[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 212 (Tuesday, December 15, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7493-S7494]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 China

  Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, I rise because in a few minutes, I am going 
to ask to enter into the Record a new report released last night by 
Adrian Zenz of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. It isn't 
often that we enter into the Congressional Record reports that are 
really things that we want our constituents to read, but this report is 
different. This report is a report that every American needs to know 
about because it makes clear two things.
  First, it makes clear that cotton from Xinjiang, which is about 20 
percent of all the world's cotton; it is about 85 percent of all the 
cotton coming out of China, but it is about 20 percent of the global 
cotton, and it is a lot of the best cotton on the globe--is stained by 
slave labor.
  The second thing that it makes clear is that a lot of this cotton is 
destined for the United States. We are the ones demanding it, and our 
people are making a market for this blood cotton.
  Under the guise of Orwellian terms like ``poverty alleviation,'' the 
Chinese Communist Party is forcibly mobilizing minority labor--the 
Uighurs--to replace the majority Han Chinese labor market that has 
traditionally picked some of the Xinjiang cotton. Very young and very 
elderly folks are often sent into facilities, and everyone in between--
everybody who has a body that can move into the fields--is being sent 
into these cotton fields for the monthslong cotton picking season.
  Picking cotton is backbreaking labor, and these Uighurs who are being 
forced to do this as slaves are under constant surveillance. They are 
subjected to very long work hours, and they are forced to participate 
in political indoctrination sessions. Some of today's pickers have also 
done shifts and turns in CCP internment camps as well.
  We should be very clear about what is happening here. What is 
happening here is an unmitigated evil. There isn't another 
interpretation for this slave labor that is producing the Xinjiang 
blood cotton. This is an unmitigated evil, and it is obviously far more 
comfortable to ignore evil than to confront it head-on. Despite our 
many promises, it is easy to forget the human toil of totalitarianism. 
It is easier to just look away.
  That is, of course, what the Communist leadership in Beijing is 
counting on. They are counting on the fact that U.S. citizens and 
corporate leadership and politicians will just be busy and will say: 
Well, that would be messy to have to confront, so we should just look 
away. We said we would never forget, but let's just not notice.
  So we should state this truth over and over and over again. Chairman 
Xi's dictatorship is enslaving more than half a million Uighurs, and 
they are being forced to pick blood cotton. That is what this report 
from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation last night clearly 
demonstrates
  The Chinese Communist Party is convinced that the American people and 
that the institutions of the U.S. Government will simply look away, so 
we need to say again and again that Chairman Xi's dictatorship is 
enslaving more than half a million Uighurs. They are being forced into 
slavery in the cotton fields. Much of that cotton is destined for U.S. 
markets, and Chairman Xi and his underlings are counting on the fact 
that although America raises a light of liberty in our rhetoric, they 
are expecting that we will just look away in practice and in fact in 
our marketplaces. We should not and we cannot give them that victory.
  Beijing's Communist Party doesn't care about basic human dignity. The 
genocidal leaders who are running the government in Beijing--and, 
again, we need to distinguish that. Every time we talk about topics 
like this, we need to distinguish between the leadership of the 
Communist Party in Beijing and the regular 1.4 billion Chinese 
citizens, many of whom have nothing to do with these evils and wouldn't 
countenance them if they had the power. The genocidal leadership of the 
Communist Party in Beijing is running systematically oppressive slave 
regimes against the Muslims and against other ethnic minorities.
  Their cruelty is unmatched. They are ripping families apart. They are 
forcibly separating children from parents. They forcibly separate 
husbands and wives. They send goons in to rape the wives whose husbands 
have been sent away, hoping that they can impregnate them with other 
ethnic children to sort of extinguish the Uighur population in this 
region. They are brainwashing children, and they have weaponized forced 
abortion and sterilization. They have systematically demolished 
mosques.
  What is happening in Xinjiang is not gray; what is happening in 
Xinjiang is evil. Chairman Xi's underlings do not believe that the 
Uighurs are human,

[[Page S7494]]

