A growing number of countries and organizations have come forward to identify China as committing genocide in Xinjiang and imposing forced labor on Uighurs, but so far most large U.S. multinationals have either remained silent on the issue or denied its existence. At a hearing held Wednesday by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, human rights experts gave major U.S. companies a “C-” or “D+” grade for their performance. They noted that the government and the public must increase pressure on large U.S. companies to change so that they do not become complicit in the 21st century atrocities committed by the Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang.
Most Major U.S. Businesses Deny Existence of Forced Labor in Xinjiang or Remain Silent
Asked to rate the response of major U.S. companies to the forced labor issue in Xinjiang, Sophie Richardson, director of Human Rights Watch’s China division, said that major U.S. companies could only receive a C- or a D+, with very few receiving a B. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom held a hearing on forced labor in Xinjiang on Wednesday. Only a very few get a B.
Many people are still in denial about the problem, or feel that the government is to blame and that it should have a set of rules to guide them,” she said. Or they’re passing the buck, saying they don’t have a problem, or that there’s no evidence that my supply chain has quiz questions, therefore, I don’t have a problem here.”
A March 7 story in the U.S. electronics magazine “the Wire China” reported that their reporters surveyed 48 large U.S. companies with operations in China. When asked if they had taken action against the Chinese government’s systematic crackdown in Xinjiang, 31 of the companies did not respond, including Amazon, American Airlines, Walmart and disney. Costco (Costco), Exxon Mobil (Exxon Mobil) and 11 other companies declined to comment on the new frontier. The report said that most companies worded it the same way, “Company management has no comment at this Time.”
Only six companies, Apple, Caterpillar, IBM, Intel, Dell and Pfizer, responded to the Xinjiang issue, saying their companies do not produce products from the region, the report said. Of the six companies, only Dell expressed concern about what the Chinese government is doing in Xinjiang.
Dell Technologies’ products do not come from Xinjiang,” the report quoted a Dell Technologies official as saying. We continue to be concerned about the alleged forced labor of Uyghurs in factories outside of Xinjiang, including those supplying the technology industry.”
Dell Technologies came under scrutiny last year for media revelations that it used Uyghur forced labor directly in its supply chain. Last March, both the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (or ASPI) found that dozens of international companies, including U.S. brands such as Dell, Nike, Coca-Cola, and Heinz Heinz) directly employ Uighur forced labor or source products from companies that use Uighur forced labor.
Last year, several U.S. business organizations reportedly came out against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act during the U.S. House of Representatives, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce bluntly stating that the bill would only harm legitimate trade, not so-called “forced labor.
Large corporations and business organizations such as Nike and Coca-Cola have also invested large sums of money in lobbying Congress to influence the passage of this bill. However, in September last year, the House of Representatives passed the bill.
However, the National Committee for United States-China Trade said in a letter to federal senators last November that the committee’s member companies have long conducted due diligence in global supply chains involving minority manufacturing and will take immediate action to address these “unacceptable and unethical practices” as soon as they find products of forced labor and prison inmates in their supply chains “.
Nury Turkel, a Uyghur human rights lawyer and commissioner of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said he has noted that some large companies have committed to eradicating forced labor from their supply chains by conducting third-party audits.
While this is an encouraging effort, he said, it is not enough. He noted that audits alone do not find reliable and sufficient information about labor abuses in the supply chain. Because of the oppressive policy environment in Uighur areas, authorities have been preventing auditors from working without undue interference. In addition, detainees interviewed by auditors are unable to truthfully describe their working conditions for fear of retaliation.
U.S. Big Business Should Not Be Complicit in China’s Atrocities in Xinjiang
Gary Bauer, commissioner of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said U.S. companies can no longer willfully ignore the evidence and pretend they can continue to do business with them as usual after the State Department found China guilty of genocide in Xinjiang.
I want to know how U.S. companies can morally justify their continued investment in communist China,” he said at Wednesday’s hearing. By doing so they are actually making that repressive regime, which has declared war on all faiths, even stronger.”
