Xinjiang Resolution Condemns U.S. Forced Labor Sanctions
In what appears to be a pointed rebuke of renewed allegations of forced labor, legislators in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region put into effect on Monday a resolution that condemns U.S. sanctions against local businesses and pledges legal and promotional support for those affected.
The Standing Committee of the 14th Xinjiang Regional People’s Congress said that measures such as the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which effectively bans from entry into the United States any goods made in whole or in part from Xinjiang, are “in fact political manipulation and economic bullying under the guise of human rights protection.”
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The resolution, which the committee passed in late August, said that the rights of Xinjiang workers, regardless of ethnicity, are “guaranteed,” allowing them to lead “harmonious lives.” By “neglecting these facts and such progress,” the United States “maliciously slanders” the human rights conditions in the province while impeding the role of industries such as textiles, clothing and silicon-based solar products in promoting employment, income creation and “high-quality development,” it added.
The UFLPA Entity List, which names sanctioned firms linked with human rights violations against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities both within and outside Xinjiang, has more than doubled in size from 30 companies in January to the current 73, though advocacy groups and some U.S. lawmakers say it needs to grow much faster. Beyond flagging companies with a manufacturing nexus to Xinjiang, the multi-agency Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force has blacklisted businesses that may have participated in state-sponsored labor transfers of Uyghurs, a scheme that experts say that beyond creating a low-paid workforce also severs them from their cultural and religious roots.
“We shouldn’t look at this as [only] economic exploitation,” Elfidar Iltebir, president of the Uyghur American Association, said at a panel with the Department of Labor in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. “Forced labor is a tool for the Chinese government to continue their Uyghur genocide while bringing thousands of Uyghurs to inner China. They’re bringing more Han Chinese immigrants to our region to dilute our population also.”
But the Xinjiang resolution said that the sanctions were “unwarranted.” It urged the Biden administration to restore a “fair market environment” for blacklisted enterprises, a development environment that allows Xinjiang citizens to “pursue a happy life” and a “fair economic, trade and rule of law environment for the international community.”
The legislators also asked that local governments help sanctioned firms expand their domestic and international markets and promote their products. Judicial authorities, too, they said, should be actively supplying legal support to these companies to “help defend their rights.”
The resolution comes on the heels of an update by the United Nations human rights office that China still maintains “many problematic laws and policies” regarding the treatment of ethnic groups in Xinjiang. The agency, which released a report two years ago warning that Beijing could be committing crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, said that it continues to call on authorities to take “prompt steps” to release all individuals “arbitrarily deprived of their liberty,” to “clarify” the status and whereabouts of those whose family members have been seeking information, fully investigate any allegations of human rights violations such as torture, and to undertake a complete review of the country’s national security and counter-terrorism legal framework so that it doesn’t discriminate against minorities.
Last week, the U.S. Department of State expressed disappointment that China “continues to reject” the UN human rights office’s findings and that the United States remains “gravely concerned” by the nation’s “ongoing repression of predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang.”
Sheng Lu, professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware, said that the resolution reads as nothing more than propaganda that serves as a “deliberate response” to the UN and Department of State’s recent statements. He noted that despite the resolution’s strong language, nearly no leading American fashion brand or retailer openly claims to use Xinjiang cotton anymore. Chinese cotton, too, has suffered a blow, with the latest Office of Textiles and Apparel data revealing that just 12.2 percent of U.S. cotton apparel, in terms of value, hailed from China in the first seven months of 2024. That’s less than half of the 27-28 percent that averaged before the UFLPA’s implementation.
“Despite calling for support for companies negatively affected by the UFLPA, the resolution does not mention any specific measures, fiscal resources or designate any government agency to lead the initiative,” he said. “Likewise, as a provisional-level policy document, this resolution does not have the same binding legal effect as a law or regulation and it does not carry much weight beyond the Xinjiang region.”