Biden signs bill banning imports from China’s Xinjiang over Uyghur ‘genocide’

US President Joe Biden on Thursday signed into law legislation that bans imports from China’s Xinjiang region over concerns about forced labour, the White House said.

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is part of the US pushback against Beijing’s treatment of the China’s Uyghur Muslim minority, which Washington has labelled genocide.

The bill passed Congress this month after lawmakers reached a compromise between House and Senate versions.

Key to the legislation is a “rebuttable presumption” that assumes all goods from Xinjiang, where Beijing has established detention camps for Uyghurs and other Muslim groups, are made with forced labour. It bars imports unless it can be proven otherwise.

Some goods – such as cotton, tomatoes, and polysilicon used in solar-panel manufacturing – are designated “high priority” for enforcement action.

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China denies abuses in Xinjiang, a major cotton producer that also supplies much of the world’s materials for solar panels.

Its Washington embassy did not respond to a request for comment.

Nury Turkel, Uyghur-American vice chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, told Reuters this month the bill’s effectiveness would depend on the willingness of Biden’s administration to ensure it is effective, especially when companies seek waivers.

One of the bill’s co-authors, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, said it was necessary to “send a resounding and unequivocal message against genocide and slave labour.”

“Now … we can finally ensure that American consumers and businesses can buy goods without inadvertent complicity in China’s horrific human rights abuses,” he said in a statement.

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In its final days in January, the Trump administration announced a ban on all Xinjiang cotton and tomato products.

The US Customs and Border Protection agency estimated then that about $9 billion of cotton products and $10 million of tomato products were imported from China in the past year.