Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said UK will fine companies if they cover up imports from the Xinjiang region of China, where international observers have accused Beijing of overseeing forced labor by Uighur Muslims. All companies with an annual turnover of more than 36 million pounds ($49 million) will be obliged to publish a supply chain transparency report or face fines, Raab told Parliament. Public sector procurement will also be banned from the region and there will be tougher export controls.
“This package will help make sure that no British organizations, government or private sector, deliberately or inadvertently profit from or contribute to the human rights violations against the Uighurs or other minorities in Xinjiang.” Raab said. “We will continue to speak up for what is right.” The measures are designed to be a precise and preemptive tool to tackle abuses in the region, Raab’s office said, though it added there is no way of quantifying how many imports come to the UK direct from the region. China was the UK’s third-biggest trading partner in 2019, after the US and Germany.
Conservative MP and chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Tom Tugendhat said “dirty goods” are one issue but “dirty money” is another problem, citing Chinese funding at British universities.
In December, the US-based Center for Global Policy published a report alleging new evidence from Chinese government documents and media reports of hundreds of thousands of Uighurs in Xinjiang being forced to pick cotton by hand through coercive state-mandated labour.