Brands like General Motors, Toyota and Volkswagen don't do enough to track their supply chains, rights groups say.
Taipei, Taiwan – Top automakers such as General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen, Tesla and BYD are at high risk of using aluminum produced with forced labor in China's Xinjiang region, Human Rights Watch (HRW) found. This was revealed in the report.
China is the world's largest automaker and the largest producer of aluminum, which is used in tires, wipers, electric vehicle (EV) batteries, and other auto parts.
One-fifth of China's aluminum is produced in smelters in Xinjiang, where rights groups say more than 1 million ethnic Muslim minorities have been subjected to internment and other abuses, including forced labor and forced sterilization. I believe that
HRW said in a report that automakers have done little to trace their supply chains in China, and in some cases have succumbed to pressure from the Chinese government to apply weaker sourcing standards to Chinese joint ventures than to their global operations. He said that
In a 99-page report released on Thursday, the rights group said: “Most companies have mapped their aluminum component supply chains to identify and address potential links to Xinjiang. We are neglecting this too much.”
“Faced with an opaque aluminum industry and the threat of retaliation from the Chinese government for investigating its ties to Xinjiang, automakers are often unaware of the extent to which they are exposed to forced labor. , consumers will have little confidence that they are buying and driving vehicles that have no connection to abuses in Xinjiang.”
For more than a decade, China has carried out a forced assimilation program against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, resulting in more than 1 million people being forced into what the Chinese government calls “vocational training centers.” is accused of being
China denies human rights abuses in the region and claims its programs targeting Muslim minorities have reduced radicalization and terrorism.
HRW said in its report that “credible evidence,” including Chinese state media articles, company reports and government statements, shows that aluminum producers in Xinjiang are participating in government-backed labor transfer programs. He said that
Countries including the United States have banned products made in Xinjiang, but materials such as aluminum can be difficult to trace, the New York-based rights group said.
Xinjiang aluminum often takes the form of ingots, which can be melted with other materials to create aluminum alloys, making it easy to hide its origins.
Michael Dunn, CEO of Dunn Insights and an expert on China's auto industry, said mapping China's supply chain can be a very difficult task.
“Chinese automakers' supply chains are somewhere between highly complex and ironclad black boxes,” Dunn told Al Jazeera. “It's like counting to infinity. You might make progress, but you'll never get there.”
HRW said automakers need to do more to map their own supply chains or pressure their Chinese joint partners to do the same.
According to HRW, Volkswagen responded to inquiries saying there was “no transparency regarding the supplier relationship” with its Chinese joint venture partner.
HRW said General Motors, Toyota and BYD did not respond to inquiries, but General Motors pointed to the difficulty of tracing its supply chain in China in its annual report.
HRW said Tesla, which has no joint ventures, had mapped its supply chain back to the mine level “in some cases” and found no evidence of forced labor, but no further evidence. I didn't.
The five automakers did not respond to Al Jazeera's requests for comment.
Supply chain expert and UK-trained lawyer Duncan Jepsen said tracing the supply chain was a matter of cost and will on the part of manufacturers.
“For NGOs, tracing supply chains in China can be difficult. For large, well-capitalized automakers that don't have the financial resources elsewhere in China…maybe the answer is expensive. But it's not that difficult,'' Jepsen told Al Jazeera.
“And that's the real crux of the matter…it's challenging and difficult and almost impossible if you don't want to spend anything on it,” he added.
China's huge market also gives it influence over automakers.
In addition to being the world's largest automaker, China is also the largest car sales market, with 23.5 million car sales in 2022, compared to 13.6 million in the US, according to HRW. That's what it means.
“The catch-22 they have is that it's not a country they particularly want to leave,” Jepsen said.
“So it's going to be a big strategic decision for automakers how to deal with this if they want to penetrate the market. And it's going to be interesting to see.”
