Chinese cheap goods e-marketplace Temu “encouraged” suppliers to use Chinese cotton in their products despite the vast majority of that cotton being produced in occupied East Turkistan, the technology news site The Information alleged in a report published on Thursday, apparently disregarding the risk of using materials tainted by slave labor.
Temu, which is affiliated with the Chinese online company Pinduoduo, is a dominant presence in American commerce, shelling millions in February to buy three Super Bowl ads and launch a campaign featuring “$15 million in coupons and other giveaways.” It sells household goods, clothing, and other basic items at steep discounts, undercutting American competitors, and ships directly to buyers. By doing so, it avoids scrutiny under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which bans all imports from East Turkistan unless the importer can demonstrate proof that slave labor was not involved in the production of manufacturing of the imports. The UFLPA does not apply to shipments worth less than $800, an exception known as de minimis that covers nearly all Temu purchases.
East Turkistan is the homeland of the ethnic Uyghur people and several other Turkic minorities. Colonized under Mao Zedong and rebranded the “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Province,” its indigenous residents have faced rampant discrimination for decades that erupted into a full-blown genocide under current dictator Xi Jinping. Since taking power in 2013, Xi has constructed hundreds of concentration camps to house non-Han people. Survivors of the camps say they were forced to renounce their religion – predominantly Islam – worship Xi, an endure unspeakable atrocities such as gang-rape using electric devices, forced sterilization and abortions, extreme torture, and slavery. Substantial evidence suggests some concentration camp victims are being killed to steal and sell their organs.
The Chinese Communist Party has insisted for years that the camps are actually “vocational and educational training” centers and began to claim in 2019 that it had emptied the camps because its prisoners had “graduated” their “vocational training.” In reality, as human rights researchers later revealed, the Chinese government is overseeing a massive online slave market in which slavetraders sell Uyghurs and others to supplying factories in “batches of 50 to 100” people. Many of those not sold to factories were sent to pick cotton, one of “Xinjiang’s” most lucrative industries.
Temu has previously argued that it is not subject to the UFLPA because it “is not the importer of record with respect to goods shipped to the United States.” It appeared to respond to growing scrutiny in America, however, following the publication of a report by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party in June that concluded there was “an extremely high risk that Temu’s supply chains are contaminated with forced labor.”
The House report also found evidence that Temu not only failed to avoid slave-tained cotton, but actively advertised some products as made from “Xinjiang cotton.”
According to The Information, Temu “started requiring its apparel suppliers that use cotton to produce a certificate of origin showing the raw material wasn’t sourced in Xinjiang” shortly after the release of the House report.
The policy, the Information report alleged, was cosmetic and rapidly rescinded once attention in America veered elsewhere. The report cited suppliers that make products for Temu who requested to remain anonymous, describing Temu as “critical” for the survival of their companies.
“Temu made an abrupt about-face on its certificate of origin requirement, scrapping it within weeks, the suppliers said,” the outlet claimed. “The suppliers said that after that change in policy, Temu staff assured them the risk of running afoul of the U.S. import ban is low and encouraged them to follow whatever Temu’s latest policy is to continue working with the platform.”
The Information said that, beyond disregarding the risk of using slave-produced materials, Temu “encouraged them [the suppliers] to continue using cotton from China instead of sourcing from other countries.”
The vast majority of Chinese cotton comes from East Turkistan, with estimates ranging between 80 and 90 percent. The Information reported that 87 percent of China’s cotton comes from the occupied Uyghur region.
The technology publication shared the story of one supplier who had found new cotton supplies in Vietnam but returned to using Chinese cotton by the end of 2023 after Temu “staff said not to worry about the risks and to focus on making new designs and ramping up production.” The suppliers all noted that finding foreign sources of cotton was more expensive than sourcing from slavery-tainted East Turkistan.
Temu told The Information that it exercises “rigorous oversight” of its supply chain.
