Forced Labour
What is the situation?
As the system of mass detention and re-education in Xinjiang gained momentum in 2017, evidence began to emerge of detainees being subject to forced labour. Framed by the Chinese government as “vocational training” to aid poverty-alleviation efforts, prisons and detention facilities were expanded to include on-site factories.
Research also indicates that as part of the Xinjiang Aid policy - a “partnership assistance” program which partners Xinjiang with provinces across the country - newly “re-educated” Uyghurs have been transferred to factories across China on the basis of the paired province’s industrial needs.
According to a report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), within these factories:
“They typically live in segregated dormitories, undergo organised Mandarin and ideological training outside working hours, are subject to constant surveillance, and are forbidden from participating in religious observances.”
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Due to the significant role that China plays in global supply chains - in particular as a producer of more than 20% of the world’s cotton, of which 85% comes from Xinjiang - there is an increasing risk that products made in China could be affected by Xinjiang-linked forced labour.
Investigations by ASPI and the Helena Kennedy Centre in 2020 and 2021 identified dozens of well-known international companies directly or indirectly benefiting from the use of Uyghur workers outside Xinjiang.
Sectors identified as highly likely to contain Xinjiang-linked forced labour are:
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While several countries have introduced sanctions targeting specific Chinese officials for the human rights abuses taking place in Xinjiang, the United States is so far the only country to have enacted legislation targeting Uyghur forced labour more specifically.
United States
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) was signed into law in December 2021 and came into effect in June 2022. This act made it U.S. policy to assume that all goods manufactured in Xinjiang are made with forced labour, blocking imports unless the goods are known to not have been made with forced labour. It also made it a requirement for firms to disclose their dealings with Xinjiang and mandated the compilation of a list of Chinese companies that have relied on forced labour.
By summer 2023, US Customs had detained over 4000 shipments, at an overall value of almost $1.4 billion dollars.
Global data suggests that there has been a decline in the global demand for Uyghur Region cotton as a result of this law, among other factors. Research also suggests that the UFLPA is driving accelerated efforts to diversify solar supply chains, to reduce reliance on the Uyghur Region. In short, the impact of the UFLPA is already starting to be felt.
European Union
Rules on products created or transported by forced labour were still being drafted by the European Union (EU) as of June 2022. A resolution passed by the European Parliament in June 2022 urged the EU’s European Commission (EC) to ensure that its forthcoming proposals on forced labour specifically address the systemic state-imposed forced labour taking place in Xinjiang.
In 2023, a regulation to ban products made with forced labour from entering the EU was still in a draft stage, with further readings due to take place in April 2024.
United Kingdom
In March 2021, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee published a report examining the extent to which the forced labour of Uyghurs and other ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang was contributing to UK value chains, with a series of recommendations for the government, with emphasis on the need to make changes to the Modern Slavery Act.
In December 2021, Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt made a statement to Politico that the British government was looking “very, very carefully at” policy on Xinjiang. Amendments to the Health and Care Act included provisions for a “review into the risk of slavery and human trafficking taking place in relation to people involved in NHS supply chains.” However, the Act did not specifically mention Xinjiang or extend beyond NHS procurement.
The aforementioned review, published in December 2023, found that at least 20% of NHS suppliers were at ‘high risk’ of modern slavery use, highlighting conditions in Xinjiang as a specific concern.
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Brands Linked to Xinjiang
The Brands Linked to Xinjiang section on this site contains a list of brands that have been linked to Xinjiang, either through reported forced labour in their supply chains, or as official sponsors of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Related reading can be found here.
End Uyghur Forced Labour Campaign
The Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region is a coalition of civil society organisations and trade unions working together to build the economic and political pressure on the Chinese government to end forced labour in the Uyghur Region, as well as calling on leading companies to ensure that they are not supporting or benefiting from it.
Read more about the campaign and how you can get involved.
Xinjiang Sanctions List
Sanctioning Alleged Xinjiang Forced Labour, a project by the University of Nottingham’s Rights Lab, tracks and analyses measures targeting alleged Xinjiang forced labour and offers recommendations for how their preventive impact can be strengthened.
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