The finding, part of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China’s most recent annual report, published Wednesday, “lays bare how the Chinese Communist Party keeps breaking its word—to its own people and to the world,” said Senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican from Alaska who also serves as chair of the independent U.S. government agency, which has monitored human rights and rule-of-law developments in China since 2020.
“Beijing signs human rights conventions, promises autonomy for Hong Kong and Tibet, and pledges to play by global trade rules, then jails dissidents, runs forced-labor factories and illegal fishing fleets, and even dispatches agents to stalk and threaten people on American soil,” he said.
The report criticizes Beijing for signing treaties and conventions on human rights, labor and trade, then ignoring its obligations in practice, including by replacing its promises of allowing Uyghurs their autonomy with mass detentions and omnipresent surveillance to “advance Han Chinese ethnic chauvinism.”
It said that the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a paramilitary organization that has been sanctioned by the U.S. government, “uses and distributes” Uyghur forced labor throughout China, contaminating global supply chains that not only sustain serious human rights abuses but also create unfair competitive advantage for imports entering markets such as the United States.
“Sadly, the People’s Republic of China under the Communist Party has proven time and again that it seeks hegemony in order to impose the same tyranny it afflicts its own citizens with upon the rest of the world,” said Representative Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey and co-chair of the CECC. “China is not a responsible member of the community of nations, for it is run by the Communist Party for the benefit of the Communist Party—a party state which does not honor the treaties to which it is a state party.”
Smith called China “more than simply a strategic rival” to the United States and “the rest of the free world.” Instead, he said, it’s a “systemic rival” that seeks to “undo the stable international order” by utilizing forced labor, stealing intellectual property and massively subsidizing state-owned enterprises in defiance of World Trade Organization mores and rules-based order.
Beijing has denied the worst of the allegations, such as torture, organ harvesting and forced sterilization, framing them as smears and lies by so-called “anti-China forces.” Officials have said that its ethnic minority policies are designed to alleviate poverty and mitigate the temptation of religious extremism through steady employment.
Human rights groups say, however, that China detained more than 1 million Uyghurs in internment camps from 2017 to 2019. When the camps closed due to international pressure, more than half a million were sent to prison instead. Other “graduates” from indoctrination programs were dispatched to low-paying, menial jobs in provinces far from Xinjiang.
On Wednesday, which was also Human Rights Day, the Delegation of the European Union to the People’s Republic of China released a statement saying that the overall human rights situation in China showed “no substantive sign of improvement.” The EU, it said, remains “deeply concerned” about the “systemic and severe restrictions” on fundamental freedoms and the right of minorities to enjoy their own culture and use their own language, both in public and in private. The delegation cited an assessment by the United Nations human rights office that indicated that serious human rights violations in Xinjiang “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
“The EU remains deeply troubled by continuing reports of forced labour and state‑imposed labour transfer schemes involving Uyghurs both within Xinjiang and to other provinces,” it added.
In a press briefing on Thursday, Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, said that Beijing “attaches great importance to promoting and protecting human rights, and has found the path of human rights development that reflects the trend of the times and fits our national realities.”
“China has made historic progress in the human rights cause,” he added in response to the EU delegation’s remarks. “It is a simple fact that anyone without bias can see. The EU turned a blind eye to its own problems while making irresponsible accusations against other countries. However, the world is not blind to hypocrisy and double standards.”
The CECC is urging the Trump administration to “confront” forced labor in supply chains by strengthening enforcement of the nearly four-year-old Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which imposes a rebuttable presumption that all goods made wholly or in part from Xinjiang are the products of forced labor and therefore barred from entering the United States.
Both the number and value of shipments detained by Customs and Border Protection have fallen to unprecedentedly low figures, a recent analysis shows, raising questions about the mechanism’s ongoing effectiveness and the strength of the current administration’s political will.
That’s not to say there haven’t been any moves to improve enforcement. Last week, Kharon said that it was expanding its agreement with CBP to use its global risk analytics platform to facilitate the agency’s enforcement of the UFLPA and other customs laws. A month before, Exiger, an AI-powered supply chain management technology platform, announced that it had been awarded an exclusive, multi-million-dollar and first-of-its-kind contract by CBP to tackle the “laundering” of goods through third countries, whether due to better tariff rates or to obscure forced labor origins.
At a conference held by Cornell University’s ILR Global Labor Institute under the Chatham House rule in New York City earlier this month, one expert called the UFLPA a “battering ram” of a law, adding that it was important to maintain the pressure and “keep interrogating.”
“Forced labor import bans in general are not a method of first resort, right?” this person said. “Many of the people in this room work on the ground with companies all over the world, trying to get them to lift up the voices of workers and change practices. When a forced labor import ban kicks in, it’s when those practices haven’t worked, when the suppliers keep denying wages or keep participating in labor programs, or in cases of state-imposed forced labor, where we can’t get something to change because the government is hovering over it.”
Among the report’s recommendations is for Congress to authorize funding for the “enhanced” adoption of DNA‑origin testing, isotopic analysis, blockchain supply‑chain mapping and machine‑learning. It should also hold UFLPA oversight hearings with Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force agencies to ensure “ongoing visibility” into forced labor enforcement resource allocations, stakeholder engagement, enforcement priorities, Entity List expansion, staffing and petition responses.
The Trump administration, the CECC added, should use congressionally appropriated funds to assist with UFLPA Entity List targeting, including the creation of a database, secure compartmented information facility system updates and other contract support. It must promote the “global adoption” of UFLPA-style measures in bilateral and multilateral forums such as the Group of Seven, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and “aggressively add” companies, government bodies, and trade intermediaries with verifiable links to Uyghur forced labor to the Entity List, which at present comprises 144 names.
At the same time, the report said, fast fashion retailers need to be sent a “clear message” by requiring companies like Shein and Temu, if vertically integrated in manufacturing, sourcing or warehousing, to clarify their legal obligations and potential liabilities related to forced labor.
A 2023 House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party previously denounced Temu for doing “next to nothing” to keep its supply chains free of forced labor because it hadn’t expressly prohibited its tens of thousands of third-party sellers from selling products originating from Xinjiang. Shein’s products have turned up traces of Xinjiang cotton in the past. Stop Uyghur Genocide, an advocacy group, also included the e-tailer’s alleged ties to a Guangdong-based industrial park with potential connections to the Uyghur region in a “dossier of evidence” that it gave to Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority when Shein was pursuing a London IPO. Both companies insist that forced labor goes against their codes of conduct.
“This report doesn’t just catalogue those abuses; it gives Congress, the administration and our allies a blueprint to stand with victims of atrocities, defend our workers and supply chains—including our fishing and seafood industries—from slave labor, and make sure the Chinese Communist Party, not American families, pays the price for Beijing’s broken promises,” Sullivan said.
