Are Wellington's new buses being made by forced Uyghur labour? An investigation is under way

Friday, 30 April 2021

Stuff Circuit's documentary Deleted exposes New Zealand business and political links to a Chinese company involved in human rights violations against Uyghurs and investigates the extrajudicial imprisonment of the brother of a Uyghur New Zealander.

The Greater Wellington Regional Council is investigating whether the 98 electric buses it is on the verge of leasing were made by Uyghurs in China who were forced into the work.

The potential links highlight the challenges in buying goods made in China, where the supply chains are often opaque, and come amid a broader effort to ensure New Zealand is not supporting modern slavery.

Chinese company CRRC is manufacturing buses and trains for New Zealand companies, despite alleged ties to forced labour, according to a news report published this week.

A total of 98 CRRC-made electric buses had already been ordered for Wellington, with the first one due to hit the streets in July, Greater Wellington Regional council transport committee chairman Roger Blakeley confirmed yesterday.

A protester from the Uyghur community living in Turkey, participates in a protest in Istanbul.

* More than 1200 Wellington bus services cancelled during March

* Consumer boycotts warn of trouble ahead for Western firms in China

Councillor Roger Blakeley said bus companies – not the council – decided to use CRRC .

Sixty-seven complete buses were coming for NZ Bus. A further 31 – which were just bus chassis – were coming for Tranzurban.

Bus companies were wholly responsible for the decision to use CRRC, Blakeley said, and he first heard about CRRC’s alleged forced labour links through media reports.

Blakeley has sought advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the regional council had launched an investigation that would involve getting legal advice.

“We acknowledge that ethical procurement is emerging as an important issue, particularly with respect to significant international procurement. The integrity of the supply chain is paramount,” he said.

“We require operators to comply with all applicable laws, licences, standards, consents and good industry practice relevant to providing services as a public transport operator.”

The first stage of that investigation would be looking into the validity of the forced labour claims then, if they were true, it would look at what options the council had, Blakeley said.

It would also look at whether the council did proper due diligence and whether its code of conduct for suppliers was adequate.

CRRC was named in February 2020 by Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) as one of 82 “foreign and Chinese companies potentially directly or indirectly benefiting from the use of Uyghur workers outside Xinjiang through abusive labour transfer programs as recently as 2019”.

China’s alleged persecution of 12 million Uyghur Muslim people has been condemned around the world. Earlier this month, the US State Department declared China was committing genocide and crimes against humanity.

In March, the New Zealand government supported the US, Britain, Canada, and the European Union when they announced sanctions aimed at freezing the assets of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a paramilitary force which is held responsible for human rights abuse.

Jason Young, director of the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington-Te Herenga Waka, said any product coming out of the Xinjiang area had a greater chance of using forced labour.

He was not aware of any comprehensive New Zealand list of companies that dealt with Uyghur forced labour making it hard for purchasers to know what to avoid.

Greater Wellington councillor Thomas Nash said news that CRRC was allegedly involved in slave labour was disturbing. He also only became aware of it this week.

He had since found out that ASPI had written about the issue, and named CRRC, about a year ago.

“If we have some credible evidence that buses are produced by slave labour, in my view, we shouldn’t get them,” he said.

But he believed there was a good chance that it was too late for the council to pull out of the contract to get the buses.

NZ Bus and Tranzurban did not respond to request for comment.

The Age newspaper in Australia in April reported that CRRC won a $2.3 billion contract to build 65 metro trains in Melbourne.

Transport Infrastructure Minister Jacinta Allan said she had assurances that the company was not benefiting from Uyghur slave labour. Now her department has been called before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal after it failed to produce those assurances.

According to the ASPI report, Uyghurs for Sale, Uyghur people were transferred out of Xinjiang, in northwest China, and 41 of those were transferred to the KTK Group, which lists CRRC as a customer and a strategic partner.

Update, August 9, 2021: Electric Autobus, the New Zealand agent for CRRC, strongly denies any forced labour was used in its supply chain.

Electric Autobus “has checked CRRC’s supply chain and says no components from KTK, the company allegedly using Uyghur forced labour, are used in any of its CRRC electric buses,” said Erich Livengood, managing director of Electric Autobus. “KTK makes interior components such as doors and seating. CRRC’s New Zealand electric buses contain seats from Poland and doors from Europe.”

“Electric Autobus has no tolerance for forced labour in its supply chain and supports all efforts to investigate forced labour claims and eliminate it where it exists. Electric Autobus works to continually improve procurement practices, which include first-hand factory visits and independent workplace labour audits,” Livengood said. “For example, global quality assurance company Intertek conducted independent workplace labour assessment of CRRC’s Hunan bus manufacturing facility in 2020 and found workers are well looked after with no evidence of forced labour.”