The International Olympic Committee signed a contract with Chinese company Hengyuanxiang in 2019 to supply Olympic uniforms for this year’s Tokyo Olympics and next year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing, with U.S. media reporting that Hengyuanxiang has a factory in Xinjiang and openly claims to use Xinjiang cotton. In response, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said it was bad to imagine an American wearing an Olympic uniform made by slave laborers who would be genocided by the Chinese Communist Party.
The IOC signed a contract with Hengyuanxiang in September 2019 to provide uniforms for Olympic Games members and staff, but Hengyuanxiang claimed to the IOC that the cotton used in the uniforms did not come from Xinjiang, but the report noted that it was difficult to ensure whether the products were produced through “forced labor” given the opaque supply chain in China. The report noted that given the opaque supply chain in China, it is difficult to ensure whether the products are produced through “forced labor”.
The report mentions that Hengyuanxiang has a long-standing relationship with the Chinese Olympic Committee and was a sponsor of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In Taobao, Jingdong and other e-commerce platforms, the company shelves many products labeled using Xinjiang cotton, Hengyuanxiang also oversees many outsourcing factories, as seen in the Hengyuanxiang website, one of the factories is located in Xinjiang.
Pompeo reposted the Axios report on Twitter on the 7th, and tweeted: “Imagine forcing American athletes to wear Olympic uniforms made by genocidal Chinese slave labor? That’s worse than ‘Jim Eagle’. And what are Coca-Cola’s values?” In another tweet, Pompeo said that if U.S. Olympians (who refused the Xinjiang cotton) were prosecuted, the Chinese Communist Party would arrest those athletes under national security laws to make up for it, and eventually risk imprisonment in China, saying, “This is just the beginning…”
Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said it’s bad to imagine an American wearing an Olympic uniform made by genocidal Chinese slave labor. Photo: Taken from Pompeo’s Twitter feed
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