WASHINGTON - The United States has banned another 29 Chinese companies from exporting their goods to America due to their alleged use of Uyghur slave labor. It’s the largest single blacklisting since the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act became law in 2021.
The listing, announced late Friday by the Department of Homeland Security, brings the total number of Chinese companies barred from exporting to America due to Uyghur forced labor to 107, following the blacklisting of three other Chinese companies earlier this month.
The companies include producers of agricultural, aluminum and polysilicon products, as well as copper, gold and nickel miners, it says, accusing them of “working with the government of Xinjiang to recruit, transfer, and receive workers, including Uyghurs, out of Xinjiang.”
Washington accuses Beijing of carrying out a “genocide” of the mostly Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority in far-western Xinjiang, including by forcing Uyghurs to work for little or no pay. Chinese officials deny the claims and say many Uyghurs are in fact in vocational training.
But that has done little to convince U.S. lawmakers. The 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which was passed on a bipartisan basis, allows the Department of Homeland Security to ban Chinese firms that it believes are using slave labor from selling their goods to Americans.
The blacklisting also comes amid an ongoing investigation by the bipartisan House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party into claims that U.S. venture capital firms are funding companies involved in Uyghur slave labor and thereby financing “genocide.”
Pressure campaign
In a statement, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said that the latest bulk blacklisting shows Washington’s resolve “to ensure that goods made from the forced labor of Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang do not enter the United States.”
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Rishat Abbas, the chairman of the Washington-based Uyghur Academy, told Radio Free Asia that the blacklisting represented “a critical move in the fight against forced labor in supply chains” in China.
“By restricting goods from over 100 Chinese companies linked to the exploitation of Uyghurs in East Turkistan, this action sends a strong message to the Chinese Communist Party,” Abbas said, using the preferred Uyghur name for the Xinjiang region of China.
Abbas added that the mounting international pressure was pushing Beijing toward a position where it may soon be forced “to reassess its policies of oppression toward the Uyghur population.”
Edited by Malcolm Foster.