"UK's £800m 'slave labour' China imports revealed - from bras to lawnmowers", 25 Aug 2025

Thousands of tonnes of clothes, toys, furniture and tech are being flown in from Xinjiang - which Uyghur campaigners say is a 'national disgrace'

Almost £1bn of goods from the Chinese region infamous for widespread slave labour have been imported into the UK in the last 12 months.

An investigation by The i Paper has obtained the first detailed list of all the products being flown into the country from Xinjiang, where hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs are allegedly forced to work in factories and fields against their will.

Vast numbers of clothes, toys, furniture and other items have been flown in from the region – including nearly two million T-shirts, 243,00 bras, 170,000 toothbrushes, 30,000 hair dryers, 6,000 lawn-mowers and 15,200kg of walnuts.

This is despite the UN warning of potential “crimes against humanity” in Xinjiang. China forcefully denies this, but the House of Commons has declared Beijing’s policy in the region a “genocide”. The EU has criticised the “atrocities” and the US has banned all imports from the region.

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Analysis of flight records shows that thousands of tonnes of items are being flown straight to British airports from Xinjiang’s provincial capital Ürümqi by two UK-based airlines: European Cargo and Titan Airways.

The massive scale of the UK’s imports – and how they have risen greatly in the last 12 months – is exposed through figures collated for The i Paper by the American trade analytics firm Import Genius.

A spreadsheet of Chinese customs records contains more than 12,000 entries from July last year to June 2025, each one logging a different type of product sent to the UK every month. The total comes to £809m.

The records log £12.4m of artificial flowers, £4.5m of jewellery, £3.6m of handbags and £2.9 of massage apparatuses. Christmas decorations, golf equipment drones, chess sets and greetings cards were among many other imports.

Besides parts for cars, bikes, clocks, cameras and sewing machines, there were also more unusual items such as ship propellers, poultry incubators and machinery to make spaghetti.

Why UK’s Xinjiang imports may be made by slaves

The abuse and exploitation of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang by the Chinese government has been a global concern since 2017. This was after evidence grew of Xi Jinping’s regime detaining Uyghurs and other local Muslim minorities in brutal camps.

Survivor accounts, leaked police files and online videos helped researchers uncover how people were persecuted to increase Beijing’s control over the region and boost the Chinese economy. Many simply disappeared.

Although China has since closed the camps – which it said were “vocational education and training centres” – experts say that forced labour remains just as common.

“Consumers in the UK don’t want to buy products made with Uyghur forced labour. And legislators should be protecting those consumers.”

Several types of products specifically linked to slavery allegations are being imported.

Cotton items worth more than £30m have been sent directly to the UK, for example, including tracksuits, dresses, underwear and socks. The true amount is probably far greater, because lots of cotton is transported around China or sent abroad before being exported.

Numerous reports indicate that cotton is harvested in Xinjiang by more than half a million workers who are highly likely to have been coerced into the work. Many are allegedly forcibly transported around the region for this intensive manual labour.

Although Beijing consistently denies the allegations, major international companies including Nike, Adidas, Uniqlo and H&M have refused to use Chinese cotton.

Campaigners question whether the Chinese internet giants Shein and Temu could be responsible for many fast-fashion imports.

Shein has been accused of investing in an industrial park linked to Xinjiang cotton – and its senior lawyer refused to tell MPs whether or not the company uses the region’s material, at a committee hearing in January. The firm did not reply to questions from The i Paper.

In 2023, Temu’s website was found to be selling products made in Xinjiang, according to a vetting company. The firm did not answer any queries for this article, but at the hearing with MPs in January, its legal counsel told MPs: “We do not permit sellers from the Xinjiang region to sell products on Temu.”

Solar cells and fittings worth £1.1m were also dispatched to the UK. But experts say these are often made by detained Uyghurs and the Government is banning the state-owned GB Energy from using Chinese solar panels as a result.

Experts fear that much more of Britain’s solar technology relies on Xinjiang, because the province produces half of the world’s polysilicon, a key component.

The data recorded £2.3m of tomato imports, despite Uyghur testimony that workers who pick the fruit are sometimes beaten or even given electric shocks if they do not meet their quotas.

Wigs made of human hair, valued at more than £34,000, have also been shipped to Britain. Concerns have been raised in the past that hair may be cut from the heads of Uyghur prisoners.

‘These findings make my blood boil’

Many of the products arrive on planes operated by the UK airlines European Cargo and Titan Airways, which launched routes from Ürümqi last year.

A total of 200 flights landed at Bournemouth, Cardiff and London Stansted in the first six months of this year, according to The i Paper’s analysis of records on the website FlightRadar24. […]

Titan Airways did not respond for this article. But a spokesperson for European Cargo said the airline recognises the importance of UN warnings about Uyghurs being abused.

“We remain vigilant about the challenges of managing this risk,” they said. “We have put in place enhanced due diligence requirements… We have made clear to our clients our expectations of ethical behaviour at all times.” They underlined that the airline adheres to UK laws. […]