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May 26, 2021
China’s ongoing suppression of Uyghur and other minority populations in Xinjiang continues to incite alarm among U.S. policymakers. A broad bipartisan consensus has coalesced around excising Chinese goods tainted by forced labor and human rights abuses from U.S. supply chains. Existing efforts have largely targeted agricultural and textile products, but policymakers are now looking into the solar industry’s ties to Xinjiang. Tracing these linkages, however, is no easy task.
Polysilicon is at the heart of the matter. The high-grade form of silicon is produced through an energy intensive process before it is melted into cylindrical ingots, sawed into the thin wafers, and converted into photovoltaic (PV) cells for use in solar panels. China is the world’s leading producer of polysilicon, with Xinjiang alone accounting for 50 percent of the global polysilicon output in 2020.
May 11, 2021
In the first installment of a three-part series, executives at the Asia Pacific Initiative Chairman Yoichi Funabashi, Research Director Yuichi Hosoya and Ken Jimbo, Executive Director for the Japan-U.S. Military Statesmen Forum discuss how the international order involving the U.S. and China has evolved over the years and how it has affected the Japan-U.S. relationship.
YH: Roughly eight years have passed since then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Barack Obama held talks in February 2013, their first meeting after Abe’s second stint as prime minister began.
Japan-U.S. relations and U.S.-China relations have changed greatly since then.
Chinese Military-Civil Fusion and Section 1260H: Congress Incorporates Defense Contributors
Members of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) walk past the Tiananmen Gate in Beijing, China. (Photo credit: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg, https://flic.kr/p/ehevvw; CC by 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)
One provision of the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2021 requires the U.S. Department of Defense to publish an annual list of “Chinese military companies” (CMCs). Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo referenced the provision, Section 1260H, during her confirmation process as a way to handle the “substantial challenges China’s military-civil fusion policy poses to U.S. national security.” But while the 2021 NDAA required the list to be published starting on April 15, the report has not yet been released.