In the wool spinning factory at the Xinjiang Tianshan Wool Textile Company, it takes just one worker to operate each of the long spinning mules that turns cashmere wool into yarn. But automation is not the only reason why there are fewer people working at this factory on the outskirts of Urumqi than there were a few years ago.
Last year, the United States government added the company to its list of sanctioned entities under the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act (UFLPA), banning the importation of its products. The impact was swift and dramatic.
“Foreign trade now accounts for less than 10 per cent, compared to 80 per cent in the past,” said Liu Zhongbin, the company’s chairman.
“This creates some difficulties for the company and also affects the normal employment of some of our employees. We have reduced our staff from about 700 in 2021 to about 500 now.”
Liu was speaking after showing a group of foreign diplomats, academics and other dignitaries around the factory on a tour arranged by the government of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The visit was part of a new effort by the Chinese authorities to push back against the sanctions imposed by the US and the European Union in response to the human rights situation in Xinjiang.
[ The tourism boom in China’s pariah provinceOpens in new window ]
At a symposium held in the Xinjiang State Guest House in Urumqi this week, officials told the international guests that the sanctions were politically motivated, illegal under international law and based on false allegations. They also argued that the economic impact of the sanctions was damaging the welfare of the Uyghur minority the measures were supposed to be defending.
Xinjiang’s governor Erkin Tuniyaz, who is himself on the sanctions list, said more than 500 international delegations visited the region this year. Describing work as fundamental to improving living standards, he said his government was committed to upholding labour standards and protecting workers’ rights under the law.
“We have actively implemented international labour and human rights standards and made positive contributions to promoting the all-round development of people. China is a founding member of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and a permanent member of the [UN] Security Council. It has ratified 28 international labour conventions, including seven core conventions, including the Convention on Forced Labour, the Convention on Equal Remuneration for Work of Equal Value, the Convention on Minimum Age for Employment, and the Convention on the Abolition of Forced Labor,” he told the symposium.
“However, in recent years, some anti-China forces in the international community have ignored Xinjiang’s tremendous efforts to protect human rights and the remarkable achievements it has made, adopted double standards, wantonly hyped up the so-called problem of forced labour in Xinjiang, and even introduced vicious laws related to Xinjiang, imposing suppression and sanctions on relevant industries and enterprises in Xinjiang.
“These have seriously violated international law and basic norms of international relations, seriously interfered with China’s sovereignty and Xinjiang’s internal affairs, seriously infringed upon the right to work, the right to life and the right to development of people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, seriously interfered with Xinjiang’s prosperity and stability, and fully exposed their vile nature of pursuing power politics and bullying.”
The programme for international delegates included a visit to an exhibition on the Fight against Terrorism and Extremism in Xinjiang. This documented the history of violent incidents by Uyghur separatists with photographs of the dead and injured and displays of captured weapons.
Bordering India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Mongolia and Russia, Xinjiang is China’s biggest region and one of its poorest. About 45 per cent of the population are Uyghurs, 42 per cent are Han (the ethnic group 90 per cent of Chinese people belong to) and most of the rest are Hui, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Mongol and Tajik.
Xinjiang enjoyed two brief periods of independence before the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949 and some Uyghurs, most of whom are Muslims, continued to aspire to a separate state. Alongside a peaceful movement campaigning for civil, cultural and religious rights, militants conducted an armed campaign over decades, with operations in Xinjiang and throughout China.
Separatists killed 31 people in a bomb attack on a crowded market in Urumqi in 2012 and suicide bombers went on a stabbing rampage at a railway station during a visit to the city by Xi Jinping in 2014. There were reports that Uyghur men had become fighters in armed Islamist groups in Afghanistan and Syria and the exhibition in Urumqi includes violent jihadi videos apparently featuring Uyghur fighters.
In May 2014 Beijing launched what it called a Strike Hard campaign against terrorist threats, linking the violent attacks to religious extremism and Uyghur separatism. By 2019, the government was claiming that it had destroyed almost 1,600 violent and terrorist gangs, arrested nearly 13,000 terrorists and punished more than 30,000 people for illegal religious activities.
