China’s mass detention and surveillance of ethnic Uyghurs turned its far western region of Xinjiang into a global symbol of forced labor and human rights abuses, prompting Congress to ban imports from the area in 2021.

But the Chinese government has found a way around the ban — by moving more Uyghurs to jobs in factories outside Xinjiang.

A joint investigation by The New York Times, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Der Spiegel found that state-led programs to ship Uyghur workers out of Xinjiang are much more extensive than previously known.

China has placed Uyghurs in factories across the country that make a wide range of goods used in brand-name products around the world, the investigation found. And it has done so with little to no visibility for supply-chain auditors or border and customs officials charged with spotting labor abuses and blocking the import of tainted goods.

Both the United States and the European Union have adopted laws aimed at preventing consumers and businesses from funding the persecution of Uyghurs in China. These state-run labor transfer programs pose a significant challenge. It may be possible to target imports from Xinjiang, but tracking the relocation and treatment of workers from Xinjiang to factories across China is a much more difficult endeavor.

By the best available estimates, tens of thousands of Uyghurs now toil in these programs. The workers are paid, but the conditions they face are unclear. And U.N. labor experts, scholars and activists say the programs fit well-documented patterns of forced labor.

China makes no secret of these labor transfer programs. It says that participation is voluntary and argues that moving Uyghurs into jobs across the country gives them economic opportunities and helps address chronic poverty in Xinjiang.

But experts and activists say Uyghurs usually have no choice but to accept the job assignments, and that the programs are part of Beijing’s efforts to exert control over a minority population that has historically resisted Chinese rule. As many as 12 million Uyghurs, a Central Asian, Muslim people, reside in Xinjiang, located on the border with Kazakhstan.

In the United States, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act bars imports from Xinjiang, unless the importer can prove that they were not made with forced labor. Forced labor has been reported in different forms in Xinjiang, in prisons, mass internment camps and large-scale relocation programs within the region, and, the U.S. government says, in the production of cotton, textiles, critical minerals and solar panels.

The U.S. law also bars imports from companies outside Xinjiang that work with the government to receive workers from Xinjiang who are Uyghur or members of other persecuted groups.

But that provision is difficult to enforce, leaving a blind spot for those trying to root out forced labor from supply chains.

The transfer of Uyghur workers from Xinjiang is a potential flashpoint in the trade war between China and the Trump administration, which has accused Beijing of “ripping off” the United States and producing goods at artificially low costs, including through exploitative labor conditions. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, was one of the 2021 law’s lead authors when he was a Florida senator.

Our findings are based on an examination of publicly available government and corporate announcements, state media reports, social media posts and research papers. Among them are local government notices describing the number of Uyghurs transferred to factory sites, and state media reports on meetings in which officials discuss how to manage Uyghur workers. Some show photos of workers in neat rows at train stations before departing Xinjiang.

The scale of the labor transfers is evident on Chinese social media, where Uyghurs have posted videos of themselves leaving home, working on factory lines and posing outside dormitories. We determined where the videos were shot by comparing the features of buildings and streets with satellite imagery, street-view maps and publicly available photographs of factories.

Some videos show other Central Asian minorities from Xinjiang, including Kazakhs and Kyrgyz people, who also face persecution and are covered by the U.S. law.

Reporters from The Times and Der Spiegel visited the areas around two dozen factories linked to Uyghur labor in eight cities in the central province of Hubei and the eastern province of Jiangsu, and spoke to more than three dozen workers as well as the owners of restaurants and other businesses frequented by them.

We did not ask interviewees for their names to minimize the risk of retaliation by the authorities, who consider the treatment of Uyghurs to be a national security issue. (We are also not disclosing the names of the people whose social media videos we found and we have blurred their faces to avoid exposing them.)

Several workers suggested, with some hesitation, that they labored under close supervision. They said their jobs had been arranged for them and that they sometimes needed permission to leave factory grounds, usually upon arrival. Security guards at some factories also confirmed they had been sent Uyghur workers by government agencies.

Other workers said that they had taken the jobs willingly and were staying in them on their own accord.

