In an effort to ensure that that forced labor-made goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region do not enter the market in the United States, US President Joe Biden has signed into law a bill that effectively bans all imports of goods sourced fully or in part from that province.
The Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act comes in the wake of US claims that Beijing is imposing slave labor, forced sterilizations, and extrajudicial mass internment camps on as many as 1.8 million people of the region and accuses China of keeping Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Muslim minority groups in a system of camps in Xinjiang.
The Muslim-majority Chinese province of Xinjiang is a major producer of cotton, agricultural products as well as polysilicon, the key component of solar panels, but also has strategically important geolocation bordering a number of countries, such as Russia in the north and India in the south.
In one of the clearest signals so far that the Biden administration will not allow China to profit from the persecution of the Uyghur people, the Act also envisages sanctioning foreign individuals that would be found responsible for forced labor.
Although US Customs and Border Protection is authorized to issue waivers to importers who can show clear and convincing proof that their merchandise was not made with slave labor, once the law comes into force, all goods produced in Xinjiang will be presumed to be made with forced labor and banned from entering the US market.
Many observers already predict that the law will be a de facto ban on all Xinjiang-sourced products but it remains to be seen how liberal the issuing of waivers would be.
GOP Senator Marco Rubio, who co-introduced the bill in January, called Biden’s decision to sign the bill the most important and impactful action taken by the US thus far to hold China accountable for its use of slave labor.
Blasting the new law a severe violation of international law and international relations’ norms, the spokesman for the Chinese embassy in the US, Liu Pengyu, called on Washington to stop using Xinjiang as a tool for spreading lies and interfering in China’s internal affairs in order to contain China’s development.
Pengyu also stressed that said Beijing will respond accordingly to the move.
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 attempted genocide.
China says its policies in the autonomous region successfully curbed radical Islamist ideology and helped lift people out of poverty. The accusations of persecution, Beijing officials insist, are lies meant to justify unilateral measures adopted by the US as part of its great-power competition against China.
Critics of the law say the US is acting hypocritically regarding Xinjiang. They argue that the clear benefactors of the import ban are US cotton producers and defense contractors who happen to stand behind vocal accusations against Beijing over the alleged 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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