“Merchandise partners are required to provide supporting documentation supporting compliance with sourcing regulations upon request,” a statement from the company read in part. It did not specify how often it makes those requests, but claimed the standard is “in line with those of major U.S. e-commerce platforms, such as Amazon, eBay, and Etsy.”
The de minimis loophole that allows companies like Temu to avoid the standards of the UFLPA is facing growing resistance in the U.S. federal government. In the Senate, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced the Import Security and Fairness Act this year that would definitively eliminate the loophole, which Sen. Rubio told Breitbart News in January Chinese companies exploit “to avoid tariffs and accountability for their ties to slave labor.”
“Every day we wait, millions more packages from Communist China flood into our country, endangering American customers and undermining American businesses,” Sen. Rubio told Breitbart News.
On April 5, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a plan to intercept more de minimis packages and inspect them for signs of violations of American law.
“Two of DHS’s agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), will further enhance their work together to protect the integrity of our markets, hold perpetrators accountable for customs violations, and safeguard the American textile industry,” DHS said in a statement.
The plan includes provisions for “cracking down on small package shipments to prohibit illicit goods from U.S. markets by improving screening of packages claiming the Section 321 de minimis exemption for textile, UFLPA, and other violations, including expanded targeting, laboratory and isotopic testing, and focused enforcement operations.”
DHS noted in its statement that, in addition to supporting human rights atrocities, allowing companies relying on slave labor to compete with legitimate American commerce hurts American businesses. The plan announced this month apparently followed a meeting with leaders in the National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO).
“NCTO explained the significant harm that the textile industry is suffering at the hands of unscrupulous individuals and entities who create an unfair market by circumventing the operation of our nation’s free trade agreements,” DHS relayed, “violating the UFLPA, and exploiting the de minimis shipment exception that is established in law.”
The dramatic expansion of China’s presence in U.S. markets has been especially devastating for the textile and embroidery industry, previously critical to the economies of many communities in the Northeast United States.
Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.
Maybe it’s time we all start learning Mandarin.
According to a report published by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) yesterday, “Chinese military companies” have paid D.C. lobbyists tens of millions of dollars in just the past few years alone—but as you might expect, neither the companies nor the lobbying firms responded to the outlet’s “request for comment” on the matter.
Here are the details, via the DCNF exposé:
Chinese Military Companies Have Spent Over $24 Million Lobbying The US Gov’t In Recent Years
Entities the Pentagon classifies as ‘Chinese military companies’ have spent more than $24 million lobbying the U.S. government since 2020, a Daily Caller News Foundation review of lobbying disclosures found.
Some of the biggest spenders on lobbying included corporations directly tied to human rights abuses and Chinese military research, like telecom giant Huawei, facial recognition software developer Megvii and genomics company BGI Shenzhen. Chinese military corporations cast a wide net across the American government, lobbying the House, Senate and various parts of the executive branch, including the office of the president, often setting their sights on proposed policies that would impact their U.S. operations, according to a DCNF review of congressional disclosures and legislative records.
As you also might expect, the names linked to this whole Americans-working-for-Chinese-communists affair aren’t all that unrecognizable. Right off the bat, we learn that Huawei paid the Podesta Group $1 million in 2021. Yes, Podesta as in Tony and John Podesta, scandal-ridden fixtures of the D.C. Democrat cabal. (Tony came under fire for unsettling emails involving Marina Abramović, and both men allegedly have an eye for extremely disturbing “art.”)
And, this should come as no surprise:
Information on the specific congressional offices Chinese military corporations paid to lobby was not included in congressional disclosures.
Conniving little traitorous monsters, aren’t they?
But then I did a little digging, and came across at least two people, both of whom work for the same firm (Squire Patton Boggs) and at the same D.C. office, that really caught my eye: John Boehner, former Speaker of the House, and Dr. Xiaoban Xin.
(As an aside: With both high-profile Democrats and high-profile Republicans involved in this, can we concede that the “two-party system” is merely an illusion at this point?)
