The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a ban on Tuesday on imports from three Chinese companies selling industrial chemicals, wool, and yarn on the grounds that they profited from Beijing’s state-sponsored slave trade of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Turkic ethnic groups.
The Chinese Communist Party, on direct orders of dictator Xi Jinping, has been waging a campaign of genocide against Uyghurs and the other indigenous communities of occupied East Turkistan since at least 2017. The government has placed at least 3 million people in concentration camps, where they are believed to face indoctrination, unspeakable torture, and the horror of live organ harvesting. Among the many abuses the Chinese government subjects them to is slavery; “batches” of Uyghur slaves openly appear for sale to willing companies on the Chinese regime-controlled internet.
In response to the influx of slave-made products from China entering the U.S. marketplace, Congress passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) in 2021, which creates a rebuttable presumption that all imports from East Turkistan – which the Chinese government refers to by the colonial name “Xinjiang” – were made by slaves. Companies seeking to import products from East Turkistan must prove their products’ supply chains are not tainted by slavery to receive U.S. government permission to import them.
The Act went into effect in June 2022, despite widespread griping from implicated companies that complying with the law would be inconvenient.
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The UFPLA also created an “entity list” of companies banned from importing goods into America on the grounds of using Uyghur and other non-Han slaves to manufacture their products. Three new companies – Xinjiang Zhongtai Group Co. Ltd., Xinjiang Tianshan Wool Textile Co. Ltd., and Xinjiang Tianmian Foundation Textile Co. – joined the list on Tuesday. Joining the list means the. companies’ goods “will be restricted from entering the United States as a result of the companies’ participation in business practices that target members of persecuted groups, including Uyghur minorities in the PRC.”
“Xinjiang Zhongtai Group Co. Ltd., is headquartered in Xinjiang and produces and sells polyvinyl chloride (PVC), iconic membrane caustic soda, industrial salt, calcium carbide, viscose fiber, viscose yarn, and other textile, chemical, and building materials,” DHS explained in a press release on Tuesday. “Xinjiang Tianshan Wool Textile Co. Ltd. is headquartered in Xinjiang and sells and manufactures cashmere and wool garments, as well as velvet and other textile products.”
“Xinjiang Tianmian Foundation Textile Co. is headquartered in Xinjiang and produces yarn and textile products,” DHS added.
DHS described the blacklisting of the companies in question as part of a campaign to “eliminate the use of forced labor practices in the U.S. supply chain and promote accountability for the ongoing genocide.”
The three companies bring the total number of entities sanctioned under the UFLPA to 27. The goods trafficked by the companies vary widely – from cotton products to chemical compounds, from baby clothes to human hair. Among the most notorious of those on the UFLPA “entity list” is the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), accused for years of using cotton picked by Uyghur slaves. Prior to the passage of the UFLPA, in 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced it would seize any products attempting to enter the country originating from the XPCC on the grounds that the company used slave labor.
“CBP’s Office of Trade directed the issuance of a Withhold Release Order (WRO) against cotton products made by the XPCC based on information that reasonably indicates the use of forced labor, including convict labor,” DHS explained at the time. “The WRO applies to all cotton and cotton products produced by the XPCC and its subordinate and affiliated entities as well as any products that are made in whole or in part with or derived from that cotton, such as apparel, garments, and textiles.”
Uyghurs protest in front of the White House to mark the anniversary of the Urumqi massacre by China on July 5, 2023. (AP)
Another corporation of note on the UFLPA entity list is Hetian Taida Apparel Co., LTD., whose slave-tainted products were freely available in American stores such as Costco as recently as 2019.
“Hetian Taida shipped 1.2 million items of baby pajamas and baby sleeper blankets with the destination of Costco, and Costco was going to sell it on their website,” China researcher and senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Foundation Adrian Zenz told Congress in October of that year.
“It extremely disturbing that U.S. companies were still sourcing from the company,” Uyghur-American attorney and current commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Nury Turkel asserted during the same hearing, referring to Hetian Taida. “Two weeks ago, baby clothes produced by Hetian Taida were on the shelves at Costco. … It’s hard to understand how the goods got on the shelves in the first place.”
DHS noted in its press release on Tuesday that CBP has “reviewed more than 5,000 shipments valued at more than $1.74 billion under the UFLPA” since it went into effect in June 2022.
Experts have lamented that CBP is limited in how much it can act to prevent slave-made products from hitting American store shelves. Among the most concerning loopholes to shipment reviews is the exception for de minimis shipments, defined as those worth less than $800. This means that large numbers of shipments from companies in China selling retail products directly to Americans – such as online “fast fashion” companies Shein and Temu – face no scrutiny from CBP entering the country.
“Shein ships small packages direct-to-consumer using a trade loophole known as de minimis entry. Shein abuses this entry category to avoid customs duties and inspections on its unethically produced products,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) explained in a letter to colleagues in June. “Shein’s exploitation of de minimis entry prevents scrutiny under UFLPA, cheats taxpayers of customs revenue, and undercuts American competitors that play by the rules.”
The average Shein package is worth $11, far from the $800 upper limit that would trigger CBP inspections.
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