The Investigation: How Journalists Exposed a Hidden Forced Labor Network
In May 2025, a landmark joint investigation by The New York Times, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), and Der Spiegel revealed the full scale of China's state-coordinated labor transfer program, connecting more than 100 global consumer brands to factories receiving Uyghur and other ethnic minority workers under coercive conditions. The investigation was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center and represents the most detailed picture to date of how China's program to move tens of thousands of people from Xinjiang into eastern factories has become a structural feature of its export economy. The methodology was as innovative as it was revealing. Journalists trawled tens of thousands of videos posted on Douyin, TikTok's Chinese sister app, geolocating footage and cross-referencing Chinese state media reports to identify Xinjiang minority workers in 75 factories across 11 regions of China. These videos, many posted by the workers themselves, captured scenes of departure ceremonies, factory floors, and government officials escorting groups of workers thousands of miles from their homes. For the first time, the investigation demonstrated that the forced labor problem extends well beyond goods produced inside Xinjiang. Brands implicated include Apple, Samsung, Volkswagen, LG Electronics, Tesla, BMW, General Motors, Ford, Skechers, McDonald's, and Subway, among many others. Critically, the investigation revealed that some global brands — including LG and Midea — directly own or operate factories that are participating in the transfer program, not merely sourcing from distant sub-tier suppliers. Products made in these factories are sold across approximately 86 markets worldwide.
Government officials, departure ceremonies, armed escorts, and real-time monitoring systems make clear that these transfers are not voluntary employment opportunities — they are a state-imposed compulsion.
China's labor transfer scheme operates through a sophisticated apparatus of coercion. Local Chinese Communist Party officials identify Uyghur, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz individuals for transfer, often visiting homes to pressure participation. As Laura Murphy, a former senior policy adviser to the Biden administration on Xinjiang forced labor, explained: when a government official tells a Uyghur person to take a job far from home, refusal is understood to be punishable by detention. Every Uyghur in Xinjiang has either experienced detention themselves or has a close family member who has, making these transfers anything but a free choice. Workers are sent to factories located more than 2,000 miles away — from Xinjiang in China's far west to industrial zones in coastal provinces like Jiangsu and Guangdong. Departure ceremonies are staged events where party officials adorn workers with red rosettes and sashes before placing them on coaches or, in some cases, moving groups of more than 30 people under armed guard. Once at their destination, workers are closely monitored by assigned minders. China's regional five-year plan has escalated the scale of these transfers significantly, projecting that 13.75 million people will be transferred between 2021 and 2025. The plan requires that every able member of an ethnic minority household be employed, a tightening from earlier requirements that specified only one family member. Authorities have established a real-time employment monitoring system informed by home visits from party officials, and have identified nearly 800,000 people for active monitoring. The scale and systematic nature of this program is why researchers, human rights organizations, North American and European governments, and the United Nations classify it as state-imposed forced labor.
The investigation exposes not just distant supply chain links but direct factory ownership by major multinationals, raising profound questions of corporate accountability and investor liability.
What makes this investigation particularly consequential for global businesses is its finding that forced labor exposure is not confined to opaque, hard-to-trace sub-tier suppliers. For the first time, evidence shows factories directly owned by multinational brands participating in the transfer program. LG Panda Appliances in Jiangsu province, a joint venture in which LG holds a direct stake, was found to be receiving Xinjiang minority workers — including a Kazakh herder who had moved thousands of miles east to work on a washing machine assembly line. Half of the Chinese factories implicated in the investigation are controlled by publicly listed companies. These businesses, along with many lesser-known factories deeper in global supply chains, are financed by state pension funds from Europe and North America, as well as major international financial institutions. This means that investors — not just brands — are materially connected to the forced labor scheme. Companies like Kingboard Holdings, one of the world's largest producers of printed circuit boards, operate multiple factories identified in the investigation, with downstream exposure reaching brands including Lenovo and Logitech. Many of the brands implicated risk violating the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which establishes a rebuttable presumption that all goods made wholly or in part in Xinjiang — or by entities on the UFLPA Entity List — are products of forced labor and are therefore prohibited from entry into the United States. Crucially, the UFLPA's reach now extends beyond goods made inside Xinjiang to include goods made by transfer workers at factories located elsewhere in China, a dimension that many compliance programs have not yet fully addressed.
Traditional audits and tier-one supplier reviews are insufficient — companies need deep, multi-tier supply chain mapping and real-time risk intelligence to meet the legal and ethical standard this investigation demands.
The NYT/TBIJ/Der Spiegel investigation makes one thing unmistakably clear: the risk of forced labor in global supply chains is not a theoretical or distant concern. It is embedded in the supply chains of some of the world's most recognizable brands, often invisible to conventional due diligence processes that stop at tier-one or tier-two suppliers. Standard social audits have consistently failed to detect labor transfer workers, in part because the coercive context of their recruitment is not visible inside the factory. For companies importing goods into the United States, the UFLPA imposes a significant legal burden. Businesses must be able to demonstrate, through clear and convincing evidence, that their goods are not connected to forced labor — either from Xinjiang or from entities on the UFLPA Entity List. The Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force has characterized UFLPA compliance as a top-tier issue, and Customs and Border Protection has detained over $3 billion in shipments since enforcement began. The investigation's findings substantially expand the universe of factories and brands that must urgently assess their exposure. FRDM's supply chain intelligence platform is purpose-built for exactly this challenge. By mapping supplier relationships up to eight tiers deep using invoice-level data, FRDM can surface connections to Xinjiang-linked factories and transfer-program participants that would otherwise remain invisible. This includes identifying not only suppliers operating inside Xinjiang, but also factories outside the region that are participating in the state labor transfer scheme — the precise risk vector this investigation exposed. Companies that act now — mapping their supply chains, engaging their suppliers, and building audit-ready documentation — will be far better positioned to meet regulatory scrutiny and protect their brand from the reputational and legal consequences that this investigation has made impossible to ignore.
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