and the racist Communist Party in Beijing believes that these men and 
women are little better than animals and that they can be exploited as 
slaves. In Xinjiang, cotton is king.
  How does Beijing try to explain this away? Well, of course, there are 
a whole bunch of lies that they try to use to cover it up. According to 
their propaganda, the Uighurs and other ethnic minorities are lazy 
people, and they need help to overcome their laziness. They need to 
learn about work, and they need to be helped out of poverty. These are 
the sorts of topline versions of their disgusting lies. But they don't 
really think that anybody is persuaded by these lies. What they expect 
is that the money will do the persuading for them. They don't think 
that these lies are ruled out in a way that is going to really be 
compelling to anyone. What they really expect is that we won't pay 
attention to where high-quality, cheap cotton often comes from and that 
we will just look away.
  And here is the painful truth: The global supply chains that have 
benefited from this blood cotton have gotten some really good cotton at 
really cheap prices. In 2019, an estimated 70 percent of Xinjiang's 
cotton was picked by hand, making it some of the highest quality cotton 
in the world and some of the most desirable cotton in any marketplace, 
and it is incredibly cheap because it is picked by slave labor. 
Xinjiang produces about 85 percent of China's cotton and about 20 
percent of the world's cotton, and it is impossible to separate blood 
cotton from the small minority that is not picked in these slave 
fields.
  Here is what it means in America and around the world: It means that 
we are living in a sea of hypocrisy because we have a whole bunch of 
U.S. companies that celebrate individuality, individualism, make some 
unbelievably good commercials and talk about the expansion of human 
potential, at the same time being cosponsors of slave fields. That is 
what we are talking about here. We can't and we shouldn't simply look 
away.
  The extensiveness of the CCP's forced labor programs are such that 
many U.S. companies, including at least 82 identifiable global brands, 
have benefited from the Xinjiang slave cotton labor. Gap and Nike are 
two of the companies that are most obviously singled out, and the CCP 
has helped them cut their costs and expand their market access. In 
exchange, what they ask for is a really polite ``see no evil'' policy.
  The commercials that are aired in prime time at major sporting events 
in the United States are aired by companies that at the same time say: 
Please don't ask us about our supply chains. We don't want to have to 
give any account for that.
  These companies spend billions of dollars a year running ad campaigns 
touting values like self-determination. Yet they are quietly importing 
Communist values, particularly about the lack of human dignity. We 
don't want those values imported into the United States. We don't want 
to look away. We don't want to be people who say ``Never again and 
never forget'' and then just casually say ``I am never going to 
notice.'' We don't want to be those people.
  Today, I have written letters to both Gap and Nike asking them to 
help--asking them to please help make transparent to the American 
people what they know about their supply chains and how we should clean 
them up. We need to tackle the problem of this blood cotton from 
Xinjiang, and we need to give the American public, the American 
consumer, a transparent look into what these supply chains look like, 
where they come from, and how much blood they are tainted with.
  In the coming weeks, I and others will be reaching out to more 
companies than Gap and Nike, but those are the two letters I sent 
today. Americans in government and business and even Americans as we go 
to the store with our wallets as consumers in the retail marketplace--
we need to be aware of what is happening. We need to be a people who 
believe in defending human rights.
  The unjust status quo is very profitable, so many companies are now 
fighting this change. They are fighting this transparency. As attention 
in Congress has turned towards supply chain integrity concerns in 
recent months, companies have begun to deploy high-paid lobbyists on 
Capitol Hill. Americans who believe strongly in human rights and 
fundamental freedoms have been justifiably confused about these efforts 
to weaken legislation that seeks to ban imported goods that are made 
with Chinese Communist Party slave labor.

  Businesses that claim a fundamental respect for human dignity ought 
to share with their consumers and with their shareholders how they 
ensure the integrity of their supply chains because, again, 20 percent 
of the world's cotton comes from this part of China, and 85 percent of 
that cotton looks like it is tainted by blood cotton.
  Companies need to come clean if they have been asked by the CCP to 
stay silent about the human rights abuses in China. Companies need to 
reevaluate the costs and the benefits, and the costs are high of 
partnering with the genocidal regime. They need to do it themselves. 
These companies need to do it themselves because it is right, and they 
need to be pushed to do it because it is hard and because the 
competitive marketplace has many of their peer companies and competitor 
companies also benefiting from this same slave cotton.
  The U.S. Congress has become increasingly concerned about the Chinese 
Communist Party's pay-to-play shakedown of American companies. There is 
currently a bill under consideration in this body that forces a long 
overdue review of supply chains, and there are going to be many more 
bills and pieces of legislation like this coming. Companies, even if 
they don't want to do it for the right reason, should do it for the 
pragmatic reason of getting in front of this because this attention is 
not going to go away. The concern in this body and in this Congress 
about the blood in the slave supply chains in many of these industries 
is bipartisan.
  The United States celebrates the ideals of universal human dignity. 
The Chinese Communist Party explicitly rejects these ideals. In this 
ideological competition, Beijing is working to exploit something--they 
are working to exploit the moral concessions of American CEOs. CEOs and 
boards, you need to do better. American consumers, you need to ask hard 
questions. And this Congress needs to do some serious investigating.
  American and global companies that find their roots in these freedom-
loving worlds and countries and that express public support for 
fundamental human freedoms that produce their success must act now. 
There is more to do than maximize the bottom line. That is not the only 
value. And the Senate is increasingly willing to act to ensure that 
American companies do not import misguided Chinese Communist Party 
values to these shores.
  Right now, it is too easy, it is too comfortable, and it is too 
profitable for many American and global companies to simply ignore the 
evil. We need to make the suffering in Xinjiang known. We need to speak 
about the Uighurs. These men, women, and children have God-given 
dignity, and we should not look away.
  Americans need to know about this evil so that we can, together, 
confront it. We need to dismantle Chairman Xi's lies, and we need to 
make it unconscionable for American businesses to profit from Chairman 
Xi's injustices.
  Mr. President, the report from the Victims in Communism Memorial 
Foundation released last night about the blood slave labor in Xinjiang 
can be found on the foundation's website at: https://
victimsofcommunism.org/publication/coercive-labor-in-xinjiang/.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The distinguished Senator from Nebraska.

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