Opinion Pieces
The Hill Op-Ed by Rep. Smith'What's inside the blind box? Trendy toys on US shelves evade Uyghur labor law.'By Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and Adrian Zenz, Opinion Contributors - 04/29/26 2:00 PM ET The cute, collectible Labubu dolls flying off shelves come in “blind boxes” — buyers don’t know which figure they’ve purchased until they open it. But the ugly truth about these popular toys remains hidden: the cotton inside is tied to state-imposed forced labor in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The New York Times reports that independent testing of Labubu dolls bought in the U.S. found that 16 of the 20 tested contained cotton whose isotopic signature links it directly to farms in Xinjiang. The Times investigation followed an anonymous tip received by Campaign for Uyghurs in 2025. Beijing’s repression of Uyghurs is now so deeply embedded in China’s economy that even trendy toys on American shelves are implicated. Under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, Pop Mart’s products should have been stopped at the border.
Pop Mart’s own record shows the political pressures surrounding its use of forced labor cotton. When Adidas pledged to stop using Xinjiang cotton because of forced labor concerns, Pop Mart ended a lucrative partnership with the company and defended its use of the cotton in Chinese court filings. Under Chief Executive Wang Ning, Pop Mart argued that Adidas had “baselessly smeared Xinjiang for violations of human rights” and “seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.” This is bigger than one company making one bad sourcing decision. The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region produces more than 90 percent of China’s cotton and roughly 20 percent of the global supply. Textile hubs in Guangdong and Hebei, where Pop Mart concentrates production, are supplied by regular “cotton trains” from the region, often routed through intermediaries. Inside China, a truly clean cotton supply chain is nearly impossible to maintain. A former Han Chinese police officer who fled the country described supervising groups of Uyghurs forced to harvest cotton under heavy security to prevent escape. Uyghurs who refused state-mandated labor transfers, he said, were sent to short-term detention facilities and “intentionally subjected to hardship and suffering” until they complied. The system behind this supply chain is not shrinking. Research from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation identifies the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region as the world’s largest system of state-imposed forced labor, putting up to 2.5 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities at risk of coerced work. In 2025 alone, authorities carried out 3.36 million “labor transfers,” forced relocations to farms and factories. That was the highest annual figure ever recorded, 22 percent above the government’s own quota. Beijing is not backing away under Western pressure. It is expanding the model. When Chen Xiaojiang became Xinjiang party secretary in July 2025, the first factory he visited was Aksu Huafu Color Spinning, a company already blacklisted under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. There, he called for expanding the cotton and textile sectors to increase “employment capacity.” Chen has also spoken of the need to “control the belly and the mind,” explicitly tying material sustenance to ideological transformation. The trade data show what that policy has produced. According to official Chinese customs figures, direct exports from Xinjiang to Canada, Britain and the European Union rose 465 percent from 2021 to 2025. From 2024 to 2025 alone, they rose 71 percent. Despite import restrictions, Xinjiang yarn output increased 20 percent in 2025 and fabric production 36 percent, creating tens of thousands of new jobs in an industry built on coercion. Cotton is only part of the story. The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region supplies 14 to 15 percent of the world’s tomato paste, about 10 percent of its chili peppers and nearly two-thirds of a key red pigment used in cosmetics and food coloring. A 2024 investigation by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation tied 72 international and 18 Chinese companies, including Kraft Heinz, Nestlé, Del Monte, PepsiCo, McCormick, Unilever and L’Oréal, to supply chains linked to forced labor. That same year, the BBC documented testimony from a detainee who said he could avoid prison only by accepting a job at a tomato plantation. American businesses and consumers cannot plead ignorance. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, co-authored by Reps. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), creates a rebuttable presumption that goods from Xinjiang are made with forced labor and should be barred from the American market unless importers prove otherwise. It won overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress. Yet enforcement has been uneven, even though cotton and agricultural products are supposed to be priority sectors. That needs to change now. Customs and Border Protection should stop and test imports tied to Pop Mart’s manufacturing hubs in Guangdong, Hebei and Zhejiang. The multiagency Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force should assess the evidence and add Pop Mart and any subsidiaries to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List, so that U.S. importers know which companies or factories to avoid. U.S. businesses need to stop pretending they can responsibly source inside a system built on state coercion. Pop Mart’s meteoric rise, and its projection that its U.S. membership and store count will double over the next two years, shows how quickly tainted goods spread through the American market when enforcement fails. If the United States cannot keep toys made with forced labor off store shelves, it has little chance of protecting the supply chains that matter even more: semiconductors, seafood, solar panels and medical equipment. We know what is inside Labubu’s blind box. The question is what we do about it. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) is one of the authors of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Adrian Zenz, Ph.D., is senior fellow and director in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. |
