The year 2020 brought forced labor and genocide in China under a global magnifying glass, creating strong reactions from American lawmakers and citizens after many large U.S. corporations refused to denounce the sleeping giant.
Amnesty International reports that in 2020, Chinese authorities reprimanded health professionals for warning about the COVID-19 virus. Additionally, foreign journalists were confronted with detention, expulsion and delays or refusals of their visa renewals, laws were enforced that denied freedom of expression and hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in China, have reportedly been imprisoned and tortured.
Late last month, a bipartisan U.S. Congressional panel scrutinized U.S.-based corporate sponsors of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics such as Coca-Cola, Visa and Airbnb for staying complicit during a time of human-rights violations occurring in China.
“Every single one of you refused to say a single word, by all appearances, that will cost you one bit of market share inside of mainland China,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Akansas) said, as reported by the Daily Caller. “Can you tell me why Coca-Cola doesn’t have a say in whether it sponsors the genocide Olympics next year but it does have a say in how the state of Georgia runs its election laws?”
Many activists called on the U.S. to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and for American corporations like Coca-Cola to place more economic pressure on the shoulders of the Chinese Communist Party, the Daily Caller reported.
From 2015-2017, Coca-Cola invested $4 billion in China, and the company has invested $9 billion since 1979. It employs more than 45,000 local Chinese citizens, according to a press release from Coca-Cola.
Asia Times reports that in terms of unit-case volume, China ranks as the third-largest market for Coca-Cola.
In Dec. 2020, U.S. Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Virginia) told CBC that corporations like Coca-Cola have been publicly disapproving of the forced labor in China but haven't done enough behind closed doors, as they tried to dilute bills against forced labor that were passed through the House and Senate. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and the Uyghur Forced Labor Disclosure Act were two bills that Wexton co-sponsored and authored, respectively, that were designed to restrain corporations that make a profit off of the persecution of Uyghur Muslims in China, CBC reported.
As of Dec. 2020, there were an estimated 1 million Uyghur Muslims held in detention camps in the Xinjiang region of China where detainees experience forced labor and participate in re-education programs, CBC reported. The Prevention Act stonewalls the use of correlated products to the forced labor of Uyghurs, and the Disclosure Act requires companies to report to the Securities and Exchange Commission their ties to the Xinjiang region.
Although the corporations denounce the human rights violations in China, the bill's requirements "could wreak havoc on supply chains that are deeply embedded in China," Business-HumanRights.org reported.
U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-New Jersey) pressed into Airbnb Head of Olympics and Paralympics Partnership David Holyoke for not being more critical of the Chinese government after they have prevented Uyghurs and Tibetans from gaining passports and identification cards that would allow them to travel and register at hotels, Reuters reported.
"You're just completely absolving yourself of responsibility for being complicit in abject discrimination," Malinowski said. "You are afraid of them in a way that you are not afraid of critics in the United States. I think that's shameful."