Perhaps a million people, many of whom were not accused of any crime but were suspected of showing signs of radicalisation, were sent to Vocational Education and Training Centres for “deradicalisation and re-education”. There have long been allegations that detainees in these centres were sent to work in nearby factories and that prison inmates were also obliged to work outside.
The Chinese government said the centres closed in 2019 and most foreign observers agree that this aspect of the re-education programme has ended. More recently, allegations of forced labour have focused on programmes of poverty alleviation through labour transfer which see workers moved from rural areas to places where labour is needed.
The US labour department this year identified the labour transfer programme as “Xinjiang’s primary coercive labour system, with labour transfers occurring more than three million times in 2022″. It is for alleged co-operation with such a scheme that the Xinjiang Tianshan Wool Textile Company was sanctioned, although its chairman Liu denies that it has ever taken part in the programme.
“All of our new employees sign labour contracts in accordance with the national labour law. Then every employee enjoys the benefits they are entitled to, including the normal rights of workers,” he said.
China’s critics acknowledge that the labour transfer programme operates throughout the country and not only in Xinjiang, and that it is an established part of the country’s poverty alleviation campaign. But they claim it conforms to the ILO’s definition of forced labour as involuntary and enforced through a menace of penalty.
“While in Xinjiang the menace of penalty through internment or other sanctions is pervasive, the opportunity to leave the countryside and increase incomes means that involuntariness could theoretically vary,” writes German anthropologist Adrian Zenz, whose research has informed much of the decision-making on Xinjiang sanctions in both Washington and Brussels.
“In practice, however, Xinjiang’s extremely coercive environment means that choices are not ‘free’, transferred labourers are unable to freely leave employment, and none of these dynamics can be objectively evaluated through local audits or interviews, given that Uyghurs cannot speak freely. The resulting pervasive risk of state-imposed forced labour can only be effectively addressed through measures such as the UFLPA’s rebuttable presumption.”
Unlike the EU’s Forced Labour Regulation which came into force this week, the US legislation places the burden of proof on the sanctioned company to show that its goods have not been made using forced labour. If a company is put on the sanctions list, it has 30 days from the day its goods arrive at US customs to rebut the presumption of forced labour by producing “clear and convincing evidence that the goods in question were not produced wholly or in part by forced labour”.
Zhu Ningbo, a professor at Shanghai’s East China University of Science and Technology, has researched the impact of the US legislation on businesses in Xinjiang and how they can mitigate it. She said that even if companies are focused on the overseas market, they often lacked the know-how or language skills to disprove the allegations within the 30-day window.
And she said that, although some companies have diversified away from the EU and the US by exploring new markets, it is a difficult process.
“During my research, I came into contact with a company that used to export to the United States. Almost 90 per cent of its products were exported to the United States but after the sanctions, it was probably less than 1 per cent,” she said.
“I asked him if he could sell the product in other countries or markets. He said that because his products are high-end products, the price is relatively high, and it’s difficult to sell at this price in the domestic market. If you go to a third-world country, it will be very difficult in the short term. So it takes a while for them to adjust, and some companies may go bankrupt without having time to adjust.”
Zhu urges companies to fight the sanctions through the US legal system even if they are almost certain to lose, because successive legal actions will build up a body of evidence to show that Chinese companies are fully compliant with the ILO guidelines on forced labour.
Spokesman for the government of Xinjiang Xu Guixiang said the labour transfer scheme was being used as a pretext by the US in a campaign to undermine Xinjiang and China itself.
“This is a very important measure to help people to gain prosperity through work. Xinjiang, especially the southern Xinjiang region, has relatively harsh natural conditions and a relatively single industrial structure, so there are not enough jobs and opportunities for people of all ethnic groups. In such a region, it is difficult to achieve common prosperity for people of all ethnic groups. Therefore, in order to help people live a prosperous life, the government has created a series of employment opportunities, especially to help people find more jobs in other parts of Xinjiang or some provinces in mainland China,” he said.
“We believe that opening the door of Xinjiang wider and wider and strengthening exchanges and co-operation between Xinjiang and relevant countries is the most powerful means and the most powerful way to oppose unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States and the West. The unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States and the West on Xinjiang not only violate international law, nor are they in line with the interests of the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang.”
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Our In The News podcast is now published daily – Find the latest episode here
