Can we ever know whether Chinese imports are made using forced labour?

The issue of forced-labour products from China's Xinjiang province is a thorny one indeed.

It's pretty clear that China does use the forced labour of ethnic Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang. What's not so clear is to what extent our Chinese imports include such products. Goods manufactured using forced labour are explicitly prohibited in the North American market, and are specifically prohibited by the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA, or CUSMA), which comes up for renegotiation later this year.

The Canadian government assures us that it is vigilant in excluding such products from Canada's imports, but it's really not that simple, especially given the lack of transparency around the whole issue. China obviously does not detail for us which elements of an exported product contains what percentage of Xinjiang labour. And not everything that comes from Xinjiang is made by forced Uighur workers anyway. It's a bit of a minefield.

It has all come to a head recently with the Canadian government's decision to allow some Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) into Canada, and the scrutiny over the vehicles' supply chains. Michael Ma's inflammatory (but actually pertinent) questions about whether Xinjiang forced labour content might just be based on "hearsay", and whether the expert in question had seen it for herself, have taken up most of the media attention on the industry committee's deliberations. Expert witness Margaret McCuaig-Johnston's impetuous put-down of such a challenge to her authority and credibility on the subject seemed to be definitive, but the issue is far from straightforward. (In the end, Mr. Ma apologized, and claimed he was actually referring to Shenzhen, not Xinjiang. Hmm.)

For example, yes, Xinjiang does produce aluminum, but it does not have the capacity to process the metal into the more sophisticated alloys used in the automotive industry. Its blocks of unprocessed metals are amalgamated elsewhere with other aluminum and other materials, so that it is really not possible to estimate how much of the end product came from where, and how much of that was produced using forced labour. And as for Uyghur labour forcibly transferred to factories in other parts of China (which is definitely a thing), there is no way at all to keep track or quantify that.

Even Tesla, which maintains much better records than other Chinese car manufacturers, is unable to definitively say how much of the aluminum used in its cars might have its origins in Xinjiang. Given that Xinjiang produces about 10% of the world's aluminum, other car brands, including GM, Toyota and Volkswagon, almost certainly also incorporate Xinjiang aluminum in their vehicles. Like I said, minefield.

The other thing that occurs to me is that we seem to be fixating on a few Chinese EVs, partly due to pressure from the US. Canada - and the US and everywhere else - imports no end of other products from China. Most of the contents of the average Dollarama store probably come from China, many of them made from, or containing, aluminum. Do we know the forced labour content of that cheap frying pan or spice rack? Does the US? It's easier when the product entirely made in Xinjiang (e.g. clothing and textiles, tomatoes, silicon for solar panels, etc), but the aluminum issue in particular is fraught with difficulties.