A bill banning the import of goods from China’s Xinjiang region came into force on Tuesday, marking a significant escalation in Washington’s economic sanctions against Beijing.
President Biden signed the Uygur Forced Labour Prevention Act into law in December 2021. The legislation was passed through Congress over allegations China is practicing forces labor in Xinjiang using Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in the region, a charge Beijing denies.
The law creates a presumption that any goods sourced wholly or partly from Xinjiang have been produced with forced labor. US companies can appeal the ban if they can show “clear and convincing” evidence that their supply chains are free of forced labor, but US officials have said they set a “high bar” for appeals.
Doug Barry, the senior director of communications for the US-China Business Council, told The South China Morning Post that the requirements for exemptions are impossible to fulfill since independent audits aren’t available for the region. “The law will essentially act as a trade embargo against goods with input from Xinjiang,” Barry said.
The Post reported Monday that the looming ban already crippled China’s cotton industry before taking effect as potential buyers were already scared off from sourcing goods from the region. “Xinjiang cotton used to be the most expensive cotton in the world. Now it has become the cheapest, and still no one buys it,” the owner of a cotton-ginning mill said.
The import ban was overwhelmingly approved by Congress, with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) being the only lawmaker that voted against the bill, demonstrating the bipartisan support for ramping up economic pressure on China. The legislation was lobbied against major US corporations that do business in Xinjiang, including Nike and Coca-Cola, but the pressure wasn’t enough to stop the bill.
The US is pressuring its allies to also ban goods from Xinjiang. “We are rallying our allies and partners to make global supply chains free from the use of forced labor, to speak out against atrocities in Xinjiang, and to join us in calling on the government of the PRC to immediately end atrocities and human rights abuses, including forced labor,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on the implementation of the ban.
Allegations of forced labor in Xinjiang first surfaced after President Trump launched his trade war against China. Most of the claims can be traced back to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think tank whose funders include the Pentagon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin.
Thanks, USA. Avoid any way of fixing your own horrendous problems in your debt-ridden, failing, anti-democratic shambling nest of violence and spending on weapons to destroy others, for bringing in another law to ensure that the important Xinjiang region of China, with the most advanced agricultural and other industries in the country, is caused problems . The special status of the Uyghur, as with other minorities in China, enables them to develop and have autonomy, but your usual finding of “dissidents” outside and pretending they represent those actually living in China, allows this pathetic attempt to destroy the BRI joining China at Xinjiang to other members of the plan.
I very much enjoy logic!
We are special! Especially debt-ridden we are. We print, print, print dollars, with zero backing but the promise by the government that the dollars will be backed. By something.
The U.S. is self destructing before our eyes. Few nations will be willing to deal with them knowing that they might go sanction on them if they don’t follow the U.S. dictates. You will see fewer nations willing to buy U.S. debt and put themselves in a compromising position. Unfortunately, the NATO nations haven’t learned that, and will have to suffer the consequences.
We need to be careful with “trade wars”, as they can, on some occasions lead to more substantial wars…
Whether the accusations of forced labor are true or not just adds to our hypocrisy. If true, this just didn’t come about so one wonders where our morality was when our manufacturing jobs were outsourced to China. And do we think other countries we do business with aren’t using forced labor?
Apple might be affected?
We don’t have forced labor in the U.S. of A. ?
Whatever I may think of the way the US treats workers (not well), we generally don’t hold people in re-education camps and force them to provide free labor.
Indeed. We throw them in jail. And up to a few years ago we chained and put them in chain gangs.
We have an issue with excessive incarceration here. But does that excuse what China is doing in your mind?
There’s still quite a bit of forced labor in US prisons. Just not as visible as the chain gang routine.
Record high inflation? Better start an extremely expensive and bureaucratic to enforce trade embargo against like 1/4 of Chinese territory, and also a lot of key goods like where most of the world’s solar panels come from. We can’t stop buying Chinese goods, but we can definitely make it more expensive for consumers just so we can score some geopolitical tension points!
Seems sort of like the Globalist Elites want to make many suffer to achieve their aims.
Fabricated Lie and Absolutely Not True…! Besides, when did US care about any Muslims whether from Palestine, Yemen or Xinjing….?!
Chain gangs have been used in the US at least until 1995. Convicts were chained and forced to hard labor. What happens in China, if true, is no different.
When the Uyghurs first started to attack Chinese citizens (similar to the mass shootings here but with a knife) a Chinese co-worker, once explained to me that the Uyghurs were lazy no matter how much the government invested in them. Most probably they were not lazy but did not feel part of society like many Muslims did in the West.
In the West, they are thrown in jail. In China they are thrown into vocational centers where they are taught a trade so they integrate back into society. What is wrong with that?
Wowwwwwwwww. And you bought that hook, line and sinker, huh?
Do you have any information about these alleged attacks?
Literally no one except the Chinese government and the commenters here denies the existence human rights abuses against Uyghurs. Why is that?
China first denied their existence, now claims they are “vocational training centers” (that look like prison camps, apparently.)
There are more than 400 pages of leaked Chinese documents discussing the mass detentions.
And 43 countries have issued a statement to the UN expressing concern about human-rights violations.
But sure, it’s all just a conspiracy.
“and to join us in calling on the government of the PRC to immediately end atrocities and human rights abuses,…”
Blinken might want to add the starvation Biden is imposing on Afghanistan by holding their money and giving the Afghan money away while people are starving.