The U.S. Senate passed legislation on Thursday to ban imports from China’s Xinjiang Region over concerns about forced labor. It is a part of Washington’s continued pushback against Beijing’s treatment of the country’s Uyghur Muslim minority.
The legislation passed by unanimous voice vote, after lawmakers agrees on a compromise that eliminated differences between bills introduced in the White House and Senate.
The Senate passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act on Tuesday, sending it to the White House, where President Joe Biden said he would sign it into law.
Uyghur legislation was a matter of debate for months between Republicans and Democrats. The dispute blocks the passage of the Annual National Defense Authorization Act and has held up the Senate’s confirmation on some of Biden’s ambassadorial nominees, including Nicholas Burns, Biden’s choice for China’s ambassador.
After the Uyghur bill passed on Thursday, lawmakers also agreed to vote at least a few of Biden’s nominees, including Nicholas Burns.
The compromise legislation keeps creating a provision “rebuttable presumptions” that all goods from Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has set up a network of detention camps for Uyghurs and other Muslim groups, were produced by forced labor.
It is a horrifying human rights situation, fully sanctioned, as we now know, by the Communist Party of China, Republican Senator Marco Rubio said while urging senators to vote for the bill.
While China continuously denies abuse in Xinjiang, currently supplying solar panels worldwide, the U.S. government and other rights groups say Beijing is carrying out genocide there.
After this decision, it is to see how it will impact India. India is already on good terms with America. Will India take action against this act and keep a ban on Chinese products and apps?
