VW’s dilemma in Xinjiang shows how the west is headed for an ethical car crash | Timothy Garton Ash

Europe and the US are economically dependent on China now – and ‘change through trade’ is no longer on the cards

On YouTube, you can watch a video clip of Volkswagen’s chief executive, Herbert Diess, denying that he knows what’s going on in Xinjiang. When the BBC correspondent helpfully spells it out – so-called reeducation camps for one million Uyghurs – Diess says: “I’m not aware of that.” Either he was being culpably ignorant about a region where Volkswagen has a factory, or he was lying.

This was in the spring of 2019, and a company spokesperson soon declared that Diess was “of course aware” of the situation in Xinjiang. The case is particularly sensitive because Volkswagen was originally set up by the Nazis, and its use of forced labour during the Third Reich has been scrupulously documented by German historians.

Related: Slavery will never be history as long as we turn a blind eye to China | Nick Cohen

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

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