China has been moving Uyghur Muslims to factories outside of the Xinjiang region in order to skirt U.S. restrictions on imports using their forced labor, a New York Times investigation revealed Thursday.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has moved Uyghurs as far as 2,600 miles from the Xinjiang region — considered ground zero for the genocide against the religious minority group — in order to provide forced labor at factories across the mainland, according to the NYT, which collaborated with Der Speigel and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism on the investigation. While the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act prevents certain imports to the U.S. from Xinjiang, Chinese goods tainted with Uyghur forced labor may still be arriving on Western shores.
Through interviews, open source intelligence and visits to the province, the NYT-led team estimated that tens of thousands of Uyghur Muslims may now be producing goods around China against their will, according to the NYT. China has insisted that the moving program is voluntary and helps open economic opportunity, but other observers — including labor experts for the United Nations — have countered that the initiative appears to be forcing Uyghurs into the jobs, and that the workers may have no other option but to accept the labor given that Chinese authorities may target them if they decline.
The State Department officially declared the Chinese government’s repression of the Uyghurs to be a genocide in 2021. Other crimes against the Uyghurs the State Department noted in 2024 include corruption, repression of political dissidents, arbitrary or illegal killings and detention, torture of detainees and kidnapping; other reports have alleged that the Chinese government is sterilizing Uyghurs and forcing Uyghur women to have abortions.
The CCP maintained a number of detention camps for Uyghurs in Xinjiang, with one such facility estimated to have capacity for up to 10,000 people. Moreover, multiple reports and testimonies from the region indicate the communist regime took measures to ban public prayer while extensively surveilling mosques for dissent.
Typically, forced labor in Xinjiang is mostly used to produce cotton, textiles, critical minerals and solar panels, according to the NYT. The Uyghur workers who have been shuffled to inland factories are making cars, electronics, footwear and other goods, some of which may be supplying Western corporations.
Companies including LG, Tesla and KFC appear to be utilizing goods from suppliers suspected of employing Uyghur forced labor, according to the NYT. LG, Tesla and KFC did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
In April, Secretary of State Marco Rubio imposed visa restrictions on Thai officials who were forcing Uyghurs to return to China, with the secretary characterizing China’s actions against the minority group as “crimes against humanity.” Rubio was one of the lead architects of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act while he served in the Senate.
The Chinese Embassy described allegations of state-sanctioned Uyghur forced labor as “a big lie made by anti-China forces” in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“The U.S. uses the made-up story of “forced labor” to enforce the malicious legislation on Xinjiang and create ‘forced unemployment’ in the region,” said a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy. “Facts have shown that the so-called ‘Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act’ is in nature a tool for U.S. politicians to destabilize Xinjiang and contain China’s development.”
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