China, Other Asian Nations Cited as State Sponsors of Human Trafficking in US Government Report

The U.S. State Department named China, North Korea, and Myanmar as state sponsors of the trafficking of persons for the second consecutive year in its annual report on human trafficking released on Thursday, citing the use of forced labor in the two East Asian countries and the recruitment and use of child soldiers in the Southeast Asian nation.

The annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report ranks 188 countries — rating them as Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 2 Watch List, or Tier 3 — based on whether they meet the minimum standards set by U.S. law to eliminate human trafficking, as mandated by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA). The minimum standards under the U.S. law include a government’s prohibition of and punishment of severe forms of human trafficking, and serious and sustained efforts to eliminate such trafficking.

In remarks given at the launch of the TIP report on Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken called out China’s use of detained ethnic Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim minority group living in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), as forced laborers to produce various Chinese-made goods.

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