Without naming any specific companies and potentially abusing parliamentary privilege in the process, it has been a surprise to me just how many companies have been happy to burnish their credentials around the “S” and the “G” while continuing to source shamelessly from places that are known to be rife with Uyghur forced labour.
Let me give you a couple of examples. All four of the Uyghur region's polysilicon manufacturers are strongly implicated in the forced labour of Uyghurs—all four of them—and that accounts for about 40% of the global supply of polysilicon, without which it isn't possible to make solar panels.
Key actors in the lithium processing and distribution supply chain are very strongly connected to forced labour transfer schemes, these government-sponsored schemes where people, mainly from ethnic minorities, are effectively dumped in companies where they have to work against their will. We know this from Chinese government data, and it's demonstrated very credibly in the literature. Why these companies seem to be able to hold their noses where there's such a clear connection to forced labour is rather baffling.
I tend to agree with your analysis.