Now, Xiaoban has a very impressive biologics background (“gene editing, cell therapy, drug delivery vehicles) and before he became a lawyer he worked at the NIH and NIAID, under the one and only…Anthony Fauci. I also gather that Xiaoban was a Chinese citizen at birth—he received his bachelor’s degree from Nanjing University in Jiangsu, China.
Of course, a plausible explanation is that SPB wants to hire the best and the brightest, and Xiaoban must certainly be a brilliant man.
But…is there a connection here?
We’ve got California politicians welcoming Chinese leaders to “American” streets with red carpet treatment in which the only flags lining the pavement are the banners of communist China.
We’ve got “American” politicians decked out in Chinese red attire, symbolizing the shed blood of communist revolutionaries, and waving Chinese flags.
We’ve got military-aged Chinese males swarming across our “border” before largely disappearing somewhere into “our” interior—Gordon Chang pointed out that they occasionally pop up when they’re caught practicing their shooting skills in rural areas. And here’s this, from CBS News in February:
Chinese migrants are the fastest growing group crossing from Mexico into U.S. at southern border
We’ve discovered the presence of Chinese biological weapons labs, operating just miles from “American” military bases…in the U.S.
We’ve got government officials, namely Fauci, taking orders from Chinese communists and forming public policy based on such orders.
What in the world is going on?
Image: Free image, Pixabay license, no attribution required.
The paid agent behind the Oval Office desk
By Monica Showalter
Via John Hinderaker of Power Line, Andy McCarthy at National Review has a stunning piece outlining the depths of Joe Biden's involvement as China's little agent, tying together details which will make you wanting to take a shower afterward.
He writes:
Thanks to the extensive excavation of Biden financial records by Senators Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), followed by the dogged reporting of the New York Post once Hunter’s abandoned laptop was exposed, the outlines of the story were publicly available before Election Day 2020. The Biden/China scheme may not have been sufficiently known, but it was eminently knowable — so much so that I presented it in detail in “A Collusion Tale: China and the Bidens,” which we published on October 31, 2020 — the weekend before the election.
The story has gotten more damning with the additional evidence unearthed by the Oversight Committee under the direction of Chairman James Comer (R., Ky.). But it hasn’t changed.
CEFC, the Shanghai-based energy conglomerate with which Joe Biden and his family joined forces, was China. To describe it as a “thinly veiled” arm of Xi Jinping’s monstrous regime would exaggerate the camouflage. It was run by Ye Jianming, whom the Bidens deemed a protégé of Xi — as the president’s brother, Jim Biden, conceded to federal investigators.
How could it be otherwise? As I recounted in October 2020, CEFC’s position as a privileged “private” company was established by the regime in 2006 (when Xi was the rising star of the CCP).
The fake Chinese front company disappeared from view along with its agents, as soon as its activities got brazen enough for lawmen to start examining them -- in an instant. But the Bidens had already gotten their money, and performed their services, and it was a lot of money -- big $10,000,000 amounts. The Chinese not only used the Bidens to find out little things like what the FBI had on their agents, they also used it to muscle other countries to jump onboard with their One Belt, One Road initiative and other projects, letting them know that they already had the Bidens in their pocket so there was no protection out there for them:
This, of course, is why the Biden connection was so valuable — why CEFC was willing to pay millions of dollars for it. Doors were opened by the association with Joe Biden, one of America’s most prominent, influential politicians. If CEFC could brandish cordial relations and a business partnership with the Biden family, then other targets of China’s OBOR blandishments would be more willing to transact.
China is famous for getting the hooks in in a string of third world nations, all of which have become remarkably uncooperative with the U.S., and not even interested in making alliances with it any more. We've lost influence as joining in the China-led BRICS bloc has become the hot new thing.
