FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about the country’s fight against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at the White House in Washington, U.S., December 21, 2021. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
December 23, 2021
(Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday signed into law legislation that bans imports from China’s Xinjiang region over concerns about forced labor, the White House said.
The bill, which received final congressional approval on Dec. 16, is part of Washington’s pushback against Beijing’s treatment of China’s Uyghur Muslim minority.
Congress pushed through the measure this month after lawmakers agreed on a compromise that eliminated differences between bills introduced in the House and Senate.
The compromise legislation keeps a provision creating a “rebuttable presumption” that all goods from Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has set up a network of detention camps for Uyghurs and other Muslim groups, were made with forced labor, in order to bar such imports.
China denies abuses in Xinjiang, which supplies much of the world’s materials for solar panels, but the U.S. government and many rights groups say Beijing is carrying out genocide there.
(Reporting by Paul Grant; Editing by Howard Goller)