One worker in Hubei Province told The Times that he and about 300 other Uyghurs lived in a dormitory separated from staff identified as from the majority Han Chinese population. He said they were assigned minders from their home counties in Xinjiang, were allowed to leave the factory premises and could return to Xinjiang if they gave a month’s notice.

He said he worked up to 14 hours a day, and earned a monthly salary of up to 6,000 yuan, or $827, about the national average for a factory worker in China. The interview ended abruptly when several men surrounded the worker and demanded to know who he was and why he was not at work.

Human rights advocates argue that Uyghurs have little choice but to accept such job assignments outside Xinjiang. If they refuse, they risk being labeled a “troublemaker,” a serious charge in a region where people have been subjected to lengthy detentions for even the faintest signs of dissent or religious expression, like owning a Quran. At the same time, the jobs offer the promise of a higher wage, in contrast to the limited opportunities and tight surveillance that Uyghurs face in Xinjiang.

The vast majority of Xinjiang’s labor transfers take place inside the region. The government said there were 3.2 million transfers in 2023, a figure that includes workers being transferred more than once, and the tens of thousands sent to other provinces.

The International Labor Organization, a U.N. agency, said in a February report that the labor transfer programs appeared to use measures “severely restricting the free choice of employment.”

The reach of these programs, and China’s dominant role in the global economy, mean a wide range of multinational companies rely on suppliers that have received Uyghur workers.

Some of these suppliers produce goods for the Chinese market, including those we found processing chicken for McDonald’s and KFC restaurants in China. Others make products for export, such as washing machines for LG Electronics and footwear for Crocs.

The risk of Chinese suppliers using Uyghur workers is sensitive for German automakers, including Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW, which have tried to address their history of using forced labor in the Nazi era by apologizing and compensating victims.

Our investigation identified more than 100 companies that appeared to receive Uyghur workers or parts or goods produced by them. Most did not respond to multiple requests for comment, including LG, Tesla, Midea and KFC. Others such as McDonald’s declined to comment, or provided statements that only emphasized corporate policies prohibiting forced labor in their supply chains.

A handful of companies, including Crocs, denied their suppliers used forced labor, but did not address the question of whether their suppliers had hired ethnic minority workers who had been transferred by the government from Xinjiang.

“Based on recent audits, we do not have reason to believe that any of our suppliers are in violation of our policies,” the Broomfield, Colo.-based footwear company said.

Companies risk having their imported goods seized by customs officials in the United States if their suppliers are found to have been using forced labor. The European Union enacted legislation similar to the American law last year, but will not begin enforcing it until 2027 to give member nations time to prepare.

China detained more than 1 million Uyghurs in internment camps from 2017 to 2019 in the name of fighting extremism. After the camps closed, an estimated half a million Uyghurs were sentenced to prison, rights groups say.

State-directed labor transfer programs have been part of Beijing’s efforts to assimilate Uyghurs since the early 2000s, with China’s Communist Party promoting the notion that labor is honorable.

But the programs grew significantly around the time internment camps were introduced in 2017, said Adrian Zenz, an anthropologist and a leading expert on Uyghur forced labor. Since the U.S. ban on imports from Xinjiang came into force in 2022, the number of Uyghurs transferred out of the region has grown.

Speaking at a press briefing in 2022, Chen Lei, an inspector from Xinjiang’s Rural Revitalization Bureau, indicated that the authorities aimed to increase the number of workers moved to other parts of China by a third in 2023 to more than 38,000, according to a government report posted online.

Labor transfer “is the only measure I see that has become more intense,” said Mr. Zenz, the director of China Studies for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington. “And the reason for that is that this is a long term mechanism of social control and indoctrination.”

In 2023, Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, told officials during a visit to Xinjiang that they should be vigilant against threats to stability and “encourage and guide Xinjiang people to go to the Chinese interior to find employment.”

Uyghur activists accuse Beijing of relocating Uyghurs in an attempt to change the demographic composition of Xinjiang and erase expressions of Uyghur and Muslim identity.

“This is not about poverty alleviation. This is about dispersing Uyghurs as a group and breaking their roots,” Rayhan Asat, a human rights lawyer at the Atlantic Council whose brother has been imprisoned in Xinjiang since 2016.

