Report: Global Car Supply Chains Involved in Xinjiang Abuse
Numerous connections to Xinjiang are mentioned in a recent report on the auto industry,
According to a new report, the Xinjiang region of China continues to be a significant source of raw materials, components, and other supplies for the global auto industry, despite a recent U.S. law designed to limit purchases from the region, where the Chinese government has committed human rights violations against mainly Muslim minorities.
The study, which was conducted by a group of researchers under the direction of Laura T. Murphy, a professor of human rights and modern slavery at Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom, explores the relationships between Xinjiang-related Chinese businesses and the automakers that depend on them for supplies like metals, batteries, wiring, and wheels.
In Xinjiang, where China has been mass-incarcerating Uyghurs and other minorities, the researchers found that big Chinese enterprises have either participated in coercive labour programmes there or have lately sourced their materials and products from the area.
According to the report, these Chinese companies play a significant role in the global supply chain for auto parts, increasing the likelihood that automakers like Volkswagen, Honda, Ford, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz Group, Toyota, and Tesla sold vehicles with parts or raw materials that at some point came into contact with Xinjiang.
No component of the car that we looked into was unaffected by Uyghur forced labour, according to Dr. Murphy. "It affects the entire industry."
Such connections could cause major issues for the global vehicle brands. Like the Trump administration before it, the Biden administration has adopted a more assertive stance toward Chinese trade breaches and imports of commodities created with forced labour, which the UN estimates harm 28 million people globally.
Products made entirely or partially in Xinjiang are now presumed to have been made using forced labour under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, putting them susceptible to confiscation by the federal government if they are imported into the United States. Since the regulation took effect in June, almost 2,200 shipments with a combined worth of more than $728 million have been halted, according to customs officials. In the end, more than 300 of those products were made available in the US.
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| a Shanghai-based China Baowu Steel Group facility. The corporation, which is the biggest steel manufacturer in the world, is one of the significant industrial suppliers included in the report that have proudly promoted their role in implementing the Chinese government's policies targeting Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Credit... EPA, through Alex Plavevski, at Shutterstock |
The types of goods confiscated were not disclosed by federal officials. But since they use Xinjiang-sourced raw materials like cotton and polysilicon, businesses that produce apparel and solar panels have been disproportionately impacted by the new regulations.
The New York Times has not independently validated the entirety of the new report, which lists some 200 companies—both Chinese and foreign—with possible connections to Xinjiang on a direct or indirect basis. Numerous of the Chinese industrial behemoths included in the research have numerous manufacturing facilities, which means they can be supplying metal, electronics, or wheels built in their plants outside of Xinjiang to foreign automakers.
The worldwide car parts supply chain is extensive and intricate. The average car manufacturer may have connections to as many as 18,000 suppliers throughout its entire supply chain, from raw materials to components, according to estimates by McKinsey & Company.
Many of those suppliers pass through China, which is becoming more and more important to the global auto industry and to the United States, which is where roughly 25% of China's yearly exports of auto parts go. Xinjiang is home to a number of businesses, but the research notes that because to its plentiful coal deposits and loose environmental laws, it is a popular place for energy-intensive materials processing, such as metal smelting.
Because of China's convoluted and opaque supply channels, it may be challenging to track specific products from Xinjiang to the United States. To combat the coronavirus, Xinjiang and other regions of China have intermittently been placed under lockdown for the past three years. Access to Xinjiang was strictly regulated by the Chinese government even before the outbreak, notably for media organisations and human rights organisations.
Given the constraints in the area, it is also challenging to determine the degree of coercion that any one Uyghur worker would experience in the mines or factories of Xinjiang. However, the U.S. government has decided to assume that any products that have been touched by the region in their manufacturing have been created with forced labour unless corporations can provide proof to the contrary due to the general climate of repression in Xinjiang.
Locals "don't have an opportunity to say no," according to Yalkun Uluyol, a native of Xinjiang and one of the report's writers. He claimed that products leaving Xinjiang "are a result of the exploitation of the land, of the resources, and of the people."