Uyghur human rights lawyer Tukel also said U.S. companies have a moral and legal obligation to ensure that their supply chains in China are not tainted by Uyghur forced labor, or they risk complicity in committing one of the worst atrocities of the 21st century.
China has always denied that there is forced labor in Xinjiang. They say it is a “vocational training center” that is “helping people of all ethnic groups achieve stable employment” and that there is no question of forced labor.
Tukel said that although these forced labor camps in Xinjiang are euphemistically called “vocational training centers,” they are far from being for vocational training, and the people inside are never there voluntarily. Detainees were subjected to torture, rape, forced sterilization and abortion, endless political indoctrination, and even death. Authorities have also forced tens of thousands of detainees to work in the Uighur region and elsewhere in China.
Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow in the China Program at the Memorial Foundation for the Victims of Communism, has long investigated the Chinese government’s human rights persecution of the Uighur community in Xinjiang. He told the hearing that China uses forced labor as a pretext to help “lift people out of poverty.
He said the Chinese government imposes forced labor on Uighurs through two programs. The first is to transfer surplus labor from rural areas to secondary or tertiary industries. The second is to turn those who have “graduated” from “vocational training centers” into forced labor. Both the factories and the Education centers are highly monitored by the government, he said, and those inside have to be “politically educated” by the government, while being banned from any religious activities.
Government and public concern will force big companies to change
Olivia Enos, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Asian Studies, gives U.S. large corporations a D or D- on the issue of forced labor in Xinjiang in general, although practices vary from company to company.
She believes that government and public pressure on large companies should prompt them to change their practices.
I think a good example of this is the NBA closing its basketball camp in Xinjiang due to public pressure,” she said. This example is also encouraging to us as individuals. Our anger at their involvement in the Xinjiang region could actually get them to change and get companies to take a different stance. The government should take action and make it clear that companies can’t get away with it and that having forced labor in their supply chains is 100 percent illegal.”
In June 2020, Republican U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-CA) wrote a letter to the NBA questioning the NBA’s ties to China, and in July, the NBA replied, ending any ties with the Xinjiang Basketball Academy.
The U.S. Congress and the government and private sector are taking action
On January 27, the new U.S. Congress again focused on the human rights issues facing Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Democratic U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) jointly reintroduced the Forced Uyghur Labor Prevention Act. The goal of this bill is to prevent products made from forced Uighur labor from entering the U.S. supply chain and to prevent U.S. companies from profiting from them.
Senators Rubio and Merkley, co-chairs and members of the Congressional and Executive Committee on China (CECC), introduced the same bill in March 2020, but it failed to pass before the end of the last Congress.
Rubio provided his written remarks Wednesday to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s hearing on Xinjiang.
We cannot allow the evil power and influence of the Chinese Communist Party to distort us all because of our economic entanglement with them,” he said. It is long past time for U.S. companies to face this reality. If they decide to continue doing business in a place where they know they risk being caught up in human rights abuses and even genocide, we must speak out and take action to do everything we can to ensure that our consumers are not unknowingly complicit.”
The Trump administration has imposed several rounds of sanctions on Xinjiang products involving forced labor during its time in office, including the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps being highlighted and its production of cotton and products being banned from export to the United States.
The Biden administration has also made clear its position on the issue of forced labor in Xinjiang. In its annual trade agenda report to Congress on March 1, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said the Biden Administration will make it a priority to address China’s forced labor programs targeting ethnic minorities such as the Uighurs in Xinjiang.
Secretary of State Blinken has spoken publicly during his own nomination hearings, affirming Trump’s determination that China has committed genocide and Crimes Against Humanity against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. In his first press conference at the State Department in late January, he said he still believes the atrocities against China’s Uighur Muslim minority constitute genocide.
There is also a new Perception among U.S. citizens of China’s behavior in Xinjiang. Recently, more than 50 experts from around the world released an independent investigation into the persecution of Uighurs in Xinjiang, which concluded that the Chinese authorities in Xinjiang had committed serious violations of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and that the Chinese government bore “state responsibility” for them.
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