WRITTEN EVIDENCE SUBMITTED BY THE RIGHTS PRACTICE

(FLS0053)

Summary

• The Rights Practice (TRP) is a human rights organisation that focuses on China. We support those working on the ground to advance human rights and undertake research and advocacy. Our submission addresses the risk of forced labour in supply chains involving production in China, the obstacles to remediation and the barriers to obtaining relevant information.

• China must be considered a high-risk region for forced labour due to the prevalence and seriousness of state-imposed forced labour (SIFL). SIFL in China is associated with the pursuit of political objectives and is generally discriminatory in its use. It takes place under conditions of extreme coercion, entails harsh working practices and oppressive ideological education. SIFL operates in different forms: in penal settings (prison, administrative and extra-legal) and through labour transfers and placements. Uyghurs have been the principal targets of SIFL schemes in recent years.

• China ratified the ILO’s two forced labour conventions in 2022. However, while forced labour is prohibited under the criminal law the state does not acknowledge SIFL in China as an offence. In the context of state coercion SIFL is impossible to remediate.

• Social audits to assess forced labour in China are difficult, while on the ground investigations of SIFL are largely impossible. The information environment in China is very repressive. The Chinese government controls access to information and has not engaged in good faith with the UN, including the ILO.

• The British government should require due diligence by all companies (turnover TBD) importing into the UK and back up legislation with credible enforcement to ensure a level playing field. Where there are allegations of egregious human rights violations entailing state-imposed forced labour, such as in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the British government should adopt urgent measures that would result in an import ban.

State-imposed forced labour in China

1. The Rights Practice welcomes the inquiry of the Joint Committee on Human Rights into forced labour in UK supply chains and the implications for British government policy. As a human rights organisation with expertise on China, our comments focus on the challenge China poses to the integrity of value chains in Britain. In this submission we highlight the particular problem of state-imposed forced labour (SIFL) and argue that stronger legislative and enforcement measures are required to effectively prevent goods produced under such conditions from entering the UK.

2. State-imposed forced labour in China is a political issue that goes beyond the question of labour rights. SIFL is a key element in an array of coercive, human rights violating measures, including arbitrary detention, used by the Chinese state to control targeted populations for political reasons. The targeting of Uyghurs on ethnic and religious grounds has been on a scale and of a nature that has led the OHCHR[1] and the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery to conclude that China’s actions may constitute crimes against humanity[2].

3. The problem of state-imposed forced labour in China is not new. It has long been a feature of penal practice in the PRC, regardless of whether those punished have been convicted by a court of law.[3] SIFL was a feature of ‘re-education through labour’, an administrative punishment introduced in the 1950s. Although abolished in 2013, the same penal model of ideological re-education and compulsory labour under harsh conditions was replicated in the so-called ‘vocational education and training centres’ (VETC) that enabled the mass internment of Uyghurs from 2017 to 2020[4]. The model can also be found in compulsory isolated drug treatment centres[5]. Although forced labour during pre-trial detention appears to have declined in use, The Rights Practice has received reports from former detainees and lawyers that it continues to be required by some detention centres.

4. All prisoners in China are required to undertake ‘productive labour’ (Article 4 Prison Law of the PRC 1994)[6]. The Rights Practice has spoken with former prisoners who describe long working hours, harsh conditions and physical punishment, including the use of electric shock batons, for failure to meet daily quotas. The Rights Practice knows of cases where political prisoners were required to work in contravention of Article 1(a) of Convention No. 105.[7]  In the absence of information to the contrary, The Rights Practice also assumes that a large majority of the additional 322,000 Uyghurs sentenced to prison terms between 2017 and 2020 were detained for political offences and have been required to undertake prison labour.[8] Given the many shortcomings in Chinese criminal proceedings (e,g. restricted access to lawyers, the use of torture, reliance on confessions, and lack of judicial independence) there is a high risk that many convicted prisoners have been arbitrarily detained.

5. The largescale use of state-imposed forced labour towards Uyghurs and other largely Muslim and Turkic-speaking communities in XUAR in internment camps, prisons and through labour transfer schemes, has led to international condemnation. Under such criticism many former internment camps (VETC) in the Uyghur region have been closed or repurposed as vocational schools, factories and prisons. With many of the internment camps built near industrial zones there remains a close proximity between factories and places of detention in XUAR. Former detainees have been placed in factories, [9] including, we believe, as a result of ‘educational placements’ for former prisoners under the Counter Terrorism Law while many Uyghur political prisoners are believed to be working in factories adjacent to prisons.

6. While the nature of repression in the Uyghur region has evolved since the height of the crackdown, the political objective of eroding Uyghur identity and assimilating non-Han populations remains unchanged.[10] With the reported closure of VETCs, labour transfers have become more widespread. Policies to promote labour transfers within XUAR and to other provinces include poverty alleviation targets and financial incentives for companies. Labour transfers have also targeted Tibetans.[11] While state-owned companies appear to be the main receiving companies the Chinese private sector is also involved.[12] Given the political objective of labour transfers receiving companies are not able to say no to such requests. Moreover, given the subsidies offered to companies that receive transferred workers there are financial incentives for companies to volunteer to provide work placements.

