces, the sectors that are implicated, the resulting sourcing challenges, and the opportunities for collective action to be explored in further research.
Uyghurs for Sale: ‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang
This report reveals how the forced transfers of Uyghurs to factories across China are linked to the supply chains of dozens of international brands.
China Cables: Who Are the Uighurs and Why Mass Detention?
China’s mass detention of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities living in its western region of Xinjiang has sparked alarm and condemnation across the world. The China Cables investigation reveals classified Chinese government directives that provided operational plans for the internment camps and orders for carrying out mass detentions guided by sweeping data collection and artificial intelligence.
To better explain China’s actions in Xinjiang and the findings of the China Cables, this report answers some key questions about who is involved, the crackdown’s origins, and the significance of the secret documents.
How companies profit from forced labor in Xinjiang
Factories of Turkic Muslim internment, part of China’s reeducation camp system, are subsidized and directed by the state, and employ many former detainees at a fraction of minimum wage. Companies, both Chinese and foreign, are taking advantage.
Beyond the Camps: Beijing's Grand Scheme of Forced Labor, Poverty Alleviation and Social Control in Xinjiang
This report discusses how the state's long-term stability maintenance strategy in Xinjiang is predicated upon a combination of forced labor, family separation and social control under the guise of "poverty alleviation".