The co-chairmen of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and a member of the House of Representatives, James P. McGovern of Massachusetts, have addressed a letter to Chris Paul and Michele Roberts, the president and executive director of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA). In it Merkley and McGovern – sponsors of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act – call on NBA players to leverage their contracts with Chinese brands to push them to end their use of cotton from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region or relinquish their endorsement deals with them. The letter mentions three brands by name: Anta, Li-Ning, and Peak. “The U.S. State Department,” reads the letter, “has determined that the Chinese government is committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, including the mass internment of over a million primarily Muslim ethnic minorities and the systematic use of forced labor to make goods for global export. The NBA and NBA players should not even implicitly be endorsing such horrific human rights abuses.” The endorsers include Klay Thompson, Gordan Hayward, Rajon Rondo and Alex Caruso for Anta, Dwyane Wade, Jimmy Butler, Evan Turner and CJ McCollum for Li-Ning, and Dwight Howard and Lou Williams for Peak. Through its customs administration, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been fighting back against brands that have stopped sourcing their cotton in Xinjiang, banning some 81 “hazardous” items from importation, among them some children’s apparel from Nike, Gap, H&M and Zara. The CCP has also been waging a campaign on social media to push Chinese citizens to buy domestic brands.

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