When Will the Left Condemn Solar-Energy Slavery?

M any of the world’s solar panels are partly manufactured by forced slave labor under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to new research from the environmentalist Breakthrough Institute. But few on the political left, despite their ostensible commitment to labor rights, seem to care.

In 2021, a shocking 42 percent of the world’s production of the kind of silicon used to manufacture solar panels took place in areas of China known to employ slave labor, and China’s dominance of the solar market is expected to continue to grow. This raises the question whether the world today depends on slave labor to produce solar panels in the way it relied on Southern slaves to produce cotton before the American Civil War.

Slave labor is also used for the mining, smelting, and slicing of silicon into the wafers used in panels that convert sunlight into energy — processes for which China has over 95 percent of the existing global industrial capacity. The actual manufacturing of the panels, at least, takes place in other provinces, mostly performed by members of China’s dominant Han ethnicity, who aren’t subjected to forced labor. According to the research:

International actors have generally overlooked early warning signs of Chinese government oppression in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) while concentrating investment and business partnerships into solar manufacturing supply chains linked to the region. . . . Now, extensive evidence of government-organized forced labor programs and numerous other crimes against humanity in the XUAR has come to light, yet downstream solar photovoltaic companies remain hesitant to quickly and fully distance themselves from low-cost suppliers with operations in the region.

The research drew from more than 200 government documents, media reports, and academic papers to determine that CCP-ruled China was employing forced labor from the persecuted Uyghur, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz minority groups on behalf of some of the world’s largest solar-power companies, which eagerly look the other way.

Solar manufacturing plants that began operating in Xinjiang over a decade ago were attracted to industrial parks and coal mines established under regional political oppression that left Uyghur, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz peoples uniquely powerless—even by the political standards of authoritarian China—to object to local environmental and socioeconomic impacts. . . . And in subsequent years, as regional authorities have intensified repressive policies targeting minoritized peoples, solar PV manufacturers have continued to expand in the region while directly participating in state-sponsored forced labor programs.

Photos obtained by the researchers show that the enslaved workers are expected to work long hours in dangerous conditions without the necessary kind of protective gear. Any who resist are forcefully “reeducated” with mandatory political indoctrination.

The report also documents how these enslaved ethnic-minority-member workers are effectively bought and sold by companies and local governments. It shows how enslaved workers are often forcefully separated from their families and children when relocated. Before America abolished slavery 160 years ago, a similar sort of family separation was very common and is widely acknowledged to have been one of the worst aspects of the horrendous institution.

China has been abusing and enslaving ethnic minorities for profit for years, but these human-rights violations have grown more egregious recently, partly in response to a greatly increased demand for solar power from the West. The U.S. solar industry has become reliant on Chinese imports, and the Communist country’s solar exports soared by 60 percent to $28 billion last year.

Given that the White House is currently refusing to offer even the mildest criticism of the CCP’s brutal crackdown on anti-lockdown protests, and that the Biden family has deep financial ties to the Chinese governing regime, it’s no wonder that many Democrats are reluctant to address this human-rights emergency.

Up until this year, all the current administration did was claim that America “can have solar energy and still stand up for human rights” and issue a minor ban targeting a single, small, China-based company. At the same time, Biden took “bold executive action” to demand the U.S. triple its amount of solar base capacity by 2024.

Solar-industry groups have similarly done little, simply asking their members to sign nonbinding pledges to possibly, eventually create a vetting system for products that may violate labor laws. When confronted about this issue in 2021 during the U.N.’s COP26 climate-change conference, Biden’s special climate envoy John Kerry said the CCP’s use of slave labor was “not my lane.” This was despite the U.S. government’s calling China’s enslavement of the Uyghurs a “genocide” in its 2021 human-rights report.

This year, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) finally passed. “The message to Beijing and any international company that profits from forced labor in Xinjiang is clear: no more,” Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) said of the momentous law. Co-sponsors of the bill included Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.), Cynthia Lummis (R., Wyo.), Rick Scott (R., Fla.), and Ted Cruz (R., Texas), among many others. The bill was bipartisan, but after the law passed, it was Republican lawmakers who applied pressure to ensure that it was enforced and repeatedly pushed back against attempts to weaken that enforcement.

Since the UFLPA passed, more than 1,000 shipments of solar-panel components worth hundreds of millions of dollars have accumulated, stuck at U.S. ports. Perhaps three gigawatts have been seized so far, which could grow to as much as twelve gigawatts’ worth of solar modules by the end of this year. This is throwing a wrench in environmentalists’ plans: According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), developers across the United States had planned to install 17.8 gigawatts of capacity this year, but so far only 4.2 gigawatts’ worth have been installed and brought online because of the new rule.

The Biden administration openly pushes into classrooms dubious progressive interpretations of history, denouncing today’s America for the horrific slavery of almost 160 years ago. But Republicans are the only ones spearheading efforts to fight the same institution today. Perhaps some Democrats fear inconveniencing environmentalists. The hypocrisy would be almost comical, if it wasn’t so tragic.