Fresh from his high-profile appearance at a recent US Congressional-Executive Commission on China hearing, Scott Nova, Executive Director of the Workers Rights Consortium in Washington DC, gave Philip Berman a hard-hitting interview questioning the reliability of social compliance audits in China. 

Scott says about auditing companies working in the Xinjiang region:

"I'm sure there are some that are actually claiming that they can conclusively demonstrate the absence of forced labor in the region, but no auditor should be working there. It's incredibly disreputable. Even aside from the fact that you can't conduct a methodologically credible audit there, what you were doing by operating there, Is you are enhancing the ability of the Chinese government to keep doing what it is doing to the Uyghur people because the best hope the Uyghur people have is that this economic boycott will convince the Chinese government that it is in its interest to chart a different course in terms of its treatment of the Uyghurs." Scott and Philip discussed the impact of the Ughur Forced Labor Prevention Act, in stopping goods made using forced Labor coming into the US. 

Interestingly, Scott said that since the Act has come into force, "to our knowledge, nobody has overcome that rebuttable presumption," that goods coming from that region were not made with forced labor. 

We followed up this point with Scott after the podcast - as it appeared that a number of goods had been seized by US customs under the law and Scott told us:

"On UFLPA seizures, there are two different phases of the process. In the first phase, CBP 'targets' shipments that it thinks have content from the Uyghur Region. Some of the targeted shipments are released because CBP determines they don’t have such content. If CBP does confirm there is content from the Uyghur Region, then the shipment is denied entry to the US, based on the presumption that all goods with content from the Uyghur Region were made with forced labor. That is the second phase. At that point, an importer can attempt to rebut that presumption by showing that no forced labor was actually used. No company has successfully done so. The released goods to which you are referring were released in the first phase, based on where the content was from."

It's a fascinating and broad-ranging conversation, with Scott and Philip discussing several issues around this topic, in particular:

Why, according to Scott, impartial factory audits are so hard to carry out in the Xinjiang region? 

Does he think the issue is confined to just this province?

Whether we should trust any social audits in China?

And what does he think this all mean for any company wanting to do business there?

You can read much more on this issue online at Ecotextile News where we most recently reported that a court ruled that the UK National Crime Agency’s (NCA) refusal to investigate forced labour links to cotton imported from China was unlawful.

This comes after cotton exports from the region continue to surge despite legislation in the USA.