The report's researchers found numerous documents, such as Chinese-language corporate filings, official announcements, and ocean import records, that show, at the very least, many international brands may have been exposed to Xinjiang programmes that the U.S. government now considers to be forced labour.
According to Dr. Murphy and her team, there are nearly 100 Chinese companies operating in the Uyghur region that are engaged in mining, processing, or manufacturing materials for the automotive industry. At least 38 of these companies have made their participation in oppressive state-sponsored labour programmes known through their social media accounts, corporate reports, or other means.
When contacted by The Times, international automakers stated they were dedicated to monitoring their supply chains for forced labour and violations of human rights but did not refute the report.
Forced labour was forbidden by G.M., Volkswagen, and Mercedes' supplier codes of conduct, they claimed.
According to Honda, suppliers must adhere to international sustainability standards. Ford claimed to have procedures in place to guarantee that all of its activities, including those in China, conformed with all applicable laws and regulations.
The Chinese government has asserted that there are no human rights breaches in Xinjiang, and has termed charges of forced labour in Xinjiang “the lie of the century.”
According to Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, "'Forced labour' in Xinjiang is a fiction purposely cooked up and promoted by the U.S. to cut China out of the global supply and industrial chains.
Some of the Chinese businesses included in the report are major suppliers to the industry and have publicly highlighted their involvement in implementing the government of China's policy toward Uyghurs in social media posts and glitzy annual reports.
One of them is the biggest steel producer in the world, China Baowu Steel Group, which produces at least 9% of its total steel through a subsidiary in Xinjiang, according to the research. Along with producing several types of steel that feed the supply chains of the majority of multinational automakers, Baowu and its subsidiaries also produce springs for axles, body panels, and suspension systems for automobiles.
Baowu Group stated in its 2020 corporate social responsibility report that its subsidiary had "fully implemented the party's ethnic policy" and that 364 labourers from low-income families from villages in southern Xinjiang had "been arranged with employment." The report also pledges adherence to China's leader and the Communist Party. The terms, said to human rights activists, are euphemisms for planned mass transfers of Uyghur workers into industries.
According to the study, Baowu Group companies have taken part in additional transfers of labourers from Xinjiang's underdeveloped districts and in initiatives billed as fighting poverty—but which the US now sees as a cover for forced labour. As a result of the new regulation, businesses that take part in such initiatives may be placed on a blacklist that prevents the export to the United States of any goods they produce, even those produced outside of Xinjiang.
The new analysis also expands on earlier research by a company named Horizon Advisory on the Xinjiang aluminium industry as well as a June Times investigation into Xinjiang's contribution to the production of lithium and nickel, two minerals used in electric car batteries.
The investigation identifies recent transfers of Uyghur workers at some of the largest aluminium producers in the world and links these products to significant car industry suppliers, some of whom sent items as recently as November to the United States, Canada, or Europe, according to shipping records.
For dozens of other key auto industry suppliers, including Double Coin, a tyre manufacturer that sells widely in the US, including online at Walmart and Amazon, it also provides documentation of connections to Xinjiang and transfers of Uyghur workers.
Additionally, it details a recent investment by CATL, a Chinese company that provides Tesla, Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen, and other brands with batteries and generates about a third of the world's electric car batteries, in a significant new lithium processing company in Xinjiang.
CATL is a minority shareholder in the Xinjiang company, according to Zhang Yizhi, a representative for the company, and is not involved in its management or operations. He added that CATL is dedicated to creating a responsible supply chain and vehemently opposes and forbids any kind of forced labour among its suppliers.
Requests for response from Baowu Group, Double Coin, and its parent company Shanghai Huayi Group went unanswered. Walmart did not answer, while Amazon declined to comment on its sale of Double Coin tyres.
According to the report, there is still a long way to go until the United States can stop the flow of items associated with Xinjiang. Although they claim to be striving to enforce a prohibition on such products, customs officials continue to hire actively and work to increase their department's ability to spot and seize these commodities.
In an interview in October, AnnMarie R. Highsmith, the executive assistant commissioner of the Office of Trade at Customs and Border Protection, stated that "we're still on an upward trend."
Origin (Source): nytimes.com
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