"U.S. steps up pressure on China over prison labor", 6 Jun 2016

U.S. authorities have blocked imports they suspect were made with convict labor linked to three Chinese firms, detaining goods including chemicals, textile fibers and sweetener…Closing the U.S. loophole, experts say, puts pressure on companies to pay more attention to the source of products they're buying…

Two of the Chinese companies whose products were blocked -- Tangshan SunFar Silicon Company and Tangshan Sanyou Group -- could not be reached for comment…A manager…Inner Mongolia Hengzheng Group Baoanzhao Agricultural and Trade, saidit was "absolutely impossible" that it would have used convict laborers…Malaysia-based PureCircle, which imports the sweetener the U.S. detained at port last week, has denied that its goods were made by Hengzheng Group, noting that it has "an explicit policy prohibiting use of forced labor."…

…The U.S. Department of Labor maintains a list of items…that it suspects are the product of forced labor…including prisons. The items it lists from China include toys, clothes, shoes, electronics, bricks and even Christmas decorations. The Laogai Foundation also keeps a list that includes tea.

Prison labor also happens in other countries, including the U.S.…But the global nature of modern supply chains often makes it difficult for U.S. authorities to identify whether a product was made by forced labor… There's also "a lot of unauthorized subcontracting -- you give the order to a factory, but they give it to somebody else to complete," said Jeremy Prepscius…at [BSR]… With China's labor costs on the rise, subcontracting is an increasingly appealing option, Lamrad said.

…U.S. has also only ever successfully prosecuted one Chinese company for importing forced labor goods into the U.S. -- and that was 15 years ago. "You can audit a factory," Rozenzweig said. "It's a lot more difficult to audit a prison in China."