Sec. 2. Findings

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Congress finds the following: In the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, the Government of the People’s Republic of China has, since April 2017, arbitrarily detained more than 1,000,000 Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tibetans, and members of other persecuted groups in a system of extrajudicial mass internment camps, and has subjected detainees to forced labor, torture, political indoctrination, and other severe human rights abuses. Forced labor, a severe form of human trafficking, exists within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’s system of mass internment camps, and throughout the region, and is confirmed by the testimony of former camp detainees, satellite imagery, and official leaked documents from the Government of the People’s Republic of China as part of a targeted campaign of repression of Muslim ethnic minorities.

Researchers and civil society groups have issued reports documenting evidence that many factories and other suppliers in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are exploiting forced labor, on July 22, 2020, the Bureau of Industry and Security of the Department of Commerce added 11 entities to the Entity List set forth in Supplement No. 4 to part 744 of title 15, Code of Federal Regulations, after determining the entities had been implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, forced labor and high-technology surveillance against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tibetans, and members of other persecuted groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region .

Since October 2019, the Bureau of Industry and Security of the Department of Commerce has added a total of 48 entities of the Government of the People's Republic of China to the Entity List set forth in Supplement No. 4 to part 744 of title 15, Code of Federal Regulations, in connection with their implication in human rights abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, forced labor, and high-technology surveillance against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

As a consequence of their addition to the Entity List, comprehensive restrictions apply to the export, reexport, and in-country transfer of most United States-origin items to those 48 entities. Audits and traditional due diligence efforts to vet goods and supply chains in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are unreliable for identifying the absence of forced labor in the production of goods because of interference by the Government of the People’s Republic of China, including through intimidation of potential witnesses and concealment of relevant information.

Reports cited by the Department of Labor estimate that hundreds of thousands of ex-detainees who are Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tibetans, or members of other persecuted groups in the People’s Republic of China may be working in conditions of forced labor following detention in re-education camps. Moreover, nongovernmental organizations estimate that more than 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to work in factories across the People’s Republic of China between 2017 and 2019, and some of them were sent directly from detention camps.

The Department of State’s June 2020 Trafficking in Persons Report found, Authorities offer subsidies incentivizing Chinese companies to open factories in close proximity to the internment camps and to receive transferred detainees at satellite manufacturing sites in other provinces. Local governments receive additional funds for each inmate forced to work in these sites at a fraction of minimum wage or without any compensation. The government has transported tens of thousands of these individuals to other areas within Xinjiang and to other provinces for forced labor under the guise of poverty alleviation and industrial aid programs. .

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued 11 withhold release orders on goods suspected to be produced with forced labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Goods subject to the withhold release orders include all cotton, cotton products, tomatoes, and tomato products, as well as certain garments, hair products, apparel, computer parts, and other goods. In its 2019 annual report, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China found that goods reportedly produced with forced labor by current and former mass internment camp detainees included textiles, electronics, food products, shoes, tea, and handicrafts.

Under section 1091(a) of title 18, United States Code, a person commits genocide if the person “whether in time of peace or in time of war and with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such— kills members of that group; causes serious bodily injury to members of that group; causes the permanent impairment of the mental faculties of members of the group through drugs, torture, or similar techniques; subjects the group to conditions of life that are intended to cause the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part; imposes measures intended to prevent births within the group; or transfers by force children of the group to another group. .

As a direct result of the campaign of targeted and coercive population control of the Government of the People’s Republic of China’s against Uyghurs, the birthrate of the Uyghur population in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region plummeted by 24 percent from 2017 to 2018, with birthrates in the Uyghur majority regions of Hotan and Kashgar decreasing by more than 60 percent from 2015 to 2018. The policies of the Government of the People’s Republic of China are in contravention of its human rights commitments and obligations, including under— the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the People’s Republic of China has signed but not yet ratified; and the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children (commonly known as the Palermo Protocol ), to which the People’s Republic of China has been a state party since February 2010.