Confronted with the Uyghur Pressured Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), U.S. laws that presumes any items made in Xinjiang concerned pressured labor, in addition to with new European pressured labor guidelines, China has not retreated. As a substitute, Beijing is constructing its personal company duty and provide chain requirements, limiting how some Western audit and requirements techniques function in China, and selling China-led requirements overseas.
China’s Ministry of Commerce just lately accused the Accountable Enterprise Alliance (RBA) of helping U.S. sanctions towards China over alleged pressured labor in Xinjiang and barred Chinese language organizations and people from doing enterprise or cooperating with it. The RBA is without doubt one of the world’s largest company social duty initiatives; it has over 600 member corporations that collectively make use of extra than 21.5 million employees. Its Accountable Minerals Initiative runs the Accountable Minerals Assurance Course of (RMAP), the one provide chain due diligence scheme thus far formally acknowledged by the EU below its Battle Minerals Regulation.
Based on the publicly disclosed checklist of RMAP conformant and lively services, as of January 31, 2026, 71 out of 196, or 36.2 p.c, of the cobalt, tantalum, tin, and tungsten smelters and refiners had been situated in mainland China.
For years, many Chinese language corporations and suppliers have participated in RBA-related auditing and compliance techniques, despite the fact that the Chinese language authorities has by no means formally acknowledged the RBA. Now, as China’s financial energy and worldwide affect have grown, Beijing is moved to move off any such cooperation. The importance of the RBA sanctions thus goes far past company compliance – it’s a part of a broader shift by which China is shifting from the place of rule-taker to that of rule-maker in international provide chains.
I’ve watched this shift develop for a number of years. In 2023, in New York, I met with a consultant of the China Affiliation of Social Employees, a government-linked group. On the time, the group was reaching out to China Labor Watch and different abroad teams engaged on labor and compelled labor points. The Uyghur Pressured Labor Prevention Act had just lately taken impact in the US, and Europe was shifting towards its personal pressured labor guidelines.
Looking back, I can see that these contacts seem to have been a part of a broader effort to grasp the prevailing worldwide system as Chinese language establishments grew to become more and more lively in growing requirements of their very own.
By 2025, this shift had develop into way more obvious. At an Group for Financial Cooperation and Growth (OECD) discussion board in Paris, Jiang Hui, chairman of the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals & Chemical compounds Importers and Exporters (CCCMC), a big government-linked trade affiliation, mentioned that some Chinese language corporations wouldn’t enable overseas organizations to audit them due to info safety issues. As a substitute, he urged Western corporations to take part in China’s rising provide chain governance system.
China’s efforts quickly gained worldwide recognition. The London Steel Trade, as an example, has already accepted the CCCMC’s due-diligence tips for mineral provide chains as an accredited commonplace. Chinese language-led frameworks have additionally drawn Western companies in immediately: The CCCMC’s Accountable Cobalt Initiative, which promotes due diligence throughout the cobalt provide chain, counts multinationals reminiscent of Apple, Tesla, and BMW amongst its members.
In 2025, a CCCMC draft mining commonplace included prohibitions on pressured labor and necessities for human rights due diligence. The China Enterprise Confederation and the Ministry of Commerce additionally issued new tips on labor compliance and company duty for Chinese language corporations working abroad.
Then, in July 2026, China’s new Regulation on Outbound Funding took impact. It requires Chinese language buyers overseas to respect employees’ authentic rights and adjust to relevant legal guidelines and worldwide practices. Extra considerably, it goes past compliance with current guidelines, calling on China to “actively take part within the formulation of worldwide funding guidelines.”
China can be constructing platforms to advertise its present strategy overseas. In 2025, the CCCMC introduced governments, corporations, NGOs, and worldwide organizations, together with unbiased commerce unions from some mineral producing international locations, collectively in Xiamen for its Worldwide Discussion board on Sustainable Mineral Provide Chains.
This enlargement of China’s regulatory ambitions comes as Washington has lowered a few of its personal worldwide labor work. In 2025, the U.S. Division of Labor terminated tons of of tens of millions of {dollars} in worldwide applications addressing baby labor, pressured labor, and trafficking, leaving extra space for China to broaden its affect over international labor and supply-chain governance.
Beijing’s language on company duty additionally stands in stark distinction to Washington’s present place: China now emphasizes shared growth and bettering native livelihoods, whereas the US more and more focuses on actions that it claims are defending American employees from unfair competitors. China’s message might resonate extra strongly in growing international locations as a result of it presents its requirements as a part of their very own growth.
The West’s best weak point is that, after a long time of writing and selling these guidelines, it nonetheless has not ensured that employees worldwide genuinely profit. That offers China room to advertise its personal requirements and its personal narrative. Nonetheless, Beijing is clearly prepared to broaden its affect over international guidelines even with out first bettering circumstances for employees in China itself.
The logic behind the 2 approaches is more and more related: Each governments are tying labor requirements to broader nationwide financial pursuits. The 2 techniques nonetheless differ in necessary methods.
Western provide chain due diligence techniques usually emphasize entry to info, exterior evaluation, and threat identification. China’s rising system additionally emphasizes labor rights and company duty, however provides larger weight to oversight by the state, info safety, and the position of Chinese language establishments in setting and implementing requirements.
For now, subsequently, the competitors is essentially about who will get to put in writing the principles for international provide chains.
If these requirements strengthen the competitiveness of Chinese language corporations abroad and provides China a larger position in governing these chains, particularly in growing and important mineral producing international locations, Beijing has ample purpose to advertise them. In reality, it already has.
In the end, the matter of who writes the principles is much less necessary than whether or not or not these guidelines truly enhance circumstances for employees worldwide. If competitors pushes either side to show that their requirements work, it will not be a foul factor for international employees.