A woman works in a cotton field in Awat County, northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on October 25, 2019. / Xinhua
A woman works in a cotton field in Awat County, northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on October 25, 2019. / Xinhua
Editor’s note: Hannan Hussain is a commentator and writer on foreign affairs. He is a Fulbright Recipient at the University of Maryland, USA, and a former research fellow at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute. The article reflects the views of the author and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
In a new report this week, the US-based Center for Global Policy (CGP) carries out malicious propaganda against labor engagement in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China, falsely claiming that ethnic minorities are involved in the cotton harvest , subject to a “state-prescribed transfer of forced labor” and a poverty reduction program. “
The report claims to have uncovered “new evidence” and merely repackaged toxic anti-China reports, including alleged “intrusive on-the-spot surveillance” by government and law enforcement officials who forced cotton pickers into “strict” Supervised Groups “and some other far-fetched fairy tales about elderly Uygurs and children being led to follow two distinctly restrictive stands for cotton picking. Taken together, such blatant factual falsification only establishes the report’s predicted bias toward the cotton-picking exercise in Xinjiang, the fair and equal treatment of minorities, and the role of a state they trust completely.
Starting with China’s labor law policy in the country’s largest cotton-growing area, it is an indisputable fact that numerous locals were freed from the shackles of poverty as early as 2018 in order to achieve a new level of economic mobility in contrast to CGP proposals of coercion. Contrary to the hollow assumption cited in the report, there is no seamless “transition” in Xinjiang between securitization and poverty alleviation to violate labor rights in the region, let alone under the pretext of “extrajudicial internment”.
Such propaganda utterance shows only an astronomical gap in the report’s acceptance of the “Citizenship Relationship” in the cotton-growing areas of Xinjiang, backed by equal legal protections and unprecedented consideration of the rich ethnic differences that make workers’ engagement in Xinjiang support, is supported.
Adrian Zenz – the main author of the report – concludes that any legitimate interaction between government agencies and selected ethnic minorities in cotton fields must be viewed as a “level of consent with regard to this process” [the process of allegedly high-risk labor transfer]”and that these minorities” can benefit financially. ”
Zenz then lands at the core of his politicization and recommends a new course of action for the well-documented foreign interference by the US government: issuing a withhold release order for every cotton product from Xinjiang and pleading for an extension beyond US customs and border detention from the start this month. The report offers overt endorsement of the Uygur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which points to the gallery of anti-China lobbyists for whom so-called research plays.
More importantly, both the report and the recent U.S. Customs Order are similar, unfounded variations on the alleged prison labor tactics. It is clear why CGP would feel compelled to target ethnic labor force participation in Xinjiang’s cotton-picking fields and to crack down on US actions as compelling international cotton supply chains and the role of the Chinese state as desirable.
The cover of the CGP report on Xinjiang.
The cover of the CGP report on Xinjiang.
Note that such an outrageous, politically motivated labor participation target is nothing new in Xinjiang. Dedicated research and extensive studies of labor rights in Xinjiang have categorically exposed Western conspiracies against the real state of labor responsive engagement in the region, which extends beyond the scope of cotton fields and encompasses the length and breadth of the region.
Millions of urban and rural workers have benefited flatly from government vocational training projects, and the proven impact of labor government regulations is related to the fundamental rights of workers rather than a malicious conspiracy to undermine them.
Experts point out that it may be a natural consideration for workers, at times, not to be part of an active work engagement based on their own voluntary will, as opposed to a dangerous fictional pursuit of forced government-sponsored transfers.
Industrial distribution has also increased, and the growth in industrial participation continues to coincide with the upward trend in disposable income, benefiting the same swarms of workers that Zenz and select Western media companies are forcing.
In a subsequent propaganda piece for the Wall Street Journal, Zenz charged the so-called CGP “results” as the reason for more extensive Western controls of “Chinese imports produced with forced labor”. Zenz claims what he has consistently suggested throughout the report: Beijing will “never allow independent reviews of working conditions” and it is time to attempt certain US violations of China’s affairs of strict sovereign interest.
Therefore, if the inherent motivation for doing so-called research is to support government narratives about apparent foreign interference, there is no chance that the report, or any of its findings, apply to a world that deserves to be informed about Xinjiang and the cotton -Picking exercise, not politically influenced.
In measuring the CGP report against hard facts and independent findings, as detailed above, its deep rifts and obvious inventions do not match the level of labor deployment in Xinjiang – fundamentally.
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