BASF is facing blowback from a broad coalition of politicians after a German media investigation tied one of its joint venture partners with what human rights experts describe as China’s genocidal repression of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
An investigation by Der Spiegel and ZDF, published last Friday, found that employees of Xinjiang Markor Chemical Industry Co., a subsidiary of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act-blacklisted Xinjiang Zhongtai Group, accompanied state and public officials on home visits to Uyghur households as late as 2019. Part of an initiative known as “fanghuiju,” the purpose of such visits, according to Human Rights Watch, is to surveil and politically indoctrinate potential dissidents, keeping them in line with China’s Han majority.
BASF and Xinjiang Markor Chemical Industry Co. operate two shared ventures in the Korla Economic Technology Development Zone: BASF Markor Chemical Manufacturing, which produces polytetrahydrofuran, and Markor Meiou Chemical, which generates 1,4-butanediol. Both chemicals are used in the creation of stretch textiles commonly employed in sportswear. BASF, the German chemical giant said, does not own a stake in Xinjiang Markor Chemical Industry Co. itself. It was on Markor’s website that Der Spiegel and ZDF found posts referring to “fanghuiju” teams from its facility mingling with villagers.
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“We currently have no reason to believe that employees from our joint ventures were involved in the measures described,” a spokesperson said of its own factories, which employ 120 people in all, none of whom are Uyghurs. “Irrespective of this, we take the current reports very seriously, will continue to investigate them and will take them into account in our assessment of business relationships.”
But a letter from the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) on Monday spoke of the “shocking degree” to which BASF “appears to be implicated in gross abuses” of Uyghurs in the region. Writing to BASF CEO Martin Brudermüller, the co-chairs and members of the international cross-party group urged the chemical giant to withdraw from Xinjiang, saying that its “credibility and integrity” are at stake.
“It is our hope that BASF will take this matter seriously and prioritize the well-being of those in Xinjiang who are suffering grievously under oppressive and discriminative policies,” the letter said. “We are confident that by addressing these concerns head-on, BASF can reaffirm its commitment to ethical business practices.”
The BASF spokesperson said that the company has received the letter, which it takes “very seriously” and will “approach the signatories promptly and make them an offer of dialogue.” It’s also monitoring the “situation of minorities in Xinjiang, as well as the political discussions surrounding it.“ So far, no audits of the joint ventures have found any evidence of forced labor or other human rights violations.
“As we consider human rights due diligence an ongoing task, we will continue to analyze the situation and take appropriate actions, including risk-based controls such as audits and assessments,” the representative said. “We are also in continuous contact with representatives of non-governmental organizations to gather further information for our review.”
But Adrian Zenz, the German anthropologist whose seminal work brought the Uyghur repression into the spotlight, said that the new evidence connects a BASF partner in the “atrocities during the height of the mass internment campaign” and therefore cannot be ignored. It was Zenz who directed Der Spiegel and ZDF to the Markor posts.
“This makes BASF’s continued presence in Xinjiang untenable, especially in light of the company’s historical connections to the Holocaust,” Zenz told Sourcing Journal. BASF predecessor IG Farben produced the infamous Zyklon B, the lethal gas that Nazis used to mass murder Jews in Auschwitz and other death camps during World War II.
IPAC German co-chair Michael Brand, a Member of the German Bundestag, agreed.
“The fact that a company which was historically burdened during the Nazi era is now again indirectly involved in a system that takes thousands of innocent people from their homes and puts them in mass camps, with forced internment and with forced labor is a truly appalling story for BASF and also for Germany,” he said.
His U.K. counterpart, Member of Parliament Sarah Champion, said that companies cannot pretend to be surprised that atrocities against Uyghurs are being committed in the region because they “have had years to withdraw from Xinjiang.”
Across the pond, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which has been hawkish on the enforcement of the UFLPA, expressed its support on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Chairs support @IPAC initiative urging @BASF to leave the #XUAR because of reported complicity in serious rights abuses,” it wrote on Thursday. Shareholders and the press must challenge the use of internal ‘audits’ as a defense by XUAR-based companies, as they are used to cover-up instead of expose.”