In November 2022 The Breakthrough Institute (BTI), drawing from Academia, NGOs, and the UN, released a report, which others digested, on the supposed inextricable link between the solar industry’s supply chains and Uyghur slave prison labor in China. China denies such claims. The report praises initial moves by the US and the EU to counter these allegedly ongoing human rights violations and extols countries and the solar industry to move the various parts of its manufacturing process out of China. As the fight for nuclear and responsible renewable energy development intensifies in the US, this narrative is gaining traction as another tool to counter the 100% renewable extremists. However, the US also has a prison slave labor problem, one that it does not even deny. We are also in a time of ratcheting tensions between the US and China, in which these narratives would be useful in stoking anti-China sentiments. However, bringing up these facts in a simplistic argument leads to the inevitable accusation of whataboutism and little else. As such, it is worth making a more longform argument which clearly lays out the current conditions of slave labor in both countries. Once it is shown that China has progressed further along in the abolition of slavery than the US, it will be clear how this narrative is just another in a long list of anti-Chinese propaganda.

Uyghur Forced Labor Camps are the New WMDs in Iraq

Video via C Ozmun

Related: Xinjiang