Last week European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyden, announced a probe into China’s electric vehicle industry which apparently have benefitted from massive state subsidies. But it’s not only such subsidies that should worry us – production in the Chinese car industry ignores human rights and climate change, and the European car industry is complicit.

The global shift in manufacturing from Europe and North America to Asia has been well-documented. As factories have closed in the UK and the EU, the same companies have built up their manufacturing capability in China as well as trained and created a network of local suppliers to provide key components for their final products. This has been particularly marked in the car industry and is supported strategically by the Chinese government. The country is now one of the world’s top auto part suppliers, exporting upwards of USD 45 Billion (milliards) of products in 2021.

But at what cost? A recent report by the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University highlights the issue and focuses on the resources that the government in China has dedicated to moving the highly polluting and energy-intensive processing of raw materials essential to car manufacture to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The Kennedy Centre report highlights that practically every major traditional automotive electric vehicle manufacturer has used products coming from companies using forced labour.

In many cases, the car manufacturers are not directly involved. They purchase the parts from so-called “Tier One” suppliers, who themselves rely on further “Tier Two” suppliers and other companies down the supply chain to produce the components. The report highlights three areas of raw material production (steel, aluminium, copper) and their applications in batteries for EVs, electronics, as well as interiors to show how these products are incorporated into cars that are sold onto the UK market.

Our parliamentary party has highlighted the abuses taking part in the region. Layla Moran highlighted the human rights abuses in the region during her Autumn Conference 2020 online speech, and she also criticised the Foreign Secretary Cleverly’s visit to China last week, calling on him to think about the signal being sent to China.

Together with Cleverly’s call for more foreign investment from China in the UK and the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee’s report on how China’s ambition at a global level “poses a national security threat,” it is important that we as a party urgently adopt policy on how to deal with China. I’ll be backing an emergency motion at our Autumn Conference highlighting these issues.

* Robert Harrison is Chair of the Liberal Democrat European Group and former Chair of the LibDems in Europe Local Party. He also holds German nationality and was a candidate for the European Parliament for the FDP in 2024.