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Thousands from ethnic minority groups in China forced to pick 20% of the world’s cotton

Tue Dec 15

The scale of forced labor in China is a lot more than previously suspected. A new report from the Center for Global Policy found even more evidence of human rights abuses and suspected forced labor of more than half a million Uighur and Turkic Muslim minority people. 

How are we only finding out about these labor abuses now?

China has allegedly been using its labor programs to coerce hundreds of thousands of Muslim minorities. The thing is, the programs itself aren’t a secret — and have been a part of the government’s poverty alleviation campaign. As a result, the programs are marketed within China as helping millions of poor people find work. But now, documents analyzed by independent researchers suggest that these programs were used to target and force Muslim minorities in Xinjiang to participate. 

And many international clothing brands get their cotton through this forced labor. Brands such as L.L. Bean, Brooks Brothers, Hugo Boss, and Uniqlo have been able to trace their cotton back to Xinjiang. Now, with reports of abuse in the supply chain, brands and the U.S. government are trying to block the import of cotton from Xinjiang. A bill that imposes restrictions on certain imports from Xinjiang has passed in the House but still needs a vote in the Senate.

SOURCES / READ MORE: The Guardian, BBC News, NBC News, Congress, Center for Global Policy

There could be new rules for tech giants in Europe

Tue Dec 15

The European Union (and Britain) is tackling tech companies again, this time with two new proposed bills that could lead to the break up of big tech companies. If passed, this would be the biggest expansion of global tech regulations in years.

The first bill would require companies to actively look for and handle illegal content, such as theft, fraud, child pornography, or copyright infringement — even if created by users of the platform versus the company itself. In contrast, the U.S. currently protects companies from these liabilities and responsibilities under Section 230 (though it’s recently come under fire by lawmakers).  

The second bill focuses on anticompetitive behavior from companies that qualify as ‘gatekeepers.’ This bill would:

• Prohibit companies from giving preferential treatment to their products over rivals on the platform
• Require greater price transparency from online advertisers and data portability for end users

And failure to meet these bills’ respective requirements could lead to fines up to 6% of a company’s annual global revenue, an increase from the current 4% limit in the EU. The U.K. has set this fine to 10%, meaning Facebook, for example, may fork over more than $6 billion for a serious breach or be blocked from the UK entirely.

When could these laws take effect?

The EU will now begin debating scope and details of each bill, which could take anywhere from months to years. For context, it took the EU four years of debate before passing their GDPR privacy laws, which majorly affected tech companies worldwide in 2016. In the U.S., conversations are starting around changing Section 230, which tech companies are not happy about. These compares are banding together in a coalition to fight any proposed changes to these protections.

SOURCES / READ MORE: The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! Finance