This brief is the first in a series that CSIS’s Human Rights Initiative (HRI) will produce to identify how businesses, governments, multilateral organizations, NGOs, and other actors can work together to address XUAR-linked forced labor. This brief enhances understanding of relevant supply chains and includes a deeper dive into forced labor risk in cotton production and supply chains in the XUAR. HRI’s work has focused less on labor transfers from the XUAR into the rest of China to avoid replicating the ongoing work of others.

The brief does not provide recommendations but rather a starting point for a common understanding of relevant supply chains and labor risks, helping to ground further research and policy solutions.The brief starts with an overview of the current policy environment in China and the XUAR as it pertains to forced labor practices and the products that the XUAR is producing and exporting. Some of the statistics used are drawn from Chinese government sources, which are not necessarily reliable but are often the only available data. The brief then looks more deeply at how the XUAR’s forced labor practices are linked to the textile, apparel, and footwear industries. The third and last section discusses areas that merit more exploration because of their ability, in combination, to provide a path forward to address XUAR-linked forced labor.

Read the brief here.