China’s machinery of exploitation: US report labels Beijing a persistent human trafficking offender
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has once again been branded among the world’s worst human trafficking offenders, following the release of the U.S. State Department’s 2025 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report.
For the sixth consecutive year, China has been ranked in the lowest category—Tier 3—signifying that it neither meets minimum standards to combat human trafficking nor makes significant efforts to do so.
The report, unveiled on September 29, paints a grim picture of a country where forced labour, state repression, and exploitation remain institutionalised features of governance rather than aberrations.
The findings are a damning indictment of the Chinese regime’s vast system of coercion, which extends from labour camps in Xinjiang to factories supplying global markets, and even to Chinese communities abroad under growing transnational surveillance.
According to the U.S. State Department, China continues to exhibit a “policy or pattern” of widespread forced labour in state-affiliated sectors, most egregiously through the mass detention and exploitation of Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang.
The report underscores that such practices are not isolated incidents but systematic, deeply rooted in the state’s machinery of control.
The official assessment accuses the CCP of operating an expansive network of forced labour programmes that draw from detained populations, including political prisoners, religious minorities, and those deemed disloyal to party ideology.
Factories, construction sites, and state-owned enterprises are said to benefit directly from these coerced labour pools, generating billions in economic output under the guise of “vocational training” and “poverty alleviation.”
For years, Beijing has insisted that its policies in Xinjiang are aimed at “countering extremism” and “promoting employment.”
Yet, multiple international investigations and satellite evidence have shown sprawling detention centres, barbed-wire compounds, and factories located adjacent to these so-called reeducation facilities.
The TIP report aligns with these findings, noting that forced labour is deeply intertwined with state policy rather than being a mere byproduct of corruption or local misconduct.
Perhaps most disturbing is the report’s focus on China’s growing use of transnational repression—a term that captures the regime’s efforts to extend its coercive reach beyond its borders.
According to the report, Chinese authorities have engaged in systematic efforts to monitor, harass, and intimidate members of ethnic and religious minority groups living abroad.
Tactics include threats to family members in China, digital surveillance, and coercion to force individuals to return to the mainland for detention or “reeducation.”
These measures, the report notes, “exacerbate the vulnerability” of targeted individuals and communities, making them more susceptible to exploitation and trafficking.
The Chinese state’s global apparatus of intimidation—ranging from Chinese police “service centres” operating overseas to surveillance networks monitoring the diaspora—illustrates how repression and trafficking converge into a single continuum of control.
The scale of forced labour within China is staggering.
The report, citing assessments by the International Labour Organisation, estimates that 3.9 million people worldwide are subjected to state-imposed forced labour exploitation, with China accounting for a significant share.
The victims include not only Uyghurs but also Tibetans, North Korean refugees, and domestic migrants who are coerced into work under threat of punishment, loss of welfare benefits, or detention.
The Trafficking in Persons report categorises countries into four tiers based on their efforts to combat human trafficking.
Tier 1 represents those fully compliant with the minimum standards of the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), while Tier 3—the lowest—includes those failing to meet these standards and not taking significant remedial action.
Placement in Tier 3 can trigger U.S. sanctions or restrictions on foreign assistance.
China’s continued presence in this category underscores Washington’s view that the regime’s practices are not only pervasive but deliberate.
“The Chinese regime does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so,” the report’s China chapter stated bluntly.
In his introduction to the 2025 TIP report, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasised that the aim of the annual study is to pressure governments into serious action against trafficking and exploitation.
Rubio described human trafficking as “a horrific and devastating crime that also enriches transnational criminal organisations and immoral, anti-American regimes.”
He linked the issue to broader geopolitical stakes, casting it as part of the ideological contest between freedom and authoritarianism.
“The Trump Administration is dedicated to upholding American values, protecting American workers, and defending our communities,” Rubio wrote, framing the report not only as a human rights indictment but as an element of strategic confrontation with regimes accused of exploiting labour for economic and political power.
Within China, however, acknowledgement of the issue is virtually nonexistent. The state-controlled media ignores or dismisses such accusations as Western propaganda designed to “contain China’s rise.”
Domestic civil society, which might otherwise investigate or expose abuses, remains muzzled under stringent censorship and sweeping laws that criminalise dissent under the guise of “state security.”
NGOs that once operated in China have been shuttered, foreign journalists expelled, and survivors of forced labour silenced through intimidation.
The result is an information vacuum—one in which the regime’s official narrative dominates, and victims are rendered invisible.
Even when reports of trafficking emerge, they are often reframed as criminal cases unconnected to systemic state policy. Forced marriages, labour exploitation in rural industries, and child trafficking persist beneath the radar of official acknowledgement.
For the global community, China’s persistent inclusion among the world’s worst trafficking offenders poses an enduring dilemma.
On one hand, Beijing’s deep entanglement in global supply chains means that goods produced through coerced labour can easily find their way into international markets.
On the other hand, the Chinese regime’s political and economic leverage deters many countries and corporations from taking decisive action.
The TIP report highlights that state-imposed forced labour in China is not merely a domestic concern—it is an international one.
Products linked to coerced labour in Xinjiang, such as cotton, solar panels, and electronics, continue to circulate globally, despite legislative attempts by the U.S. and some Western nations to block such imports.
The sheer scale and opacity of Chinese supply chains make accountability nearly impossible.
What emerges from the 2025 report is not a portrait of a government struggling to contain a criminal problem, but of a state that has institutionalised exploitation as a tool of governance, repression, and economic growth.
Human trafficking in China, as described by the U.S. report, is not conducted in the shadows—it is embedded within the very structure of the CCP’s political and economic order.
Six consecutive years on the world’s trafficking blacklist reveal a disturbing truth: Beijing’s model of authoritarian control depends on the commodification of human labour and the subjugation of entire populations.
Behind the statistics and policy jargon lies a reality of mass coercion, systemic dehumanisation, and a regime that continues to wield exploitation as a weapon of power.
