President Joe Biden’s White House is trying to reconcile his desire to ratchet up U.S. renewable power generation with his outrage over alleged Chinese human rights abuses in Xinjiang, a major supplier of a key component in solar panels.
Factories in Xinjiang, a western region of China that’s home to the oppressed Uyghur minority, produce half the global supply of polysilicon, a metal critical for the panels that turn sunlight into electricity.
But Biden has accused China of "genocide” in a campaign to erase the culture of the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs. Hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have been sent to Chinese "re-education” camps, according to the United Nations and advocacy groups.