Two separate rounds of materials testing have revealed the presence of cotton from East Turkistan, the occupied Uyghur homeland the Chinese Communist Party refers to by the colonialist name “Xinjiang,” in clothing on Labubus, a series of small impish dolls that have become an international sensation.
“Independent laboratory testing of 16 of 20 Pop Mart Labubu dolls sold in the U.S. used isotopic testing to trace their cotton directly to Xinjiang — a region where forced labor is systematically embedded in cotton production,” the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), whose researchers have helped uncover the expansiveness of China’s national Uyghur slave trafficking program, highlighted on Thursday. The foundation noted that Pop Mart has previously been publicly supportive of the Chinese Communist Party’s activities in East Turkistan, condemning the sports apparel company Adidas for “hurting the feelings of the Chinese people” after it publicly announced it would no longer use cotton from East Turkistan.
VOC is calling for the United States to significantly limit imports of Pop Mart products until it is possible, if ever, to confirm that their goods do not have any ties to slavery. Congress passed a law to prevent the import of Uyghur slavery products into the United States called the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) that took effect in 2022, effectively banning imports from East Turkistan unless the importer can prove that the product was not tainted with slave labor. As the law only affects products directly imported from East Turkistan, and Pop Mart has manufacturing operations throughout China, most Labubus are not automatically subject to UFLPA inspection.
Ascertaining the origin of cotton is relatively routine for many international companies to ensure that they can verify where they are getting their raw materials and abide by international human rights standards. Cotton, as a natural fabric, has a DNA blueprint that forensic testing companies can use to figure out where it was grown.
“We can put a man on the moon, surely we can know where our cotton comes from,” Grant Cochrane, the CEO of forensic tracing company Oritain, told Breitbart News in 2022. “We work with a wide range of brands. If people want to know they can know.”
On Thursday, the New York Times – a publication that has previously published Maoist propaganda – revealed that it had commissioned testing of cotton on 20 Labubu dolls it purchased to see if they contained cotton from East Turkistan, following a similar testing round commissioned by the human rights group Campaign for Uyghurs. Both rounds of testing found evidence of “Xinjiang cotton” on the dolls, mostly in their clothing, as the dolls themselves are made with mostly synthetic materials.
The Times observed:
Pieces of clothing from 16 of the 20 dolls were identified as containing cotton from Xinjiang, mainly their T-shirts. The dolls themselves are primarily made of polyester, but the outer part of some of the dolls, including the clothes, are described as containing cotton.
“The Labubu findings expose how deeply Beijing’s coercion has penetrated global consumer supply chains,” Dr. Adrian Zenz, VOC Senior Fellow and Director in China Studies and one of the preeminent researchers exposing the genocide of Uyghurs by the Chinese Communist Party, said in a statement shared with Breitbart News. “Inside China, a genuinely clean cotton supply chain is all but impossible to maintain. In 2025 alone, authorities transferred over 3 million people via ‘labor transfers,’ with those refusing state work assignments facing detention and long-term imprisonment.”
The Labubu – according to its manufacturer, the Chinese company Pop Mart, is a “small monster with high, pointed ears and serrated teeth” who “is kind-hearted and always wants to help, but often accidentally achieves the opposite.” Its likeness is often described as “ugly” and it appears to be a form of demon or imp. Many Labubus are sold with clips to be displayed on owners’ purses or other bags.
A view of the Pop Mart store at the shopping mall in Shanghai, China, on March 16, 2026. (JPix/NurPhoto via Getty)
Labubu is by far Pop Mart’s most popular product, becoming a household name in the United States as a result of a long list of celebrities stepping out and being photographed with their Labubus in tow. Among the most high-profile individuals sporting Labubus in public are tennis star Naomi Osaka, reality television personality Kim Kardashian, and Barbadian singer Rihanna.
Pop Mart maintains its sales high by selling Labubus in a format known as a “blind box”: the buyer does not know exactly which kind of Labubu they have purchased until they open their box. The company also provides a wide variety of designs, some touted as “rarer” than others. The blind box promotes addiction, as Labubu fans continue to buy dolls in pursuit of the “rare” versions or especially beloved models. Obsessives have admitted to American publications spending thousands of dollars on Labubus.
While regular models of Labubu often sell for between $20 and $40, Pop Mart has expanded to offer luxury versions of the doll. At press time, the Pop Mart website is offering for sale a special edition FIFA World Cup Labubu for $149, for example, and an item called a “Mega Labubu 400%” for $314.90. Labubus have become so popular internationally that Sony Pictures announced in March that it is working with Pop Mart to produce a Labubu movie, intended in part both to sell more Labubus and to expand the popularity of other Pop Mart doll characters.
The founder of Pop Mart, Wang Ning, is a vocal Communist Party supporter who has appeared on the pages of Chinese state media encouraging international corporations to move manufacturing operations into China, despite overwhelming evidence of mass enslavement in the country.
“China’s excellent manufacturing industry and strong market can become a platform for artists around the world to incubate IPs, which are incubated in China and go global later,” Wang told the state-run Global Times in July, crediting the Labubu’s success to “precisely Chinese manufacturing.”
The Chinese government is believed to have begun the process of genocide against the indigenous Uyghur population of East Turkistan in 2017, initially constructing concentration camps that it used to imprison as many as 3 million people. Survivors of the camps have testified to being forced into slavery, as well as experiencing forced sterilization, beatings, rape, and other atrocities. The forced labor operation appeared to move nationwide around 2020. That year, the groundbreaking report “Uyghurs for Sale” by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) revealed that China was using bus transfers to send Uyghur slaves into factories all over the country, making it effectively impossible to confirm that a product made in China was not tainted by the human trafficking initiative. The report implicated dozens of international corporations in using factories tied to the sale of Uyghur slaves.
VOC estimated this week that as many as 3 million Uyghurs are enslaved in East Turkistan alone.
“In 2025 alone, authorities transferred over 3 million people via ‘labor transfers,’ with those refusing state work assignments facing detention and long-term imprisonment,” VOC observed. “Xinjiang produces over 90% of China’s cotton and roughly 20% of global cotton supply, making genuinely clean cotton supply chains inside China vanishingly rare and impossible to maintain.”
Pop Mart reportedly told the New York Times that the company would investigate the report and hold suppliers to “the highest standards.”
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