As the United States continues to target Chinese goods and companies under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), China’s information landscape has adapted its rhetoric around labor practices in a way that can obscure ongoing UFLPA risks.
That means new red flags for businesses to learn and to watch for.
Background: Forced-labor allegations in China’s Xinjiang region have escalated since late 2017, the United Nations has said, including from internment-camp “graduates” and rural workers who said their work transfers were compulsory, tightly surveilled and paired with “ideological education.” An August 2022 UN assessment concluded that elements of state-imposed forced labor likely exist.
Now, the rhetoric around labor practices in some cases has updated and softened further: economic revitalization being emphasized over “poverty alleviation,” for instance, while references to transferred laborers’ “ideological” or “deradicalization” trainings, mandatory language trainings, and military-style trainings have given way more often to terms like skills training.
Other references have disappeared. Mentions of Xinjiang labor transfers no longer explicitly state, for example, that the workers are accompanied by security forces and government minders, just that train tickets were purchased for them.
That means new red flags for businesses to learn and to watch for.
Background: Forced-labor allegations in China’s Xinjiang region have escalated since late 2017, the United Nations has said, including from internment-camp “graduates” and rural workers who said their work transfers were compulsory, tightly surveilled and paired with “ideological education.” An August 2022 UN assessment concluded that elements of state-imposed forced labor likely exist.
- The UFLPA, enacted earlier that same year, created a “rebuttable presumption” that all Xinjiang-linked goods are tainted unless proven otherwise. The measure has led to the detainment of cotton, polysilicon, PVC, batteries, electronics, and, most of all of late, automotive and aerospace shipments.
Now, the rhetoric around labor practices in some cases has updated and softened further: economic revitalization being emphasized over “poverty alleviation,” for instance, while references to transferred laborers’ “ideological” or “deradicalization” trainings, mandatory language trainings, and military-style trainings have given way more often to terms like skills training.
Other references have disappeared. Mentions of Xinjiang labor transfers no longer explicitly state, for example, that the workers are accompanied by security forces and government minders, just that train tickets were purchased for them.
State of play: At the same time, local Chinese governments reportedly continue to make explicit plans and goals that can signal UFLPA risks, such as by:
Two intertwined state programs sit at the center of today’s UFLPA risks in Xinjiang:
- putting quotas on how many workers they want to transfer into new jobs outside their home provinces.
- openly building special industrial park zones to place those workers.
Two intertwined state programs sit at the center of today’s UFLPA risks in Xinjiang:
- The poverty alleviation/surplus labor transfer programs that were first rolled out in 2014.
- The “pairing assistance” and Xinjiang Aid drive that channels capital and companies from wealthier provinces into the region, while bringing Xinjiang workers to factories in those wealthier provinces.
- References to meetings between Xinjiang officials and non-Xinjiang officials, especially from relevant departments like Xinjiang Aid, under the pairing assistance programs.
- References to certain metrics, such as annual job placement targets for ethnic minorities “lifted out of poverty” and county‐level household employment tallies.
- References to incentive programs, including cash rewards or social-security rebates for factories that hit minority-worker quotas and subsidies for charter trains moving Xinjiang workers east.
