On Sept. 22, the United States House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill targeting forced labor and modern slavery conditions in China’s Xinjiang Province.^[1] The bill is the culmination of efforts by U.S. politicians to act on reports that China is operating vast internment camps in Xinjiang, a region in northwestern China inhabited by Uighur, Kazakh, and other Turkic minorities.^[2]

The first substantial reports regarding the internment camps arose in March 2020, when the International Cyber Policy Centre in cooperation with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute released their report, “Uyghurs for sale: ‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang.”^[3] In July, the U.S. Departments of State, the Treasury, Commerce, and Homeland Security issued an advisory on Xinjiang, “Risks and Considerations for Businesses with Supply Chain Exposure to Entities Engaged in Forced Labor and other Human Rights Abuses in Xinjiang.”^[4]