A Uyghur rights group that is vehemently opposed to a potential Shein listing on the London Stock Exchange says it has uncovered “probable” links between the Chinese-founded e-tail juggernaut and a Guangdong-based industrial park with potential connections to textile production in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where forced labor is part of the broader persecution of Muslim minorities.
After the Guangdong government and the Xinjiang Development and Reform Commission signed a cooperative agreement in 2023, Stop Uyghur Genocide said, several cotton and textile companies signaled their intention to “settle down” at Guangqing Textile and Garment Industry Orderly Transfer Park, allegedly one of the many sites where Shein produces its trend-driven and ultra-cheap clothing, though it’s hard to say, since the Temu rival doesn’t disclose its authorized suppliers.
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Among them, the nonprofit said, were several companies that are banned from importing goods into the United States under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, or UFLPA, as well as the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a paramilitary organization with sprawling corporate interests. Attendees at the signing event, it added, were told that the Guangqing park would create a “fast fashion smart manufacturing base” that would transform it into an “industrial paradise” for the global apparel industry.
Stop Uyghur Genocide said that Shein was present at the park’s official opening that same year, even inking a strategic cooperation agreement that reportedly included an offer of technical and financial support. The Singapore-headquartered firm, which did not respond to a request for comment, also allegedly held an “investment promotion event” at Guangqing the following year, “encouraging textile and clothing manufacturers to move to the premises with the potential benefit of becoming a supplier for Shein” and raising the risk that Shein products would be made using Xinjiang textiles, it said.
“The research shows credible evidence that Shein has not only invested in but actively promoted a textile hub designed to connect global commerce with the Uyghur region—a region where atrocity crimes, including genocide and cultural destruction, are being carried out with industrial efficiency,” Rahima Mahmut, executive director of Stop Uyghur Genocide, said in a statement. “By signing strategic agreements and encouraging production in this park, I believe Shein is not simply turning a blind eye; I believe it is profiting from a system built on the forced labor of persecuted people.”
Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a human rights group, said he would need to review the original Chinese documents obtained by Stop Uyghur Genocide before he could verify the claims. Even so, they are, broadly speaking, “very credible,” he said.
“They reflect a very common pattern that used to be well documented, but since the revelations about forced labor, tends to be more hidden,” Zenz said. “These sorts of connections are very common.”
Stop Uyghur Genocide, which previously provided Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority with a “dossier of evidence” tying Shein’s supply chains with Xinjiang forced labor, said that the agency must add the new Guangqing revelations to any final approval of the company’s proposed public float, even though the move may be itself in peril amid the tariff and de minimis fallout in the United States. Already, its valuation has taken a nosedive from $90 billion in 2023 to $30 billion this past February. Those too-good-to-be-true prices have also gone up.
“Allowing such a company to list on the London Stock Exchange would stain the U.K.’s commitment to human rights and the rule of law,” Mahmut said. “The Financial Conduct Authority must take this evidence seriously. We cannot let the City of London become a safe haven for companies whose supply chains are at risk of being connected with allegations of genocide.”
Unlike the United States, the United Kingdom hasn’t explicitly outlawed goods made wholly or in part in Xinjiang on the basis that they might be products of Uyghur forced labor. Leigh Day, the law firm that represents Stop Uyghur Genocide, argues, however, that any company whose supply chain benefits from modern slavery should be held in violation of Britain’s 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act.
Shein has repeatedly dodged questions over its use of Chinese cotton, 90 percent of which hails from Xinjiang. Even an especially grueling interrogation by British parliamentarians at a hearing earlier this year provided few straight answers. But while any supply chain partner that signs the Missguided owner’s code of conduct has to affirm that it will not use forced labor, including prison and bonded labor, Shein does not “prohibit” the use of Chinese cotton “specifically where such use would not contravene the laws and regulations of the jurisdictions in which we operate,” it told ministers in a follow-up statement.
Whether the United Kingdom needs to tighten up its modern slavery regulations—or even if they are still fit for purpose—is a matter of much public debate. Ten years since the passing of the U.K. Modern Slavery Act, forced labor has “slipped down” Britain’s public policy agenda compared with a few years ago, said Murray Hunt, director of the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre at the University of Oxford, who noted that recent cuts to international aid are “an example of setbacks that the work to address modern slavery has suffered recently.”
But Hunt also sees positive developments that provide “opportunities for progress,” including what he says is the Keir Starmer government’s “unequivocal commitment” to international law and human rights. “Modern slavery is a human rights issue because it is about protecting people against exploitation by the privately powerful,” he said. “Recognizing this must be a starting point for any serious work to address it.”
Harmit Kambo, campaigns manager at Good Law Project, a legal nonprofit that is supporting Leigh Day’s work with Stop Uyghur Genocide, said that Shein’s alleged Guangqing connection would make a “mockery” of the Modern Slavery Act if its listing were approved. It was congressional pushback in the United States over claims of underpaid and forced labor that supposedly torpedoed Shein’s planned public debut in New York.
“Previously, the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said that if Shein was to list on the London Stock Exchange, it would be expected to meet ‘ethical and moral targets,’” he said in a statement. “It would demean U.K. PLC if the FCA were to now waive through a company that reportedly trashes the environment, has been accused of dodging taxes, and appears to be linked to the forced labor of Uyghur people.”
