FIRST ON FOX — The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is requesting a briefing from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on the agency’s implementation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), a law designed to combat the import of Chinese goods made with slave labor, according to a letter shared exclusively with Fox News Digital.
The UFLPA, passed in 2021, directed DHS’ Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force to develop a strategy for quelling the importation of goods into the United States that are “manufactured wholly or in part with forced labor in the People’s Republic of China.”
Human rights groups began shining a spotlight on the alleged oppression and forced labor the CCP was imposing on Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), a sparsely populated Chinese territory in the country’s far west.
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“The Uyghurs are being politically persecuted in Xinjiang, China. They are being forced to give up their religion. They’re being forced to assimilate into Chinese culture. And many of them are being forced to do labor, to work for low wages or no wages and long hours,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., the ranking member on the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview.
Khanna argued that enforcement of the UFLPA is not just a moral issue, but one of economic and national security for Americans.
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“This is a human rights violation, but the broader problem also for Americans is that they’re making steel, they’re making aluminum, they’re making textiles, and then they’re dumping it into the U.S. market. How could U.S. Steel or Cleveland Cliffs or our aluminum manufacturers compete with slave labor? Of course we can’t. So what our letter does is it says that we need more of these companies that are using forced Uyghur labor to be designated by the Department of Homeland Security,” Khanna continued.
The bipartisan letter, addressed to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, asks the agency to address 10 concerns the committee has, including what work DHS and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are doing to update the list of companies and entities on the UFLPA Entity List.
DHS added an additional 43 companies to the list in July, an action that Khanna applauded.
“I think the administration may have gotten wind that we were doing this letter and that precipitated action. You know, for a year, they hadn’t done anything. Now, I give them some credit for having 44 of these companies on the list. But hopefully, once the letter goes out, we’ll see more action,” he said.
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The committee’s letter highlights concerns that products produced by companies on the list and that are coming from the XUAR are still making their way to U.S. customers. Those products, the letter alleges, cover supply chains ranging from steel and aluminum to silicon-carbon materials critical to technology production.
The letter highlights a New York Times report that suggests the cotton contained in popular “Labubu” dolls comes from slave labor.
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“A lot of the textiles are coming, they come from China, are coming from Uyghurs. It’s one of the easiest places to force people into labor, and that’s why we included it, because of the reports that Uyghurs are involved in textile production,” Khanna added.
Khanna also explained how China circumvents the import bans by outsourcing manufacturing.
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“It’s very challenging. I mean, obviously, conventionally, China has been evading some of the tariffs and protections by having their companies open up in Malaysia or Vietnam. Here, of course, you’ve got actual slave labor. And so what we’re saying is identify these products back to the source. And if the source of the textile or steel or aluminum is forced Uyghur labor, then that should not be in the United States,” he told Fox News Digital.
Ultimately, Khanna stressed, the problem of forced labor in China is a bipartisan issue, a statement seemingly reflected by the fact that the letter was signed by eight lawmakers, four Republicans and four Democrats.
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“This is about fair trade and human rights. Americans aren’t concerned about fair competition. If China had laborers that were being paid a fair wage and they were making something and we wanted to buy from them and they weren’t dumping, and if China were buying from us, that would be fine. But what can’t happen is them using slave labor, undercutting our market and our companies, and then not allowing our companies to sell to them. That’s just not fair,” he told Fox News Digital.
“Most Americans believe in trade, but they want fair trade and they don’t want to be competing with slave labor,” Khanna concluded.
Fox News Digital contacted the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, the Chinese Embassy in the U.S., and Pop Mart, the maker of Labubu, for further comment.
