Several reports over the past two weeks have shed light on the ongoing human rights issue of Uyghur forced labor and its impact on global supply chains. The most recent report was published on Wednesday, as Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agreed to a trade deal that would see China resuming exports on certain critical minerals. The Global Rights Compliance report on Wednesday analyzed corporate annual reports and marketing, state media, and shipping records to show how four critical minerals—titanium, lithium, beryllium, and magnesium—have a significant presence in Xinjiang, where they are supplied by forced labor:
Global Rights Compliance found that for each of the four minerals studied, major mining and processing companies are participating in the state labour transfer programs, which scholars and legal experts identify as forced labour.
The report identifies 77 critical minerals sector companies and downstream manufacturers of minerals-based products operating in the XUAR, and therefore are at risk of participating in labour transfer programs, in the titanium, lithium, beryllium, and magnesium industries.
Research found 15 companies with documented sourcing directly from those XUAR-based companies in the last two years.
The report uncovers 68 downstream customers of those Chinese suppliers with sourcing from the Uyghur Region, indicating a risk that inputs may have been sourced from the region.
Research identified 18 XUAR entity parent companies that may source inputs from their XUAR subsidiaries. [Source]
Last week, Peter Irwin and Henryk Szadziewski wrote for Foreign Policy about a recent report they published demonstrating how international hotel giants are profiting from forced labor and other abuses in Xinjiang:
In addition to the 115 hotels that are currently operational in Xinjiang, we identified another 74 in various stages of planning and construction from international hotel giants—Accor, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Marriott, Minor Hotels, and Wyndham. Marriott will open at least 13 hotels located in Xinjiang in 2026, including a Ritz-Carlton in Urumqi. IHG will open nine hotels in the region in 2025 and another seven in 2026, including InterContinentals in Urumqi, Kashgar, and Ghulja. (InterContinental is IHG’s flagship luxury brand.)
Moreover, we documented a long list of rights abuses connected to hotels in Xinjiang, including forced labor, presence on territories controlled by an entity under targeted human rights sanctions, financial and management links to Chinese state-owned enterprises, and hotels hosting Chinese state propaganda events. Hilton even opened a hotel on the site of the Duling Mosque in central Khotan, which local authorities demolished in 2018. None of the seven hotel chains responded to our repeated requests for comment.
[…] The business model of international hotel chains means they have avoided the burden of supply chain regulations. A core operation involves licensing their brand name to Chinese companies through franchising agreements or management partnerships, making them virtually invisible to trade-focused rules, such as the UFLPA [U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act].[Source]
Two weeks ago, a joint investigation by The New York Times, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and Der Spiegel highlighted the scope of Chinese state-led labor transfer programs that force Uyghurs to work in factories, as far as 2,600 miles from Xinjiang, that supply many major international brands. Reporters examined government and corporate announcements, state media reports, social media posts and research papers; visited areas near two dozen factories linked to Uyghur labor; and spoke to dozens of workers. David Pierson, Vivian Wang, and Daniel Murphy at The New York Times summarized the investigation:
By the best available estimates, tens of thousands of Uyghurs now toil in these programs. The workers are paid, but the conditions they face are unclear. And U.N. labor experts, scholars and activists say the programs fit well-documented patterns of forced labor.
[…] We documented their presence at 75 factories across 11 provinces in at least five major industries.
[…] These companies supply brands such as Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, McDonald’s, KFC, Samsung, LG and Crocs.
[…] “This is not about poverty alleviation. This is about dispersing Uyghurs as a group and breaking their roots,” Rayhan Asat, a human rights lawyer at the Atlantic Council whose brother has been imprisoned in Xinjiang since 2016.
If multinational brands cannot guarantee that their suppliers are free of forced labor, then they should find other suppliers that they can guarantee are, or pull out of China altogether, Ms. Asat said. [Source]
Evidence of Uyghur forced labor has continued to emerge across a variety of sectors. In February, a French media investigation found evidence of Uyghur forced labor in the supply chain of multinational sporting goods company Decathlon. Last December, the BBC published a documentary tracing the shipment of processed tomato products—made with Uyghur forced labor in Xinjiang—to Italy and then onward to the U.K. and Germany. Last November, Volkswagen decided to end its presence in Xinjiang after news reports and a leaked audit revealed that one of its factories near Urumqi used Uyghur forced labor. In 2022, activists protested the International Olympic Committee whose official supplier of IOC uniforms and other apparel for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics was a company publicly using cotton sourced from Xinjiang. Virtually the entire global supply chain for cotton is tainted by forced labor from Xinjiang.
Despite these ongoing revelations, international legal action to combat the issue of Uyghur forced labor appears to have waned, after a peak in 2022. In June of that year, the U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act went into effect. Then in August, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery published a report concluding that there is forced labor in Xinjiang. In September, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights published a report concluding that the serious human rights violations in Xinjiang, including forced labor, may constitute crimes against humanity. Since then, the U.N. Human Rights Council has declined to address these issues, leaving some activists to seek alternative avenues for justice in regional or national courts. For more on this topic, see CDT’s interview with Laura Murphy on forced labor in Xinjiang.