Even as athletes from around the globe compete in the delayed 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, a growing movement is seeking to move or postpone next year’s Winter Olympics in China. The reason: the Communist country’s alleged use of forced labor for products and many things in supply chains of multinational corporations.
The latest salvo in the push to move or delay the 2022 games slated for the Chinese capital of Beijing comes from an American congressional committee set up to observe China’s human-rights practices. Committee officials say that relocation would serve as a sanction for the country’s alleged forced labor practices that have been increasingly tied to America’s growing solar power industry, as well as products and materials used to make sneakers, mobile phones, TVs and other consumer products.
The Congressional-Executive Commission on China asked Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee to postpone the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and to relocate them if the host government does not end what the group describes as the country’s “egregious” human-rights abuses. In a letter dated July 23, the commission wrote that “no Olympics should be held in a country whose government is committing genocide and crimes against humanity.”
U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and U.S. Representative James P. McGovern (D-MA), are the chairman and cochairman, respectively, of the bipartisan and bicameral commission.
Other significant politicians and activists have echoed the commission’s sentiments. The Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, and U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, the top House Republican on foreign policy issues, have called for a boycott if the games aren’t moved.
Meanwhile, while China’s foreign ministry website doesn’t have a statement on the brewing boycott, the Council on Foreign Relations said that “China’s foreign ministry has warned of a ‘robust response’ to any boycotts.” The organization noted that Beijing was likely to leverage its consumer market of 1.4 billion people against companies that participate in a boycott.
A Chinese state broadcaster, CGTN, has reported that Beijing is putting $3.9 billion into holding the games. That relatively small price tag reflects the city’s plans to reuse some venues created when Beijing last hosted an Olympics, in the summer of 2008.
So far, the International Olympic Committee hasn’t issued a statement on the calls to move the 2022 Beijing games. In fact, the World Uyghur Congress, an international advocate group for the Uyghur people, filed a complaint with the committee’s ethics commission over its failure to issue a response to outstanding requests before the committee on moving the games.
Allegations of forced labor in Xinjiang
The U.S. lawmakers’ letter is just the latest note in a crescendo of activity from the government, as well as organizations around the world, seeking to expose China’s labor practices in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where authorities are accused of forcing Muslim ethnic minorities, particularly the Uyghurs and Kazakhs, into interment camps and labor programs.
It’s not just consumer-goods companies like Nike, Coca-Cola, Calvin Klein and the Campbell Soup Co. that are grappling with the issue of forced labor in China. Also seeing a major impact is America’s fast-growing solar power industry, which relies heavily on imported solar panels from the country.
“Forced labor will not be tolerated in our industry,” said John Smirnow, vice president of market strategy for the Solar Energy Industries Association. “Given reports of labor abuses in Xinjiang and the inability to conduct independent audits there, solar companies should immediately move their supply chains out of the region.”
As reports are showing, American imports are increasingly tied to the Uyghurs Region, as noted in a March 2020 report from the congressional-executive commission, which identified a found a number of products that could be the product of forced labor, including clothing and other textiles, food products, cell phones and other electronics, shoes and even tea. The commission, which also requested the Olympic venue change, is composed of members of Congress, along with presidential appointees. It was established in 2000 to monitor human rights and the development of the rule of law in China.
Ties to solar production
In May, a report from the United Kingdom’s Sheffield Hallam University found that such involuntary workers in the Uyghur Region “can pervade an entire supply chain and reach deep into international markets” of solar panels.
Solar-grade polysilicon are the primary material used for 95 percent of solar modules, and polysilicon manufacturers in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China accounted for about 45 percent of the material’s worldwide supply, concluded the report, titled “In Broad Daylight: Uyghur Forced Labour and Global Solar Supply Chains.”
“Labor transfers are deployed in the Uyghur Region within an environment of unprecedented coercion, undergirded by the constant threat of re-education and internment,” the report said. “Many indigenous workers are unable to refuse or walk away from these jobs, and thus the programs are tantamount to forcible transfer of populations and enslavement.”
In response, the U.S. Congress and President Joe Biden are beginning to take action. In July, the Senate passed legislation targeting China’s labor practices in that region, while in June the Biden administration banned imported materials from firms linked to the area.
“A broad bipartisan consensus has coalesced around excising Chinese goods tainted by forced labor and human rights abuses from U.S. supply chains. Existing efforts have largely targeted agricultural and textile products, but policymakers are now looking into the solar industry’s ties to Xinjiang,” said Matthew P. Funaiole, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Forced labor’s deep reach
The solar industry is far from the only industry assessing its ties to the Uyghur Region. In its May 2020 report, the congressional-executive commission published a list of recognizable American brands that were “suspected of directly employing forced labor or sourcing from suppliers that are suspected of using forced labor.”
“Soon, many or most products made in China that rely at least in part on low-skilled, labor-intensive manufacturing, could contain elements of involuntary ethnic minority labor from Xinjiang,” researcher Adrian Zenz said in the report.
Nike, one of the companies cited in the commission’s report, said that it does not source products from the Uyghur Region, though the company acknowledged it would continue to work diligently with suppliers to ensure that its products remain free of forced labor.
“We have confirmed with our contract suppliers that they are not using textiles or spun yarn from the region,” Nike said in a statement. “While Nike does not directly source cotton, or other raw materials, traceability at the raw materials level is an area of ongoing focus. We are working closely with our suppliers, industry associations, brands and other stakeholders to pilot traceability approaches and map material sources, so we can have confidence the materials in our products are responsibly produced.”
Like other companies sourcing materials or labor from China, America’s solar power industry has been working to assess its connections to China’s Uyghur Region. In April, the Solar Energy Industries Association released a tool for solar panel suppliers designed to increase supply chain transparency. However, with limited information available about the region, both industry officials and human rights advocates acknowledged that government restrictions in the region make it impossible to accurately trace materials and products from that region.
“The fact is, we do not have transparency into supply chains in the Xinjiang region, and there is too much risk in operating there,” the solar association’s Smirnow said in June. “For that reason, in October, we began calling on solar companies to leave the region and we provided them a traceability protocol to help ensure there is not forced labor in the supply chain.”
While industry officials are working to ensure their products aren’t sourced from the Uyghur Region, it could soon be illegal in the U.S. to source any product from there, regardless of whether the materials are audited for labor. With the Senate having already approved legislation that would prohibit the import of any material or product sourced to the Uyghur Region, the House of Representatives is expected to follow suit, as a similar bill passed the House in the last congressional session, with only three members voting no.
Edited by Matthew B. Hall and Bryan Wilkes
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