The House of Representatives late Wednesday passed legislation to ban all goods from China’s remote northwestern region of Xinjiang over concerns about forced labor.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which passed the Democrat-led chamber by an overwhelming vote of 428-1, now heads to the Senate. It would need to pass the Senate and be signed by President Joe Biden to become law.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) was the only lawmaker who voted against the measure.
The measure would create a “rebuttable presumption” that all goods from Xinjiang, where the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has set up a vast network of detention and reeducation camps for Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, are made with forced labor.
To bypass the import ban, entities would be required to prove, with “clear and convincing evidence,” that their goods from the Xinjiang region are not made with forced labor.
The bill also requires the president impose sanctions on foreign officials that he determines have “knowingly” engaged in or facilitated forced labor of victims in Xinjiang.
It also requires the Secretary of State to, with in 90 days of the legislation’s enactment, determine whether forced labor and other human rights abuses against Uyghurs and minorities in Xinjiang “can be considered systematic and widespread, and therefore constitutes crimes against humanity or constitutes genocide.”
Representative Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the bill’s sponsor, said on the House floor, “This is not a partisan issue. It is a human rights issue. It is a moral issue.”
A similar version of the bill previously passed the Senate in a unanimous vote in July. Lawmakers would need to go to conference to reconcile a number of differences between the House- and Senate- passed measures.
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