World Bank sent money to Chinese firms under sanctions for military and human rights violations.

World Bank Funds Chinese Companies Linked to Human Rights Abuses

The World Bank has come under fire for sending $25 million in 2021 to Chinese companies that are on U.S. sanctions lists for military and human rights abuses. According to a federal review of the contracts, at least five Chinese companies that appear to be on the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions lists were awarded contracts by World Bank borrowers in 2020 and 2021.

Recipients of World Bank Funds

• Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps: $7.1 million in 2021
• China Communications Construction Company Limited: $6.8 million in 2021
• China National Chemical Corp., Ltd.
• China Mobile Communications Group Co., Ltd.
• China National Electronics Import & Export Corporation
• Huawei subsidiary: over $9 million in contracts in 2020

The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a state-run manufacturer, was sanctioned for human rights abuses against Uyghurs. The company is involved in a pervasive program of egregious rights violations that affect the most marginalized people in the Uyghur Region, according to a report by the Helena Kennedy Centre at the United Kingdom’s Sheffield Hallam University. Other companies that received large sums of money from the World Bank in 2021 include the China Communications Construction Company Limited, a company that was sanctioned for its involvement with the Chinese military.

The findings could raise national security or foreign policy concerns for the U.S. and raise new questions about the United States’ role as the top financial contributor to the World Bank, in light of the bank’s increasingly close relationship with China.

The World Bank told the Washington Free Beacon that it “upholds a principle of universal/open eligibility, which guarantees that bidders from all our 189 member countries are eligible to bid for Bank-financed contracts.” The only exceptions are entities that are subject to sanctions imposed by the United Nations’ Security Council.

While the World Bank was created to support developing countries, companies in China—the world’s second-largest economy—are the biggest beneficiaries of its contracts. Businesses in China received 29.2 percent of all contract funding from the World Bank between 2013 and 2022, compared with 2.4 percent for U.S. companies and 4.4 percent for French companies, the GAO analysis found.

The World Bank says it is willing to work to increase the share of contracts that go to U.S. companies, but it can’t give money to companies that don’t put in bids for contracts. “Businesses in the U.S. enjoy a high rate of success when they bid for Bank-financed contracts, winning over 70 percent of the contracts for which they bid,” the World Bank told the GAO. “We assure you of our readiness to work with the U.S. executive director, Department of Commerce, and U.S. agencies to boost participation by U.S. businesses in Bank-financed procurement through our procurement outreach program.”

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