One of the most hypocritical things about the modern left is that when it rages against Americans like George Washington that owned slaves two and a half centuries ago, it does so primarily from iPhones that were built by what amounts to slave labor from China.
Similarly, many other things Americans use and even watch have some connection to Chinese slave labor. Many things, from cheap cotton t-shirts to Mulan (parts of which were filmed near Xinjiang), have some connection to Chinese slave labor.
And the worst of that slave labor takes place in Xinjiang, where the CCP has imprisoned millions of Uighurs and is waging a campaign of genocide against them. They’re forced to work for nothing so Americans can buy cheap goods and then prattle on about how terrible Thomas Jefferson was.
That evil labor system, one particularly horrific in the modern-day, is why Arizona State Representative Justin Wilmeth (R-Phoenix) just introduced HB 2488, which is meant to combat Red China’s use of Uighur slave labor.
The bill, which now has 9 cosponsors including 7 Republicans and 2 Democrats, forbids any public entity in Arizona from entering into a contract with a company unless the contract includes and express written certification swearing that the company doesn’t now use and never will use Uighur slave labor to produce the good, service, etc.
Explaining the bill and its necessity in a statement, Wilmeth said:
“As a student of history, I know what happens when good people remain silent,” said Representative Wilmeth. “The Chinese Communist Party keeping millions of people locked in internment camps, which harkens back to the darkest chapters of the 20th century. HB 2488 sends a strong message that the State of Arizona won’t do business with anyone that turns a blind eye to this horrible human rights abuse.”
Further, his statement explains the plight of the Uighurs, saying:
“The PRC government has pressured many Uyghurs, including former detainees, into accepting employment in textile, apparel, agricultural, consumer electronics, and other labor-intensive industries. Some factories utilizing Uyghur labor are tied to global supply chains.”
Ridding even one state of a connection to that evil is surely a noble goal, though it remains to be seen if the bill will push past the lobbying attempts of those corporations that profit off such labor and be passed.
However, it’s not clear why the bill limits the issue to Uighur slave labor rather than including any slave labor (is the camp inmate in Xinjiang really that much worse off than the worker laboring in some phone production plant where the conditions are so terrible that the companies had to install suicide nets to prevent workers from committing suicide during the workday?).
Despite that, it’s still a good start, as it will punish those companies that are taking advantage of the evil going on within the CCP.
Yet more encouraging is that it’s bipartisan. While Republicans are typically the China hawks focused as they are on the evils of the communist nation and its ideology, it’s good to see that Democrats, most of whom are typically less hawkish, are signing onto the bill and pushing forward the fight against the CCP.
By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.
This story syndicated with permission from Will – Trending Politics