Beijing Assails Biden’s Signing of Xinjiang Forced Labor Law

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act “maliciously denigrates the human rights situation in China’s Xinjiang region in disregard of facts and truth,” said a Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson. President Joe Biden signed the measure into law Thursday, using his Tariff Act Section 307 authority to ban imports originating in Xinjiang unless the importer of record shows U.S. Customs and Border Protection “clear and convincing evidence” that the goods were not produced with forced labor. U.S. allegations of forced labor and genocide in Xinjiang “are nothing but vicious lies concocted by anti-China forces,” said the ministry spokesperson Friday. The U.S. “is engaging in political manipulation and economic coercion, and seeking to undermine Xinjiang’s prosperity and stability and contain China’s development under the pretext of human rights,” he said. “China deplores and firmly rejects this.”