Forced labor in Xinjiang? China borrows U.S. data and claims forced labor a chronic American disease
With comments from Prof. Darren Byler, Simon Fraser University
One thing that has irritated China, or the Chinese government, more than anything in recent years is perhaps U.S. and international criticism of its practice of forced labor in Xinjiang.
On August 31, the long-awaited report by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights “OHCHR Assessment of human rights concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China” was finally published.
The UN assessment found that the practice of forced or compulsory labor in Xinjiang happened in two ways. One was “placements in VETC (Vocational Education and Training Center) facilities and upon ‘graduation,’” where detainees had to work within the VETC facilities as part of the “graduation process,” with no possibility of refusal. Another was “labor placements in XUAR (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) and in other parts of China, known as ‘surplus labor’ and ‘labor transfer’ schemes,’” as the Chinese government linked its poverty alleviation schemes to the prevention and countering of religious “extremism,” with its perceived nexus between religious “extremism” and poverty in Xinjiang.
China did not like it one bit. On the same day, China’s permanent mission to the United Nations in Geneva issued a 122-page rebuttal titled, “Fight against Terrorism and Extremism in Xinjiang: Truth and Facts.” Its spokesperson said the report “smears and slanders China, and interferes in China’s internal affairs.” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson called the report "completely illegal and void,” and accused the OHCHR a thug and accomplice of the U.S. and the West.
However, just before the publication of the UN report, China’s official media demonstrated just how much they liked a different report out of the U.S.
On Aug. 30, People’s Daily carried “in-depth observation” titled “’Modern slaves’ in every corner of society - U.S. has become a disaster area of forced labor.” The piece started with quoting “Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers,” a report published in June by the University of Chicago Law School’s Global Human Rights Clinic and the American Civil Liberties Union, which examined the use of prison labor in the U.S. and called for reforms to make prison labor voluntary, with fair pay and proper training. In the same piece, People’s Daily also went back as far as 2004 to quote a UC Berkeley human rights study of hidden slaves and forced labor in the U.S.
If “Captive Labor” was mostly about involuntary work in America’s prisons, Xinhua News Agency had also published a 5,000-word long report of their own about forced labor in general in the U.S. titled “The United States' Practice of Forced Labor at Home and Abroad: Truth and Facts.”
In its introduction, the Xinhua report stated, “In fact, the claim of forced labor does not apply at all to Xinjiang. It is instead a chronic disease of the United States that goes all the way back to the founding of the country.” In its pages upon pages of “truth and facts” about America’s black slaves, prison labor, child farm workers, labor trafficking, etc., one finds the report consisted of all data published by American non-profit, research institutes, government agencies, and newspapers, including ACLU, the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, the Urban Institute, the American Economic Policy Institute, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Labor, Department of State, Department of Justice, the Human Trafficking Institute of the United States, as well as the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Anyway, not only did China’s official media use American data to mount a counterattack at the United States in terms of forced labor, it has also been revealed that Chinese diplomats at the UN had lobbied other countries to help China bury the UN report, putting "tremendous pressure to publish or not publish” on commissioner Michelle Bachelet, who was only able to publish the report on August 31, her last day in office.
Over a week later, on September 9, continuing with the strong reaction, China's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva announced that Beijing would no longer cooperate with the U.N. human rights office following the release of its report on Xinjiang.
Guest comments: Prof. Darren Byler, Simon Fraser University, author of “Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City:”
People of conscience must be able to oppose multiple atrocities at the same time. We can work for abolition and prisoner rights in North America while at the same time opposing forced labour and mass incarceration in China.
At the same time, there is an emerging consensus among international labour rights researchers that the current forced labour system in Northwest China is the largest in its scope and scale of any forced labour system in the contemporary world. Because it is orchestrated by the Chinese state in the absence of free speech and legal protections, it is incumbent upon citizens and institutions outside of China to raise awareness and reduce their complicity. If people outside China do not speak about it and act, no one will.