Does it sound like Joe Biden has undermined our international interests with his takings from the Chinese regime, all to buy those mansions and fancy cars? Somehow, the U.S. doesn't have the influence it used to have internationally, and it's not just because of President Obama's constant apology tours. It was having Joe on their string that pretty well negated the U.S. as a global player. It also doesn't help that with Joe around, we also lose wars and sport wokester troops on hormone treatments, wearing makeup and dresses.
I'd still like to know what Hunter Biden did with
that diamond the Chinese agents presented him
with, likely to avoid bank monitoring laws.
Acting as an agent of a foreign regime while in public office is treason by anyone's definition. It's also an impeachable offense, as is bribery, according to the Constitution's Article II, Section 4:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Where's the impeachment of this one, given the clarity of the charges?
Previous House Speaker Kevin McCarthy hemmed and hawed on it, believing perhaps that because past presidential impeachments have been on trivial matters and have always failed, this one wouldn't be any different.
But it is different, with millions of dollars changing hands and U.S. influence waning significantly. If this isn't dealt with in Congress, the stage will be set for any elected leader to do the same. Now that the facts are known, Andy McCarthy argues, that Joe cannot escape his China scandal paper trail at the very least. One hopes that he is right because the bribery and treason here couldn't be more real.
Image: Screen shot from a camera aimed at a television set, processed with Adobe CameraRaw.
WHAT IF JOE BIDEN WORKED AS HARD FOR AMERICA AS HE DOES FOR RED CHINA?
Memo: Hunter Biden Tried to Help CCP-Linked Company Purchase U.S. Maker of Nuclear Reactors
1,053
Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images for World Food Program USA
WENDELL HUSEBØ
16 Mar 2024503
3:15
Hunter Biden tried to help Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-linked entity CEFC China Energy Co. purchase a maker of U.S. nuclear reactors in 2016, a strategy memo and testimony given to the House impeachment inquiry shows.
CEFC is closely linked to the CCP. The chairman of CEFC was Ye Jianming, who paid Hunter a $1 million retainer fee for legal services in 2017. Hunter also received a large diamond from Ye in February 2017 worth an estimated $80,000.
Ye “had direct abiding and deep ties to Chinese intelligence when they were arranging these ideals for the Bidens,” according to Breitbart News senior contributor and Government Accountability Institute president Peter Schweizer.
The memo obtained by lawmakers suggests CEFC’s goal was to exploit Hunter’s proximity to the Obama White House to allow the controversial deal to go through — all while shielding the transaction between CEFC and Westinghouse, the maker of nuclear reactors. Just the News first reported on the information obtained by lawmakers:
Congressional investigators recently obtained new memos and testimony about the nature of the plan to help CEFC gain a larger foothold in the global nuclear energy market by acquiring Westinghouse. One of Hunter Biden’s former business partners, Rob Walker, told Congress the future first son was involved, providing a letter to make the Chinese comfortable with the plan.
…
This plan would place the appearance of a layer between CEFC—a China-based company with close connections to the ruling Chinese Communist Party and component of its national energy strategy—and the iconic U.S.-based energy company.
…
At the time, Westinghouse was U.S.-based but owned by Japan’s Toshiba and one of the darlings of the nuclear industry with its new AP1000 reactor, a smaller and more advanced power generator. But it privately was suffering financial strife due to cost delays and overruns at a planned nuclear power plant in Georgia that would eventually force the company to file for temporary bankruptcy protection.
Hunter was not the only Biden attempting to help CEFC acquire business in the American energy sector. James Biden, brother of President Joe Biden, confirmed to the FBI in 2023 that his family tried to help CEFC purchase a U.S. liquid natural gas facility in Louisiana. James told investigators that he worked with Louisiana state officials to cut regulatory red tape to benefit the deal. The deal never materialized.
House investigators launched the probe into the Biden family in November 2022. They revealed Joe Biden received money from James and Hunter Biden. They also showed that nine additional Biden family members received payments from the family’s foreign business ventures, including two of Joe Biden’s grandchildren.
Joe Biden (L) and his brother James Biden (Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images)
More evidence against Joe Biden can be found here and here.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo
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