The Bureau of Investigative Journalism: China’s Economy Runs on Uyghur Forced Labour

This investigation by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism provides devastating documentation of how China's forced labour system has evolved and expanded beyond the mass detention camps that initially drew international attention. The report reveals a more systematic and economically integrated approach to coercing Uyghur and other ethnic labour.

The investigation exposes how over 100 major global brands are connected to this forced labour system, with workers transferred thousands of miles from their homes under government pressure. What makes this particularly insidious is how the system has been institutionalized - it's no longer just about detention camps, but about restructuring entire communities and economies around coercive labour transfers.

SYSTEMATIC COERCION:

The numbers are staggering: China plans to transfer 13.75 million people between 2021-2025, with new policies requiring all able-bodied members of ethnic minority households to work. The digital monitoring systems tracking "income, household status, and compliance" reveal the surveillance state apparatus supporting this system.

BEYOND LABOUR - CULTURAL DESTRUCTION:

The investigation connects labour coercion to broader cultural erasure: thousands of razed mosques, seized farmland, forced relocations to state-managed housing near industrial zones. The statistic that Uyghurs represent less than 1% of China's population but 34% of incarcerations illustrates the scale of targeting.

CORPORATE COMPLICITY:

The involvement of major international brands like Tesla and Samsung demonstrates how this system has become integrated into global supply chains, making international companies potentially complicit in what the ILO classifies as state-imposed forced labour.

THE HUMAN REALITY:

The poem from the Uyghur woman in the poultry plant - "My many sorrows overflow, uncontained. But to the world I am lighthearted, companioned with laughter" - captures the profound personal tragedy beneath the economic statistics and policy documents.

This investigation reinforces the arguments made in the first document about Indonesia's position. It shows that what's happening in East Turkistan (Xinjiang) isn't just a human rights crisis in isolation, but a systematic restructuring of ethnic communities that has implications for global supply chains, international law, and the precedent it sets for how states can treat minority populations with impunity.

The evidence presented here makes the case for international action, including from countries like Indonesia, even more urgent and compelling.