How to protect the Uyghur minority can blow the green dreams of Biden and the EU
At a time when global supply chains are still stretched to the limit, the United States is cracking down on products potentially sourced from forced labor camps in China.
Beginning June 21, a new law will ban imported goods that were partially or wholly produced in Xinjiang, unless companies can prove that the products have "no connection with forced labor," according to reports. to Bloomberg .
The law was passed unanimously by Congress and enjoys "strong support" from trade unions and activists. A similar motion was approved at the end of last year by the European parliament.
These measures are important to signal the will to protect religious and ethnic minorities that China would like to erase, but they risk on the one hand to be ineffective, on the other hand to hit some key industries.
because, unknown to many, Xinjoang is the Chinese heart, that is the world heart, in the production of polysilicon crystals, the raw material necessary for the construction of solar cells.
More than half of China's polysilicon crystals, just under half the world, are produced in Xinjiang. So looking for those that can be produced with the Uyghurs' slavish labor could literally block the global solar industry. Sure, we could have built our own European solar industry, but it cost too much and the Germans wouldn't earn enough. Servile work is better.
However, the measure risks remaining the usual good deed written on paper: distinguishing the components made in Xinjiang in Chinese productions is not easy, much less defining which ones are the result of the exploitation of the Uyghur minority. But in this way the US and EU elites have washed their conscience.
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The article How to protect the Uyghur minority can blow Biden's and EU's green dreams comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/come-tutelare-la-minoranza-uigura-puo-far-saltare-i-sogni-green-di-biden-e-ue/ on Sat, 04 Jun 2022 08:00:57 +0000.