If multinational brands cannot guarantee that their suppliers are free of forced labor, then they should find other suppliers that they can guarantee are, or pull out of China altogether, Ms. Asat said.

In a written response, the Chinese Embassy in Washington denied that forced labor is used in Xinjiang, saying that such allegations were “nothing but vicious lies concocted by anti-China forces.” It said that China rejected the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, calling it an interference in China’s internal affairs.

The statement also asserted that all residents in Xinjiang “enjoy happy and fulfilling lives” and that the government’s policies are focused on making the region safer. “Xinjiang-related issues are not human rights issues at all, but in essence about countering violent terrorism and separatism,” it said.

Jobs as Social Control

Little is known about the lives of the Uyghurs sent to work in factories across China.

Censors frequently scrub the internet of anything deemed critical or unflattering of the government. Still, social media provides a window.

Some videos show workers raising their right fists and pledging allegiance before a Chinese flag, evidence of the ideological training that experts say is often mandatory for Uyghur workers on such job programs.

The activity is about “showing loyalty to the Communist Party,” said Yalkun Uluyol, the China researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Some videos posted by workers hint at feelings of homesickness, at times using Uyghur poetry.

Thwarting a Law Aimed at Protecting Uyghurs

From outside, the sprawling white and blue factory complex in the central Chinese city of Jingmen looks like a giant sheet cake.

Behind its walls, workers make automotive and aerospace equipment, specializing in lightweight aluminum chassis parts and brake systems.

The Hubei Hangte Equipment Manufacturing Company’s website displays the logos of customers such as Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Mazda and Hyundai. But it says nothing about the pipeline of Uyghur workers from Xinjiang that the company relies on.

News releases posted elsewhere say government officials visited the factory to check on workers sent from Xinjiang as recently as April last year.

And a video posted by a state-owned human resources company that helps facilitate labor transfers, Xinjiang Zhengcheng Minli Modern Enterprise Services, indicates that the firm recruited workers for the factory in August 2023.

The previous year, Hubei Hangte hosted a meeting with Communist Party officials and educators from Xinjiang and described measures it had taken to better manage workers from the region. That included ensuring that their activities were “controllable” and that they refrained from “laxity,” “drinking” and, curiously, “swimming in groups.”

“We will strive to make Hangte a model unit for employment of Xinjiang people in Jingmen City,” Chen Yun, the company’s deputy general manager, said in a statement posted online at the time.

Xinjiang Zhengcheng Minli Modern Enterprise Services and Hubei Hangte did not respond to requests for comment.

BMW acknowledged that Hubei Hangte may provide parts to one of its direct suppliers. It said it has asked that supplier to investigate. Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and Chrysler’s parent company, Stellantis, also said they had opened investigations.

Mazda said it had no “direct” relationship with Hubei Hangte, and General Motors, Ford and Hyundai said they prohibited forced labor in their supply chains but declined to answer questions about Hubei Hangte.

It is not uncommon for global brands to have several layers of suppliers, explaining why companies may not have a direct relationship with a factory.

Shipment records provided by a trade data firm show that, since May 2021, Hubei Hangtei’s parts have been shipped to India, Indonesia, Mexico, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Canada, as well as the United States, where shipments would be subject to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.

One U.S. customer of the Chinese company is a subsidiary of the German auto parts manufacturer Mahle Industrial Thermal Systems, which said in a statement that it prohibits the use of forced labor by its suppliers. Mahle did not answer questions about Hubei Hangte.

Another transaction that may violate the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act occurred last July, when a Chinese manufacturer of computer equipment known as Transimage sent at least two shipments to a San Diego address for Samsung America Electronics, according to trade data.

Transimage, also known as Jiangsu Chuanyi Technology Company Ltd., received help recruiting workers from a labor dispatch center in Akqi County in Xinjiang in 2023, according to a post on a local government social media account. Social media posts by workers show employees at the factory who appear to be Kyrgyz wearing teal jackets embroidered with the company’s name.

Transimage did not respond to requests for comment. Samsung said in a statement that it found no evidence of forced labor at Jiangsu Chuanyi Technology, adding that it “prohibits its suppliers from using all forms of forced labor.”

This article was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center.

Shawn Paik contributed video production.