Two Swiss textile machinery companies, Rieter and Uster have been singled out for exporting machines to China amid allegations of forced labor in the clothing supply chain including Uyghur and other minorities.

As per a report by the Textile Focus, Xinjiang purchased $6.4 million (CHF6 million) worth of machines from Switzerland in 2019. According to customs data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), the region imports the majority of its machinery from three nations, Germany ($26.8 million), Japan ($23.4 million), and Italy ($7.4 million). Switzerland, on the other hand, is a major exporter of knitting machine accessories like spindles, dobbies, and automatic stop motions, which are used in large spinning, weaving, and knitting machines. Over the previous three years, Switzerland has shipped $2 million worth of knitting machine accessories to the autonomous area.