Washington / Beijing (dpa) – The US electric car manufacturer Tesla has come under fire for opening a new store in the Chinese region of Xinjiang.
According to human rights activists and Western governments, Beijing is using so-called re-education camps and forced labor to suppress the Muslim Uyghur minority. China denies this.
Republican US Senator Marco Rubio criticized the opening of Tesla’s new store in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi. “Stateless firms are helping the Chinese Communist Party cover up genocide and slavery in the region,” he wrote on Twitter.
A spokeswoman for US President Joe Biden said when asked that she did not want to comment on individual companies. The government is clearly of the opinion that the private sector should reject the “human rights violations and the genocide in Xinjiang”. Firms involved in forced labor or human rights abuses through doing business in China will be held accountable, she warned. The USA has already imposed sanctions on the situation in Xinjiang and can also prohibit imports from there on the basis of a recently passed law.
Numerous car manufacturers active in the region
Tesla announced the opening of the store on December 31st via the Chinese social media platform Weibo. In front of the new showroom in Urumqi, Tesla had already installed charging stations in the region. Many international automakers have long been active in Xinjiang. Volkswagen even operates a plant there, for which the carmaker has repeatedly come under criticism in the past. China is an important market for manufacturers.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for international companies to operate in the field of tension between foreign sanctions and human rights violations in China. Only recently, the US chip manufacturer Intel announced that it would no longer use goods and services from Xinjiang. Strong criticism and calls for a boycott from China were immediately followed by an apology from the company on Weibo.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 220105-99-591253 / 2
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