A Chinese policeman looks on as a Uyghur man passes a billboard for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. (Guang Niu/Getty Images)

Policymakers in the U.S. and other democracies have yet to forge a united and effective response to Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) genocide of the Uyghur people. With the 2022 Winter Olympics just months away, the United States and allies have a powerful opportunity to hold the CCP accountable for its crimes. But will they? 

In a new policy memo, Hudson Senior Fellow Nury Turkel outlines a nine-point blueprint to pressure the CCP to end its campaign against the Uyghurs, including a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics and conditioning the participation of athletes and corporate sponsors upon changes in China's repressive policies.

See key takeaways below, and be sure to watch David Asher's conversation with The Australian's investigations editor Sharri Markson on China's cover-up of COVID-19's origins.

Key Quotes

1. The US Should Leverage the Olympics to Push for Action

Many states participating in the Winter Olympics are powerful economic actors and so beyond the reach of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative; presenting a united front, they could condition their participation—and the corporate sponsorships of their national brands—upon certain human rights achievements. The world’s athletes should not be expected to compete against the backdrop of concentration camps, and it is not too late to relocate the Games should the situation not improve, as urged by a resolution introduced by Florida Senator Rick Scott and fellow Republicans at the beginning of this year.

2. Anti-Trafficking Measures Can Help End Uyghur Forced Labor

The United States boasts a powerful anti-trafficking legal architecture that enjoys broad bipartisan support and that includes export controls, withhold release orders (WROs), and supply chain curtailment for private and parastatal entities implicated in forced labor or human trafficking. It is time that China feels the full force of this apparatus, whose purpose is to deter atrocities such as those being perpetrated on the Uyghur people. With this tool at its disposal, the Biden administration should adopt a proactive stance by preventing the import and export of Chinese products and materials made by Uyghurs held in labor camps.

Iconic brands synonymous with America’s global commercial influence, including Nike and Coca-Cola, have been implicated in the inclusion of Uyghur forced labor in their supply chains. The Biden administration must enact policies to ensure that neither the U.S. government nor American corporations are directly funding or capitalizing on the Uyghur genocide; the enterprises we treasure as bastions of our freedom and economic innovation should not be purveyors of enslavement and tyranny abroad.

3. Sanction Individuals Responsible for Creating and Implementing China's Uyghur Policy

Following the passage of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, the Trump administration deployed a number of robust sanction authorities; these should be expanded to include all key architects of China’s Uyghur policy and those implementing it at the local or regional level. The symbolic and substantive value of being sanctioned by the United States would send a powerful message of condemnation and responsibility to those complicit in Uyghur persecution.

Precise identification of those most involved with a genocidal policy serves a range of critical functions, including the following: 

• naming, blaming, and shaming perpetrators so that they cannot enjoy the privilege of anonymity;
• isolating and containing abusers so that they cannot travel or profit from their depredations;
• restricting access to resources for self-enrichment or to organize abuses;
• preventing domestic investment of tainted funds;
• signaling certain conduct to be worthy of censure; and
• expressing solidarity with victims and survivors.

Quotes may have been edited for clarity and length.

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