Investigation Finds Forced Labor Across Eleven Chinese Regions

VOC Director of China Studies, Dr. Adrian Zenz, supported an investigation into the shocking amount of Western companies’ forced labor usage across China in 75 factories.

Companies including BMW Group, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz AG, LG Electronics, Tesla, KFC, McDonald’s, and Skechers were implicated in China’s massive Uyghur forced labor system.

Zenz and his research were cited extensively in the reports across the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

As seen in the New York Times:

“But the programs grew significantly around the time internment camps were introduced in 2017, said Adrian Zenz, an anthropologist and a leading expert on Uyghur forced labor. Since the U.S. ban on imports from Xinjiang came into force in 2022, the number of Uyghurs transferred out of the region has grown. 

Speaking at a press briefing in 2022, Chen Lei, an inspector from Xinjiang’s Rural Revitalization Bureau, indicated that the authorities aimed to increase the number of workers moved to other parts of China by a third in 2023 to more than 38,000, according to a government report posted online.

Labor transfer ‘is the only measure I see that has become more intense,’ said Mr. Zenz, the director of China Studies for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington. ‘And the reason for that is that this is a long term mechanism of social control and indoctrination.'”