Solar material production skyrocketed in Xinjiang after Communist nation opened labor camps
An unlikely coalition of Republicans, Democrats, and labor leaders are concerned by the solar industry’s dependence on goods linked to Chinese forced labor camps, a development that threatens President Joe Biden’s push for a green energy economy.
Western China’s Xinjiang region—where China is forcing more than a million Uyghurs into brutal forced labor regimes—dominates the solar sector’s supply chain. Nearly half of the world’s polysilicon, a raw material crucial to producing solar cells, comes from Xinjiang. That economic dependency is attracting the attention of a bipartisan group of lawmakers and union heads, who cite credible reports linking the solar industry to the modern-day slavery regime.
