The United States government believed hyping up "forced labor, genocide and human rights abuses" in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region would help contain China.

That's what Sheila Carey and Andrew Chira, two diplomatic officials at the US consulate in Guangzhou then, told guests at a reception in 2021, says a social media post by Global Times.

That would mean that certain US politicians knew they were lying about Xinjiang but still chose to do so. In fact, they fabricated those lies. That should come as no surprise though. For, wasn't it former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who headed the CIA from 2017 to 2018, who famously said: "We lied, we cheated, we stole"?

Pompeo is the only person in US history to have been promoted from CIA chief to secretary of state. And it seems many US officials follow in Pompeo's steps and serve the CIA with their fabricated lies.

However, what they do not realize is that by doing the CIA's bidding, they are actually hurting US interests. It is because of lies peddled by certain US politicians that the "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act" was passed by the US Congress and Senate in 2021, before US President Joe Biden signed it into law.

According to the act, all commodities from Xinjiang cannot clear US customs unless the importers provide ample proof there was no "forced labor" in the whole supply chain.

Voice of America quoted Doug Barry, a vice-president with the US-China Business Council, as saying that "the specifics of what must be proven and how have not been announced, leaving American companies to worry that cargo may be seized for unspecified reasons". The law is so broad that it can apply to many categories of goods regardless of proximity to Xinjiang. And that's worrisome for thousands of US companies, given that in the first quarter of 2021, Xinjiang exported goods worth $64.4 million to the US.