An investigation by French outlet Disclose, in partnership with France 2’s documentary program Cash Investigation, revealed evidence of Uyghur forced labor in the supply chain of French multinational sporting goods company Decathlon. According to the investigation, Decathlon’s second-largest textile manufacturer in China is a company called Jifa, whose subsidiary Xinjiang Xirong Clothing makes sportswear in a factory of Yengisar industrial park that received Uyghurs from a concentration camp less than one kilometer away. Jifa also received Chinese government subsidies for labor transfers of Uyghurs to its factories in Shandong that supply Decathlon, including one factory where a 12-year-old girl was found to be working. A Jifa manager at one of those factories said that Decathlon selects the cotton used in production, and that some of it may come from Xinjiang. The authors of the investigation, Pierre Leibovici and Gabriel Garcia, provided more details:
We are meeting in the summer of 2024 during a hidden-camera visit to the premises of Yanggu Jifa, the main employer in Sanzhiwang, a village in Shandong province, eastern China. The factory is the property of the Jifa group. Most people have not heard of it, yet it is Decathlon’s second largest textile manufacturer in China. A fact that the French sports multinational kept secret until an internal source at Decathlon shared a sensitive business file with Disclose: the list of its subcontractors around the world. In the document, Jifa is referenced as one of the French brand’s “key account suppliers”: Decathlon bought 43 millions euros’ worth of clothes from Jifa in 2022 alone.
[…] Decathlon’s supplier is in fact directly involved in a system of modern slavery in China, as revealed by Disclose in partnership with Cash Investigation, after a year-long investigation into the brand’s supply chain. Uyghur women are the main victims of this traffic in human beings. They are members of a predominantly Muslim ethnic group violently suppressed by Beijing. The workers are forcibly enrolled to make t-shirts, shorts and other items of clothing likely to end up in Decathlon’s 1 700 or so shops around the world. [Source]
“Decathlon couldn’t have not known,” wrote Libération, adding that a French Uyghur wrote for the newspaper in 2017 about how one of her friends who worked for Decathlon was arrested while on a work trip to Shanghai, sent to a detention center in Urumqi, and after Decathlon became involved, he was somehow rescued and allowed to return to Paris. Le Monde noted that Decathlon also made the official uniforms for 45,000 volunteers at the 2024 Paris Olympics. In response to the investigation, Decathlon said that the cotton it uses was being supplied by sources “committed to the most responsible practices, which guarantees the absence of all forms of forced labour.”
Last month, the Rand Corporation published a 197-page report on the impacts of and opportunities for enforcing U.S. laws on forced labor in global supply chains. The report found that businesses and consumers “remain exposed to goods made with forced labor through indirect supply chain linkages with limited visibility.” John Foote provided extensive commentary on the Rand report in his latest Forced Labor & Trade Substack. Later in the month, the U.S. government began to block imports from 37 additional Chinese companies in conjunction with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The Chinese Foreign Ministry called the move “completely unfounded.” Ana Swanson at The New York Times reported on the companies that were targeted:
The administration’s move is the single largest batch of additions to a list of companies that are barred from bringing products into the United States because of concerns about human rights violations.
[…] The 37 entities that were added on Tuesday to a special list created by the law include subsidiaries of a major supplier of critical minerals, Zijin Mining. The New York Times reported in 2022 that Zijin Mining had links with labor transfer programs in Xinjiang.
The additions also include one of the world’s largest textile manufacturers, Huafu Fashion, and 25 of its subsidiaries. It’s not clear which retailers Huafu currently supplies, but H\&M previously said that it had an indirect relationship with a mill belonging to Huafu Fashion and that it would cut those ties.
Companies in real estate, mining, solar and cotton production were also added to the list. Altogether, they bring the list to 144 entities. [Source]
The Trump administration was reported this week to be discussing whether to add Chinese e-commerce fast-fashion giants Shein and Temu to the U.S. forced-labor blacklist. Last month, representatives from the two companies were summoned to a British parliamentary hearing where lawmakers grilled them for evading questions about their companies’ links to Uyghur forced labor. (“You’ve given us almost zero confidence in the integrity of your supply chains,” one lawmaker concluded.) British activist group Stop Uyghur Genocide stated it will lodge a judicial review if Shein’s IPO on the London Stock Exchange is approved. Separately, an investigation by the head of the British parliament’s cross-party human rights committee found that three new cargo flight routes directly from Xinjiang to Britain may be trafficking goods made with forced labor. And as Christopher Knaus and Helen Davidson recently reported for The Guardian, Australia has become a destination for thousands of imports from Chinese companies blacklisted by the U.S. over links to Uyghur forced labor:
Using freedom of information laws, the Guardian obtained details of 3,347 import declarations that name eight US-blacklisted companies as suppliers of materials to Australian importers since 2020. The companies ship a range of products, including parts for car batteries and trains used by state governments; safety gear for tradespeople; spices and food additives; and laser printers.
The documents show Australia’s imports from the eight companies actually increased after the US introduced its ban, peaking in 2023.
Separate records obtained from the fisheries department show Australian seafood importers are receiving hundreds of shipments from Chinese-based processors publicly linked to the use of Uyghur labour during an exhaustive investigation by the Outlaw Ocean Project, a not-for-profit investigative reporting group based in Washington DC. [Source]
