Report: John Kerry Holds Equity in Fund Linked To Uyghur Labor Abuse

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry reportedly has $1 million invested with a Hillhouse China Value Fund L.P., the second-highest shareholder in a solar panel company linked to Uyghur labor abuse.

A report by the Washington Free Beacon indicates that the fund purchased a six percent stake — which would make it the second-largest shareholder — in a Chinese solar panel manufacturer that goes by LONGi Green Energy. The company has been targeted by human rights groups as well as American lawmakers for getting some of the raw materials used from companies suspected of using forced labor in China:

LONGi “is a customer of many of the polysilicon companies that are engaged in labor transfers in the Uyghur Region,” according to a report by the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University. The company has ongoing purchasing agreements with polysilicon manufacturers GCL-Poly and Daqo, the report found.

GCL-Poly and Daqo were blacklisted by the U.S. Department of Commerce in June for allegedly “participating in the practice of, accepting, or utilizing forced labor involving Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups,” according to the Biden administration.

American Solar Manufacturers Against Chinese Circumvention (A-SMACC) has lobbied the current administration to examine LONGi’s supply chain being linked to forced labor, which allows the company to have extremely low costs on their manufactured products.

Kerry has been under scrutiny for appearing to use his position as a U.S. climate envoy to benefit China, as his investments, such as block regulations importing solar panels from China, even though he has acknowledged some of the solar panels in China are a product of forced labor.

“On the one hand, we’re saying to [China], ‘You have to do more to help deal with the climate,’” Kerry said last month. “And on the other hand, their solar panels are being sanctioned, which makes it harder for them to sell them.”

Intelligence analyst and publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, Anders Corr, told the Beacon that the envoy’s Chinese investments are”an outrage”:

Far too many investors have continued to pour billions into China even after abundant evidence that the country is executing an ongoing genocide and threatens war against our closest allies. … That Kerry too had funds invested in China is an outrage, not least because he is a public official who claims to uphold the highest of ethics. Investing in China, given its shocking violation of human rights and totalitarian political system, should be cause for immediate removal from any positions of public trust.

Last week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) called on President Joe Biden to fire Kerry after reports emerged he has a stake in a Hillhouse which has reportedly funneled money into a business blacklisted for its abuses against Uyghur Muslims.