Free Republic

Elon Musk’s Tesla has been one of the largest electric vehicle manufacturers in recent years thanks to its range of reasonably priced, high-tech EVs like the Tesla Model Y and the newly introduced Cybertruck. Chinese manufacturers have made huge progress in recent years by expanding across Europe and North America with the aim of securing a significant global market share. Major Chinese firms can benefit from cheaper production costs and greater access to materials needed to manufacture electric vehicles, putting them ahead of the competition. Elon Musk has now warned that manufacturers from China will have “significant success” outside of...

The Uyghurs Forced to Process the World’s Fish (Can't be posted, per FR rules.)

Belarus' authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has decided to stem an exodus of qualified workers to Russia, starting by banning those who work in wood-processing industries from quitting. Critics have compared the measure to serfdom and warned that it would only deepen the former Soviet republic's economic troubles and fuel protests against Lukashenko.

The Washington Free Beacon reported: A solar energy company owned by a Biden megadonor received a $500 million government loan to build a manufacturing facility in India, the Biden administration announced this week, raising questions about whether the company’s political clout played any role in the financing decision. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation granted the loan to First Solar, which is owned by billionaire Walmart heir Lukas Walton, to build a solar module plant in India. Walton contributed over $300,000 to President Joe Biden’s campaign last year, and over $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee, according to campaign finance...

Biden administration climate czar John Kerry holds $1 million stake in Chinese private equity fund, Hillhouse China Value Fund, tech company blacklisted for human rights abuses and major shareholder of solar panel firm connected to Uyghurs labor abuses. Human rights groups and U.S. lawmakers have accused LONGi of sourcing raw materials from companies using forced labor in Xinjiang, a region the Chinese government abusing the Uyghur population and other ethnic minorities. Hillhouse is also a funder of a tech firm connected to Beijing’s surveillance of Uyghurs, a revelation last week leading Republican senators urging Biden to fire Kerry over ethics...

Slavery is acceptable in Islam. The Qur’an has Allah telling Muhammad that he has given him girls as sex slaves: “Prophet, We have made lawful to you the wives to whom you have granted dowries and the slave girls whom God has given you as booty.” (Qur’an 33:50) […] A couple who enslaved a West African girl at their home in Texas for 16 years have been convicted by a federal jury. Mohamed Touré, the son of Guinea’s first president Ahmed Sékou Touré, and his wife Denise Cros-Toure arranged for the child to travel to the US when she was...

The chairmen of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) on June 1 called on NBA players to end endorsement deals with Chinese sportswear firms that are linked to forced labor. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), in a letter to National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) President Chris Paul and Executive Director Michele Roberts, expressed concern over contracts that more than a dozen NBA players have signed, with firms that include Anta, Li-Ning, and Peak, which have all admitted to using cotton produced in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. The commission’s letter to the labor...

British researchers say the world’s production of solar panels is being fueled by forced labor from Uyghur Muslims in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. An investigation by Sheffield Hallam University says some 45 percent of the world’s supply of a key component in the panels—polysilicon—comes from Xinjiang and is obtained through a vast system of coercion involving the Uyghur ethnic minority. In Broad Daylight, the report from the university’s Helena Kennedy Center for International Justice, says the world’s four biggest panel manufacturers use polysilicon tainted by forced labor, and urges producers to source the substance from elsewhere. It cited an...

The Chinese regime is taking on foreign apparel and footwear brands amid global fallout over its genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region. Undeterred by growing international condemnation over its human rights abuses, Beijing is pressing companies to reverse their position on Xinjiang by way of boycotts. The regime has dredged up past statements made by companies—some up to two years old—to distance themselves from sourcing materials from the northwestern Chinese region over potential forced labor abuses. It hopes to stoke nationalist fervor and encourage a nationwide boycott. The outrage from Beijing followed days after the...

Nike has long been accused of turning a blind eye to China’s terrible human rights record, at best, while being super woke in the United States.The sporting goods giant posted a statement questioning and distancing itself from China’s alleged (by the BBC and Reuters) use of forced labor in concentration camps to pick the cotton used in textiles by Nike and other brands. That statement is being met in China with a much more extreme reaction than Nike probably expected.Chinese fans are up in arms after Nike said it would not use cotton from China’s disputed Xinjiang region, and some...

