US Congress approves import ban bill targeting forced labour in China

17 Dec '21

2 min read

Pic: Robert Byron | Dreamstime.com

A bill barring imports from China’s Xinjiang region unless US businesses can prove they were produced without forced labour received final Congressional approval yesterday by US senators. The US administration also announced fresh sanctions targeting several Chinese biotech and surveillance firms and government entities for their actions in Xinjiang.

The Senate vote sends the bill to President Joe Biden.

Press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden supported the measure after months of the White House declining to take a public stand on an earlier version of the legislation, a global newswire reported.

The United States claims China is committing genocide in its treatment of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang. China has denied all such claims.

Raw cotton, gloves, tomato products, silicon and viscose, fishing gear and a range of components in solar energy are among the goods alleged by the United States to have been produced with the help of forced labour in Xinjiang.

“Many companies have already taken steps to clean up their supply chains. And, frankly, they should have no concerns about this law,” Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who introduced the earlier version of the legislation with Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, said in a statement.

“For those who have not done that, they’ll no longer be able to continue to make Americans — every one of us, frankly — unwitting accomplices in the atrocities, in the genocide,” Rubio said.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)

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