Was your car produced using forced labor in China?
There’s a disturbing chance the answer is yes.
A new report links the world’s biggest car companies to government-imposed forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region.
In particular, the new research details Xinjiang’s role in the production of metals critical to the auto industry – including aluminum, steel, and copper – as well as the region’s manufacturing of batteries, tires, and other car parts.
Published by Sheffield Hallam University’s Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice and NomoGaia, a nongovernmental organization, the report finds evidence that many Xinjiang-based suppliers are implicated in government forced labor programs. It details links to major car makers.
What’s been going on in Xinjiang in recent years is no less than crimes against humanity. HRW research confirms it, and UN rights chief’s report pointed in exactly the same direction.
Since 2017, Chinese authorities in Xinjiang have detained an estimated one million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims. Detainees and prisoners are subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, cultural and political indoctrination, and forced labor.
The products of the prisoners’ involuntary work can end up in your car.
The good news is that governments in some of the biggest car markets around the world are finally starting to act.
In June, the United States Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act took effect. This establishes a presumption that goods made in whole or in part in Xinjiang or produced by entities in China linked to forced labor, cannot be imported into the US.
The European Union in September 2022 proposed a law that would also prohibit the import of products made with forced labor.
Car makers need to shift gears. The new report and the rightly increasing regulation in destination countries show they need to accelerate their oversight of suppliers in many places.
And car makers should surely exit the Xinjiang region altogether.