On Thursday May 16, the US authorities have announced they have blocked all imports from 26 Chinese textile companies, as part of their efforts to stop the output of forced labour by members of the Uighur community from entering the US supply chain.

These companies – chiefly cotton traders and storage warehouses – are now included in a list of businesses targeted by the Uighur Forced Labour Prevention Act, which was passed in the USA in 2021 in response to what the US government regards as the genocide of Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang province.

Washington has accused Beijing of setting up forced labour camps in Xinjiang province in western China, perpetrating abuses against minority Muslim communities, including Uighurs. China has refuted the accusations and denied the abuses, casting its extremely official campaign as a policy for integrating the Muslim minority in society through work.

While most of the Chinese cotton companies on the list are based outside of Xinjiang, they are sourcing cotton from that province, the US Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

China accounts for nearly 25% of the world’s cotton output, with some 20% coming from crops cultivated in Xinjiang province. As some Chinese cotton specialists told FashionNetwork.com in March, the cotton banned by the USA has been extensively redirected to the domestic market.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington has criticised the US administration’s recent decision. “This so-called ‘prevention act’ is simply an instrument used by American politicians to create disruption in Xinjiang and stifle China’s growth,” he said.

A suspicion fuelled by the USA’s recent decision to raise customs duties on a long list of products, including goods belonging to the textiles and apparel categories. A choice that was unequivocally condemned by the American Apparel & Footwear Association (as reported in this article).

Since the Xinjiang blacklist was introduced, the US administration has restricted imports from a total of 65 Chinese companies, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

But the fate of the Uighurs continues to be a significant blind spot for the international community, NGOs and the apparel industry itself. A report published at the end of 2020 by the Australian Institute for Political Strategy warned that Uighurs are being displaced in huge numbers across China, and forced to work in textile factories that have been transformed into enclosed detention centres. This makes it more difficult to measure the true extent of the link between Xinjiang and the production of textiles and apparel, of which China is by far the world’s largest exporter.

(with Reuters)