Volkswagen said on Wednesday (Feb 14) it is in talks with its joint venture partner in China over the future of its presence in Xinjiang, after a German newspaper reported what it said was evidence of the carmaker’s involvement in forced labour.

The report in business newspaper Handelsblatt said that independent researcher Adrian Zenz had found evidence of the use of forced labour in the construction of a test track in Turpan, Xinjiang, which is operated by a subsidiary of the SAIC-Volkswagen joint venture.

“Volkswagen is currently in talks with the non-controlled joint venture SAIC-Volkswagen about the future direction of business activities in Xinjiang province. Different scenarios are being considered intensively,” a spokesperson said when asked about the report.

SAIC did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Rights groups have documented abuses in Xinjiang, including the ethnic minority Uyghur population being subjected to forced labour in detention camps. Beijing denies any such abuses.

Zenz said in an email to Reuters that he had found photos and statements online, including on the website of an engineering company hired by Volkswagen and its Chinese joint venture partner SAIC in Xinjiang, which indicated that Ugyhurs were employed to construct the test track under poverty alleviation programmes which UN experts have said often involve forced labour.

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Zenz also said he found photos of workers at the engineering company, China Railway Engineering Corporation, wearing military drill uniforms and a red flower, which he described in a post on X as a “typical feature of the most coercive labour transfers”.

China Railway Engineering Corporation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Volkswagen said in a statement to Reuters that it was not previously aware of any indications of human rights abuses at the test track, which was built in conjunction with the carmaker’s jointly owned site in Urumqi.

When asked why the test site was not audited together with the Urumqi site last year, Volkswagen said that would not have been possible because the two sites were owned by different operating companies. It did not name the companies. REUTERS