US President Joe Biden on Thursday signed into law legislation that bans imports from China’s Xinjiang region over concerns about forced labor, the White House said, provoking an angry Chinese condemnation.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is part of the US pushback against Beijing’s treatment of the Xinjiang’s Uighur Muslim minority, which Washington has labeled genocide.
The bill passed the US Congress earlier this month after lawmakers reached a compromise between House of Representatives and Senate versions.
Photo: AFP
Key to the legislation is a “rebuttable presumption” that assumes all goods from Xinjiang, where Beijing has established detention camps for Uighurs and other Muslims, are made with forced labor. It bars imports unless it can be proven otherwise.
Some goods — such as cotton, tomatoes and polysilicon used to manufacture solar panels — are designated “high priority” for enforcement action.
China denies abuses in Xinjiang, a major cotton producer that also supplies much of the world’s materials for solar panels.
The Chinese embassy in Washington said that the act “ignores the truth and maliciously slanders the human rights situation in Xinjiang.”
“This is a severe violation of international law and norms of international relations, and a gross interference in China’s internal affairs. China strongly condemns and firmly rejects it,” embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu (劉鵬宇) said in an e-mailed statement.
He said China “would respond further in light of the development of the situation,” but did not elaborate.
US Commission on International Religious Freedom Uighur-American vice chair Nury Turkel told Reuters earlier this month that the act’s effectiveness would depend on the willingness of Biden’s administration to ensure it is complied with, especially when companies seek waivers.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Biden’s approval of the law underscored the “United States’ commitment to combating forced labor, including in the context of the ongoing genocide in Xinjiang.”
“The state department is committed to working with Congress and our interagency partners to continue addressing forced labor in Xinjiang and to strengthen international action against this egregious violation of human rights,” he said.
One of the bill’s coauthors, US Senator Jeff Merkley, said it was necessary to “send a resounding and unequivocal message against genocide and slave labor.”
“Now ... we can finally ensure that American consumers and businesses can buy goods without inadvertent complicity in China’s horrific human rights abuses,” Merkley said in a statement.
In its final days in January, the administration of former US president Donald Trump announced a ban on all Xinjiang cotton and tomato products.
The US Customs and Border Protection agency estimated then that about US$9 billion of cotton products and US$10 million of tomato products were imported from China during the previous year.
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