As of: February 8, 2024, 3:10 p.m
By: Lars-Eric Nievelstein
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Some of the major car manufacturers are increasing their involvement in China.
Allegedly, forced labor is used there on a large scale.
Human Rights Watch pointed the finger at several companies.
Beijing – China should become an “automotive power”, the current Chinese President Xi Jinping announced in 2014.
Now, ten years later, this wish seems to have come true.
In 2023, no country in the world produced as many automobiles as China.
More and more foreign manufacturers are opening plants in the Middle Kingdom.
The problem is that forced labor is allegedly used to a large extent for a raw material that is indispensable for industry.
Human Rights Watch accuses car manufacturers of accepting forced labor
According to a recent report by the human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW), car manufacturers outside of China are not sufficiently examining how and where exactly forced labor plays a role in their automobile production.
The major manufacturers currently producing in China include General Motors, Tesla, Toyota and Volkswagen.
VW recently announced that it wanted to expand its commitment.
Some of the major car manufacturers are increasing their involvement in China.
Allegedly, forced labor is used there on a large scale.
Human Rights Watch pointed the finger at several companies.
© IMAGO / VCG
In December, Volkswagen also wanted to make it clear in a report that there was no forced labor at the Chinese plant in Urumqi.
The factory was previously responsible for assembling cars, including painting, but today, according to a company spokesman, a final inspection is primarily carried out there.
Most of the work on Volkswagen models produced in China is carried out by the factories in the east of the country.
Risks of China's aluminum dominance
For HRW, however, the core of the problem does not lie directly in the factories, but in the production of aluminum.
The material is indispensable for automobile production; it is found in dozens of components, from the engine to the wheels.
China accounts for almost 60 percent of global production.
A large part of this falls on production sites in the Xinjiang region, also called the Uyghur Autonomous Region.
This has been appearing repeatedly in the media for several years.
It is often about the human rights violations that human rights organizations such as HRW have repeatedly documented there.
Among other things, it was about house arrests, torture, disappearances and religious persecution.
Aluminum manufacturers use Uyghur forced labor – How much do car manufacturers know?
Human Rights Watch reported that there is credible evidence that aluminum producers in Xinjiang are participating in Chinese government programs that force Uighurs and members of Muslim communities to work.
Independent field research on labor transfers is not possible due to Chinese government restrictions, so Sheffield Hallam University, the NGO NomoGaia and the consultancy Horizon Advisory relied on media articles, company reports and government statements, HRW said.
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According to Human Rights Watch, international car manufacturers have little understanding of the extent to which forced labor is involved in their supply chains.
They simply do not know the extent of their connections to forced labor in Xinjiang.
On the contrary.
“Some automakers in China have bowed to government pressure and are applying less stringent human rights standards in their Chinese joint ventures than in their global operations,” writes HRW.
Chinese “surplus forces” and surveillance
Officially, China is moving the Uighurs through so-called state conscription.
They are considered “surplus workers,” mostly poor people from the countryside, whom the government then commits to seasonal forced labor.
According to the U.S. Bureau of International Labor Affairs, there is a need for Muslim minorities, which Beijing then assigns to a specific work environment.
The government ensures that sufficient control and monitoring is possible.
The workers are subject to permanent isolation.
They don't really have a choice - because of the rigorous surveillance measures, they have to cooperate.
In addition to the actual work, the Uyghurs are also subjected to forced Mandarin language training and ideological indoctrination, depending on the environment.
Checking supply chains is a herculean task
But is it even possible to adequately monitor supply chains?
Management consultancy McKinsey said that up to 18,000 different companies are involved in the production of a single car, from raw material production to assembly.
It is correspondingly difficult for car manufacturers to exclude forced labor 100 percent.
Human rights activists had already filed a complaint against VW, BMW and Mercedes over the same issue.
In response to a request from
Ippen.Media
, Volkswagen said that the company was by no means blind to human rights violations in regions such as China.
However, there were two major problems with the review.
The first of these is the already mentioned complexity of the supply chain.
Even if Volkswagen, for example, enters into a contractual alliance with a supplier of hubcaps, there is still no way to control the company, which in turn supplies the hubcap supplier with material.
Volkswagen commits to supply chain
The second problem, according to VW, is the Chinese legal system.
As a business company, the company does not have the power to change China's legislation.
Even at the plants in which VW is involved, be it in a joint venture with the Chinese manufacturers SAIC or FAW, consultation with the Chinese partners is necessary for an audit.
“We not only set high standards within the Volkswagen Group, but also work to ensure that these values are adhered to along the supply chain,” said the VW spokesman.
“Suppliers must accept our sustainability requirements and undertake to meet them in order to enter into a business relationship with the Volkswagen Group.” Volkswagen, in turn, expects direct suppliers to pass on these sustainability requirements to their business partners.
In concrete terms, this means: VW obliges supplier A by contract to work based on the sustainability ranking used by VW, and supplier A must then do the same for supplier B.
If all companies follow suit, the practice should extend all the way down to raw material extraction.
At least in theory.
In the event of serious violations, VW will terminate the contract with suppliers unless corrective measures are taken.
Tesla, Toyota and General Motors had not yet commented on the issue.