China’s labor transfer policies may amount to crimes against humanity: UN
Experts say coercive labor schemes targeting Uyghur and Tibetan communities risk enslavement, cultural erasure and contamination of global supply chains
GENEVA, Switzerland (MNTV) — United Nations human rights experts have issued a stark warning that China’s state-directed labor programs targeting ethnic minorities may constitute crimes against humanity, citing evidence of widespread coercion, surveillance and the systematic dismantling of traditional livelihoods.
In a newly released assessment, independent experts mandated by the United Nations said labor transfer schemes affecting Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Tibetan communities show clear indicators of forced labor, including the absence of free consent, threats of punishment and conditions resembling enslavement.
The experts said these practices are embedded within government policies officially presented as poverty alleviation and employment generation, but in reality operate through intimidation and compulsion.
Individuals are reportedly assigned work placements both within East Turkistan (Xinjiang) and in distant provinces, with little or no ability to refuse or change employment without facing reprisals such as detention, loss of services or intensified surveillance.
According to the experts, China’s five-year development plan for Xinjiang projected more than 13.75 million labor transfers between 2021 and 2025. However, available evidence suggests actual numbers may already exceed official targets, raising concerns about the scale and institutionalization of coercion across multiple regions of China.
The warning extends beyond Xinjiang. U.N. experts said similar mechanisms are being applied to Tibetan communities through compulsory vocational training programs that use military-style discipline, followed by enforced job placements. Estimates indicate that nearly 650,000 Tibetans were subjected to labor transfers in 2024 alone.
Experts also raised alarm over large-scale displacement linked to “whole-village relocation” schemes, which they say manufacture consent through pressure tactics including repeated home visits, restrictions on dissent and the withdrawal of essential services.
Between 2000 and 2025, around 3.36 million Tibetans were affected by policies aimed at settling nomadic populations, with official figures showing roughly 930,000 rural Tibetans relocated through village-wide or household-level programs.
Taken together, the experts said, labor and land transfers appear to form part of a broader strategy to forcibly reshape minority identities under the guise of development.
By dismantling pastoral and agrarian livelihoods and pushing communities into tightly controlled wage labor, the policies erode language, religion, culture and social cohesion, causing harm that experts warned could be irreversible.
The U.N. experts also cautioned that goods produced through these labor schemes may be entering international supply chains via third countries.
They urged companies and investors to conduct rigorous human rights due diligence and renewed calls for unrestricted access for independent U.N. human rights mechanisms to assess conditions on the ground.
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