Chinese fans are up in arms after Nike said it would not use cotton from China's disputed Xinjiang region, and they're burning their prized kicks. The sports company faced a massive backlash and boycott on Chinese social media platform Weibo after a statement that it released that highlighted the forced labor of Uighurs in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR)... ...People began posting videos of themselves burning their Nike Air Jordans and Air Force 1s, with some of these videos being reposted over 100,000 times. "I burned all my Nikes. This is a matter of national pride. We will not...

83.That’s the number of U.S. and other foreign firms a new study links to China’s forced Uighur labor camps. Forbes has the details.The 83 foreign and Chinese companies that ASPI has identified as directly or indirectly benefiting from the potentially abusive transfer programs for Uighurs include clothing brands such as Adidas, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger and Uniqlo; carmakers such as BMW, General Motors, Jaguar and Mercedes Benz; and tech giants such as Apple, Google, Huawei and Microsoft.The camps include ideological “reeducation” and the workers are not allowed to go home. Their labor is advertised and sold online, including suggestions that they...

Twitter has come under fire recently for refusing to ban the Chinese government for lying about not employing forced labor in the Xinjiang province.“‘Forced labor’ is the biggest lie of the century aimed to restrict and suppress the relevant Chinese authorities and companies and contain China’s development,” Chinese spokesperson Hua Chunying tweeted.Accompanying the tweet was a video of forced laborers smiling and saying how good everything is at the factory. Nauseating."Forced labor" is the biggest lie of the century aimed to restrict and suppress the relevant Chinese authorities and companies and contain China's development.🔗https://t.co/olKiB2NxwM pic.twitter.com/SxzzxkrOja— Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) January...

China has constructed a vast string of factories inside the walls of Xinjiang mass internment camps, and Chinese authorities are forcing thousands of Muslim minorities to work in cotton fields, according to two recent investigations. Why it matters: Xinjiang products are deeply integrated into lucrative supply chains around the world. The Chinese Communist Party's official embrace of coerced labor will force Western governments and institutions to choose between pleasing business leaders or enforcing universal human rights values. Details: In the past three years, the Chinese government has forced hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang to...

Source: Courtesy Photo of U.S. Customs and Border ProtectionIt is rare in this polarized era for legislation of moral and commercial significance to attract substantial support across party lines. A bill to fight slave labor in China is turning out to be a notable exception.The Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act, was introduced in March by Representative Jim McGovern, the Worcester Democrat who chairs the House Rules Committee, and by Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. It would ban the importation of goods made in China's Xinjiang region, where more than 1.5 million Uighur Muslims are imprisoned in a vast gulag...

Washington has announced its latest move to punish Chinese CCP officials and mainland-based companies for enabling human rights abuses in Xinjiang, the far-western region where as many as 1 million Chinese Uighur (a Muslim minority group) have reportedly been interned in a network of 'forced labor camps'. The Trump administration announced Tuesday morning that it has banned imports from three Chinese companies based in the Xinjiang region of China, retaliation for Beijing’s repression of the Uighurs. US Customs and Border Protection on Aug. 11 issued a "withhold release order", which is used to combat forced labor in global supply...

In his new book, Unbelievers, British historian Alec Ryrie observes that the only moral standard people agree on these days is “don’t be like Nazi Germany.” Since firms such as Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, and Bayer used forced labor from concentration camps during World War II, that should mean we could all agree that forced labor is bad.Tragically, at least if it involves new laptops in time for the new school year, it doesn’t.Recently, the Intercept reported that Lenovo, the world’s largest manufacturer of laptops, “has imported an estimated 258,000 laptops” built by a certain Chinese manufacturer named Hefei Bitland. Through...

The New York Times reports that China is using what amounts to slave labor to manufacture face masks. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to drive demand for personal protective equipment, Chinese companies are rushing to manufacture the gear for domestic and global consumption. A New York Times visual investigation has found that some of those companies are using Uighur labor through a contentious government-sponsored program that experts say often puts people to work against their will. The Uighurs are an ethnic minority in China, which is majority Han Chinese. The report may shed some light on video we and many...

A report published Sunday by an Australian think tank revealed that as many as 83 internationally known brands – including Nike, BMW, Apple, Sony, Google, Lacoste, and Nintendo – have active ties to factories where evidence suggests the Communist Party has shipped Uyghur Muslims to engage in forced labor.

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 301 of title 3, United States Code, and section 741 of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement Implementation Act (Act) (Public Law 116-113), it is hereby ordered as follows:Section 1.  Establishment of Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force.  The Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (Task Force) is hereby established to monitor United States enforcement of the prohibition under section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1307).Sec. 2.  Membership.  The Task Force shall be chaired by the Secretary of Homeland Security and shall...