Allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang labor of animosity for paid-up China-bashers: China Daily editorial

The so-called "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act" US President Joe Biden wrote into law on Thursday is a typical example of the hypocrisy of the United States.

The act makes it US policy to assume that "all goods" manufactured in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region have been produced with "forced labor", unless the commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection certifies that the goods are known not to have been.

That is patently absurd. Yet it is this absurdity that according to the act justifies the US administration to employ sanctions to "further promote accountability for persons and entities responsible for these abuses", and requires enterprises to disclose their dealings with Xinjiang.

Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Jim McGovern, two veteran China-bashers in Congress who cobbled the bill together last year, have turned blind eyes to the origins of the claims of "forced labor" the bill cites.

These have been provided by the vice-president of an NGO called "Citizen Power Initiative for China", who worked in the US Senate for 12 years as legislative counsel and policy director for three senators; the president of the "Uyghur American Association" who also works for the US Commission on International Religious Freedom and who earns his living spreading lies about Xinjiang, which he left in 1995, never to return, and a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a self-proclaimed expert in "satellite analysis of human rights abuses".

These three figures claim their fabrication is an "almost certainty". Yet they offer no first-hand factual evidence to back it up, and fudge the allegation by saying the number "is estimated".

Without any shame, they also sometimes quote each other and others who are also on the payroll of the US government to affirm their fiction.

What the three organizations they work for have in common is that they are all funded by the US government, wholly or partly — making themselves appear to be "forced labor".

They are among the vanguard of those who have also been hyping up the rumors of "genocide" in Xinjiang and incited the unrest in Hong Kong. Indeed, the wholesale smearing of China can be traced to their doors.

Although the US administration feels no qualms about disrupting the global supply chains with its acts targeting Chinese entities, it is always careful to ensure its China-smearing supply chain, which consists of NGOs, rights groups, think tanks and media outlets, operates around-the-clock.

In other words, the outrage the US legislature and administration display toward the lie of "forced labor" in Xinjiang is utterly feigned.

The fanfare accompanying the act, as it has been with many other acts and bills targeting China, is nothing but another element in a burlesque that is directed, performed, watched and praised by themselves.

The alleged human rights abuses the US denounces are just fig leaves that it uses to cover up its desperate attempts to interfere in China’s internal affairs through "long-arm jurisdiction".