The Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act accuses China of keeping “as many as 1.8 million” Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and members of other Muslim minority groups “in a system of extrajudicial mass internment camps” in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
Once the legislation comes into force, all goods that can be shown to have been produced in Xinjiang will be presumed to be made with forced labor and banned from entering the American market. US Customs and Border Protection will be authorized to issue waivers to importers who manage to submit “clear and convincing evidence” that their merchandise is not tainted.
While it remains to be seen how liberal the issuing of waivers would be, many observers predict that the law will constitute a de facto ban on all products sourced from Xinjiang. The policy dovetails with other US measures aimed at undermining Chinese economic and political power, like the campaign to convince US allies to join Washington’s diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Xinjiang is a major producer of cotton, agricultural products like tomatoes, and polysilicon – a key component of solar panels. The Muslim-majority Chinese province also has a strategically important location bordering a number of countries, from Russia in the north to Afghanistan in the west to India in the south.
Critics of China have long been accusing Beijing of suppressing ethnic minorities living in Xinjiang through mass surveillance and incarceration, coercive birth control, and forced labor, accusing the Chinese government of an attempted genocide.
Commenting on Biden’s signing of the new legislation, Senator Marco Rubio, who co-introduced the bill in January, called it “the most important and impactful action taken thus far by the United States to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for their use of slave labor.”
Meanwhile, they point out, the damage will be done to Xinjiang workers who may lose their jobs due to American pressure if the restrictions work as intended.
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