Author ORCID Identifier
0000-0001-6040-6123
Abstract
Since 2017, the Chinese government has launched a campaign of repression against the Muslim Turkic minorities of Xinjiang, a region located in China’s Northwest. While most scholars have focused on the mass internment of Uyghurs and other minorities, this Article highlights an under-discussed aspect of China’s campaign: the construction of a sophisticated forced labor system. Minority forced labor supplies key sectors of the global economy—from the automotive to the energy sectors—and allows Chinese companies to outcompete foreign firms. The unprecedented scope and sophistication of what I term the “modern Xinjiang forced labor system” imperils the very future of the international order.
Challenging conventional thinking, this Article argues that international law, far from being moribund, offers solutions to the current crisis. Specifically, this Article lays out a dual-track strategy, according to which liberal democratic states that seek to contest the Xinjiang forced labor system should combine the use of procedures at a formal institution of international law—the International Labor Organization—with the deployment of domestic legal tools, namely: (1) forced labor importation bans and (2) mandatory human rights due diligence legislation.
Ultimately, this Article introduces the concept of, and advocates for, a symbiotic approach towards international law. International institutions remain important, mostly due to their legitimacy in the eyes of many states; yet international law does not belong solely to these formal institutions. Instead, states have long upheld and advanced international law through the employment of domestic legal measures. The Xinjiang forced labor crisis thus offers an architectural lesson for international law. In responding to systemic threats, the international community will only be able to ensure the continued health of international law by adopting a mixed approach, which combines respect for and advocacy at international institutions with hard-hitting domestic tools of enforcement.
“When they force me to accept the massacre as love Do you know that I am with you.” Perhat Tursun, The Elegy
Recommended Citation
Preston Jordan Lim, Symbiotic International Law: Combatting Uyghur Forced Labor, 2025 ULR 609 (2025).