US ‘rallying’ allies against Xinjiang forced labour as ban takes effect

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that the US is rallying its allies against forced labour as it begins implementing a law that bans goods from China’s Xinjiang region, where Washington says Beijing is committing genocide.

US Customs and Border Protection on Tuesday begins enforcing the Uighur Forced Labour Prevention Act (UFLPA), which President Joe Biden signed into law in December.

CBP has said it is ready to implement the law’s “rebuttable presumption” that all goods from Xinjiang, where Chinese authorities established detention camps for Uighurs and other Muslim groups, are made with forced labor and barred from import unless it can be proven otherwise.

The agency has said a very high level of evidence would be required for importers to receive an exception to the law.

“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 (People’s Republic of China) to immediately end atrocities and human rights abuses,” Blinken said in a statement.

“Together with our interagency partners, we will continue to engage companies to remind them of US legal obligations,” he said.

China denies abuses in Xinjiang, a major cotton producer that also supplies much of the world’s materials for solar panels.

Foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said earlier in Beijing that claims of forced labour in Xinjiang were a “big lie concocted by anti-China forces.”

“With this so-called law, the US is trying to create forced unemployment in Xinjiang and to push for the world to decouple with China,” Wang said.

Beijing initially denied the existence of any detention camps, but then later admitted it had set up “vocational training centres” necessary to curb what it said was terrorism, separatism and religious radicalism in Xinjiang.

Last week, CBP issued a list of Xinjiang entities presumed to be using forced labor, which includes textile, solar-grade polysilicon, and electronics companies. It has said imports from other countries would be banned if related supply chains include Xinjiang inputs.

The US, Britain and other countries have called for the United Nations’ International Labour Organization to set up a mission to probe alleged labour abuses in Xinjiang.