7. All examples of imprisonment and other punishment regimes in China include oppressive ideological education (‘brainwashing’) to ensure compliance with CCP policy. Compulsory Chinese language learning is common for non-Han populations and has been a feature of labour transfer schemes.[13]

8. State-imposed forced labour poses an exceptionally serious risk to UK supply chains. The 2024 edition of the ILO Handbook on forced labour surveys recognises, in a stand-alone chapter, that SIFL remains a concerning practice. As the ILO states, “state-imposed forced labour operates through a pervasively coercive wider social context marked by a general lack of civic freedoms and a state apparatus that generates powerful coercive pressures through an extensive grassroots apparatus consisting of state and non-state institutions.” The Handbook goes on to observe that, “Non-cooperation entails a systemic risk that is often more implicit than overt.” SIFL, it notes, is more readily assessed as a systemic risk than a specific instance, that researchers should take into account the fundamental policy preconditions as well as noting that SIFL is “not always economically exploitative when political aims are primary”.[14]

9. Given the enormous coercive powers of the PRC state, the political objectives of the Chinese Communist Party, and in the absence of any effective legal protections for workers in China (including the absence of free trade unions), there are no reasonable prospects of remediation in situations of forced labour imposed by the Chinese state. SIFL cannot realistically be challenged by private sector companies in China or international buyers.  Moreover, although forced labour is prohibited in the PRC criminal law the government of China does not recognise SIFL in China as a crime.

Information and research challenges

10. It is impossible to fully manage the risk of forced labour without access to firsthand information. In the case of China access to information about the situation on the ground is restricted and, generally, incomplete. Social auditors face difficulty gaining unfettered access to factories and workers, and where they do have access there are restrictions on what they can report. There is general agreement that audits in XUAR are currently impossible due to high levels of repression. State agencies have no incentives to provide full and reliable information to foreign companies. We also note that a number of Chinese companies now offer social audits for foreign companies, but there are concerns that many of these companies are unable to operate independently of the interests of the government.

11. In its latest assessment of PRC compliance with conventions and recommendations the ILO repeatedly expresses regret that, “once again the Government has not provided any information on this subject.”[15]

12. The highly repressive information environment in China makes it very difficult to obtain reliable information about politically sensitive topics such as the use of forced labour and the role of state actors. Since researchers began to monitor the ongoing human rights crisis in the Uyghur region a number of official websites are no longer available or have been censored or placed behind a firewall. Many companies accused of using Uyghur forced labour have changed their names making online research into supply chains more difficult.

13. The Protection of State Secrets Law has a broad definition of state secrets (Article 13). Revisions in 2024 introduced an additional requirement on government departments and companies to manage and protect work secrets that, while not state secrets, would cause an adverse impact if they were leaked (Article 64).[16] Organisations monitoring working conditions in China have told The Rights Practice that local research staff working with foreign-owned companies are fearful of falling foul of these new restrictions.

14. Research into the political context and systemic nature of SIFL in China requires Chinese language research skills and knowledge of the ways in which the state apparatus implements policy and exercises control. Historically, analysis of forced labour owes much to the work of labour and human rights NGOs working on the ground. The introduction of the Overseas NGO Management Law in 2017 led many international labour NGOs to leave China and the loss of support to local groups. In January 2025, the new US administration suspended support to many INGOs addressing rights issues in China, including organisations working on labour conditions and forced labour in the Uyghur region.[17]

15. Research indicates that almost any business sector may be vulnerable to forced labour. Sheffield Hallam University reports on forced labour associated with the Uyghur region cover over 20 products from agriculture to textiles, food processing, the solar industry and mining. Supply chains with China frequently include unauthorised sub-contracting[18] and third countries making them very difficult to track.[19]

16. Research into supply chains in China is resource intensive. Without robust measures to ensure that all companies meet similar transparency requirements companies that try to ensure that forced labour does not enter their value chain are disadvantaged. In such a situation voluntary measures are not fit for purpose.

17. It should be in China’s long-term interests to provide a more open information environment and allow access by independent labour monitoring experts. Restrictions on access to information by China must, however, lead policy makers to draw their own conclusions from the limited evidence available and the lack of cooperation from the Chinese government.

Policy implications

18. Preventing the risk that products made with state-imposed forced labour reach the UK market must be a policy priority for the British government. Failure to address this matter with the seriousness it deserves condemns, likely, hundreds of thousands of workers and detainees in China to harsh involuntary work and coercion by the state. It would also risk undermining the UK’s position in support of international human rights law. Robust measures to prevent forced labour entering UK supply chains will benefit ordinary workers in China, as well as in Britain, and signal the UK government’s concern with how SIFL is used as a tool of repression by the Chinese state.

19. The UK government should require due diligence is undertaken by all companies (above a turnover TBD) that import into the UK. This must be backed up by a credible enforcement regime that will help to ensure a level playing field among companies and not reward those that ignore prohibitions against forced labour from accessing the British market. A failure to introduce robust measures will see more goods being dumped in the UK by Chinese exporters adapting to restrictions on access to the US and EU markets.

20. The rebuttable presumption underpinning the USA’s Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) is a clear response to the prevalence of forced labour in the Uyghur region and the challenge of researching supply chains involving XUAR. The policy includes the use of labour transfers from the Xinjiang region. It has reportedly led many companies to divest from XUAR with a number of foreign companies also moving their supply chains away from China.

21. The UFLPA has been described as blunt and effective. UK legislation does not, however, need to target a particular country or region. Where there are allegations of egregious human rights violations entailing state-imposed forced labour, such as in XUAR, the British government should be able to adopt urgent measures to designate a region or country as presenting an unacceptably high risk of forced labour. This should result in import bans. Characteristics of egregious human rights violations involving SIFL would include widescale violations and discrimination targeted at specific population groups that risk genocidal acts or crimes against humanity. The imposition of import bans should be part of the toolkit for more effective atrocity prevention work in non-conflict situations. 

(Feb 2025)