By Daniel Murphy, May 29th 2025
Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan via Alamy
For decades, China has engaged in a systematic programme of repression in Xinjiang, focused on ethnic minority groups including Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Uyghurs.
Investigations and human rights groups have highlighted detention camps, forced labour and oppressive surveillance, all designed to force these majority Muslim people to ‘assimilate’ with mainstream Chinese culture.
Credit: Alamy
International responses to the human rights abuses have largely focused on goods produced in Xinjiang, in particular cotton.
But more than cotton is shipped out of Xinjiang. Many Uyghurs, Kyrgyz and Kazakh people are coerced by local Chinese Communist Party officials into “labour transfer schemes”. Under this programme, the Chinese government moves thousands of ethnic minorities from Xinjiang to factories hundreds of miles away in the country’s biggest industrial zones.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, working with Der Spiegel and the New York Times, has traced thousands of these transfers through videos uploaded by the workers themselves to Douyin, China’s version of TikTok.
Party officials encourage transfer workers to contribute to the Chinese economy at departure ceremonies, adorning them with red rosettes and sashes. Sometimes they are moved under armed guard. This video shows a group of workers in Artush, in the far west of Xinjiang. They were transferred more than 2,000 miles east to Jiangsu to work at Elec & Eltek, a company that makes circuit boards for home appliance brands.
We identified people from Xinjiang who ended up working at an Elec & Eltek factory. Videos posted on social media show ethnic minority workers in Elec & Eltek uniforms…
Working on production lines for circuit boards…
And doing Xinjiang dances at company events.
State media articles confirm the company has taken hundreds of workers from Xinjiang.
Translation: Since last year, demonstration units such as Yangzhou Elec & Eltek Co., Ltd. and Wuxi Xinri Electric Vehicle Co., Ltd. have recruited more than 300 workers from Kezhou. Rusibai Abdureheman, who works at Wuxi Xinri Electric Vehicle Co., Ltd., has enrolled in Wuxi's local social insurance through the Jiangsu-Ke exchange and integration demonstration unit work mechanism. She said: "I can now enjoy the same benefits as Wuxi citizens, all thanks to Jiangsu's aid to Xinjiang!"
In a presentation posted to LinkedIn, Elec & Eltek identified some of the brands it claims to work with. TBIJ did not trace all of these relationships, but we were able to establish that Elec & Eltek circuit boards end up in the supply chain of LG, Logitech and Cal Comp. There’s no suggestion that the other companies in the slide deck benefited from forced labour at Elec & Eltek.
Elec & Eltek’s Yangzhou operation is one of 75 factories across China supplying more than 100 global brands identified by TBIJ as benefiting from forced labour from Xinjiang.
The factory workers are paid. But the oppression in Xinjiang has led experts to label this transfer system state-sponsored forced labour.
“When a government official knocks on the door of a Uyghur person and says they should take a job far from home, the person knows this is not merely a request,” said Laura Murphy, a former senior policy adviser to the Biden administration on Chinese forced labour. “They know there are directives that say refusal is punishable by detention. And they know how horrible detention is. Every Uyghur in Xinjiang has either been in detention themselves or has someone close to them who has been. This is not a choice. This is not consent.”
Even after leaving Xinjiang, workers find themselves being closely monitored by ‘minders’. When more than 30 people are moved at once, they’re accompanied by security guards.
At a factory in Liaoning, workers process chicken on high speed production lines. Footage from an event shows ethnic minority workers saluting the flag. A suspected minder conducted them as they sang patriotic songs.
The factory is owned by Dachan Food, a business that reportedly supplies KFC and Subway within China.
We matched footage shot in the factory car park to stills on the company website.
Workers live on site – videos show the only view from their dormitory balconies is the factory complex.
In some factories, workers make products that are sold directly to Chinese customers. In others, they make parts for global supply chains that loop around the globe. Whole industries, especially cars and home appliances, are implicated.
The cars, shoes, tech and appliances made with this forced labour end up being sold both in China and around the world. TBIJ tracked products to 86 different countries, including the UK. Forced Xinjiang labour has become almost inescapable in Chinese exports.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the US said “allegations of ‘forced labour’ in Xinjiang are nothing but vicious lies concocted by anti-China forces”. They said members of all ethnic groups there “enjoy happy and fulfilled lives”. They added: “Xinjiang-related issues are not human rights issues at al, but in essence about countering violent terrorism and separatism.”