U.S. Boycott, Multiple Reports Point to Persistent Cotton Crisis in Xinjiang
President Joe Biden’s move to place a U.S. diplomatic boycott on the 2022 Winter Olympic Games to be hosted in Beijing has once again put the spotlight on human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
While American athletes will still be able to compete in the Games that begin Feb. 4, the White House stated its decision Monday is a protest against China’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.”
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Australia, Canada and the U.K. are among the countries that are also said to be considering a diplomatic boycott of the Games, as multiple reports over the years have emerged alleging mass detention, forced labor, surveillance, and oppression of the Uyghur people and other Muslim minorities. China has always denied the existence of Xinjiang detainment camps or forced labor transfers, describing them instead as vocational centers and poverty alleviation programs.
However, two more papers published in November are urging attention to the concerns. One report, “Laundering Cotton: How Xinjiang Cotton Is Obscured in International Supply Chains,” linked big industry players like Walmart, Target, Macy’s, PVH Corp., Gap and Lululemon and smaller names like Everlane to suppliers known to source cotton from Xinjiang.
Products made with Xinjiang cotton have been illegal in the U.S. since January when the American Customs and Border Service banned the importation of the material. But nearly a year on, goods with tainted cotton are still reaching American consumers, research by Sheffield Hallam University found.
Using publicly available information, the report examined dozens of intermediary manufacturers from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Ethiopia, China and Mexico that purchase unfinished cotton goods from five leading Chinese manufacturers that have sourced Xinjiang cotton.
These five Chinese companies — Huafu Fashion, Lianfa Textiles, Luthai Textiles, Texhong Textiles, and Weiqiao Textiles — have all sourced cotton from Xinjiang at least through the fall of 2020, and most of them have subsidiaries there that have employed state-sponsored labor transfers, in other words, suspected forced labor.
“Through an analysis of the bills of lading, shipping records, and corporate disclosures of these five companies alone, we identified: 53 intermediary manufacturers (from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Ethiopia, China and Mexico) that purchase unfinished cotton goods from five leading Chinese manufacturers that have sourced Xinjiang cotton, and 103 well-known international brands that are supplied by those intermediaries and are thus at high risk of having Xinjiang cotton in their supply chains,” the research contends.
More than half of China’s exports of cotton semifinished products are destined for countries within Asia such as Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and Cambodia, according to U.N. Comtrade data, and about 85 percent of cotton grown in China is produced in Xinjiang, amounting to 22 percent of global cotton production. A China Daily news report in November also quoted an official saying that despite the U.S. ban, exports of textiles and garments from Xinjiang had increased significantly in the first nine months of the year, reaching $4.74 billion, an increase of 53.7 percent year-on-year.
Though several of the 103 brands named in the report responded to the researchers to deny tainted cotton in their supply chain, the report said its aim was to urge brands to do a deep dive into their due diligence and that standard auditing was inadequate in preventing Xinjiang cotton from entering the supply chain.
“The surveillance, internment, and forced labor regime in operation in Xinjiang reveals the very real limits to standard due diligence, social auditing, and workers’ rights programs,” the report claimed. “In the Uyghur Region, these strategies are simply impossible, as there is no freedom of participation in the labor market for minoritized citizens, much less an ability to freely engage in grievance mechanisms, worker voice programs, or stakeholder engagement. However, this report shows that human rights due diligence is also currently inadequate in identifying and addressing Uyghur forced labor in supply chains of manufacturers outside of China and enforcement mechanisms are not currently responding to the export of those goods internationally.”
In separate research also released last month, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide expressed grave concern surrounding the alleged human rights abuses in the region. The report, “To Make Us Slowly Disappear: The Chinese Government’s Assault on the Uyghurs,” claimed that unlike bloody genocides the world has seen in the past, Beijing allegedly is relying on forced sterilization and IUDs to reduce the size of the Uyghur population — even as it expands its standard childbearing policy to accommodate for three children per household.
“The nature of China’s atrocities against the Uyghurs, and specifically its assault on the regenerative capacity of the group, challenge standard policy responses,” the center contended. “The Chinese government’s multifaceted attack on Uyghurs does not rely on large-scale killings, as commonly occur in recognized genocides. Rather, China has relied on a combination of high-tech surveillance, intimidation, mass detention, forced labor, forced transfer, and coercive birth control practices to commit atrocity crimes. The lack of mass killing has probably reduced the amount of international outrage, especially before the size of the mass detention program became public, and made it easier for China to deflect criticism.
“This includes, in particular, a deepening assault on Uyghur female reproductive capacity through forced sterilization and forced intrauterine device (IUD) placement as well as the separation of the sexes through mass detention and forcible transfer,” it said, citing data that showed the birth rate in certain Uyghur regions had dropped by 70 to 80 percent over a few short years, while IUD placements had surged some 60 percent from 2014 to 2018.
Moreover, it said that “female former detainees have spoken of the systematic use of rape, sexual abuse, and torture of women held inside the detention centers by agents of the Chinese government.
“China’s growing economic, military and political strength makes it easier for Chinese leaders to rebuff external calls for change, dismissing them as interference in Chinese internal affairs, and more difficult for external actors to build broad coalitions and find effective points of leverage,” the center said.
“The fact that the atrocities have been ongoing for years means that the Chinese government has already invested significantly in and absorbed some political or reputational costs associated with its policy of systematic repression. Perhaps most alarmingly, it has witnessed the world’s acceptance of these atrocities with little repercussions and no criminal accountability,” the report claimed. “It is typically more difficult to convince leaders to reverse a course of action that they believe benefits them than to forgo one in the first place. Especially if they feel it is working and there are no disincentives to stop them.”
Related:
U.S. Bans Xinjiang Cotton To Combat Slave Labor
What’s Going On in Xinjiang and How It Impacts Fashion
‘Made in China’ Book Spotlights Forced Uyghur Labor
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