Forced Labor? – China Pushes 1000s Of Uyghur Muslims To Work In Factories

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) published a new report that says at least 27 factories in nine Chinese provinces are using forced labor of at least 80,000 Muslim Uyghur minority from the western Xinjiang autonomous region. 

“Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 83 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony, and Volkswagen,” ASPI’s report said.

After several years of intense international criticism of China’s Uyghur re-education camps of more than one million people, many of these folks have graduated and been funneled into government-directed factories around the country. 

The report said, “It is extremely difficult for Uyghurs to refuse or escape these work assignments, which are enmeshed with the apparatus of detention and political indoctrination both inside and outside of Xinjiang. In addition to constant surveillance, the threat of arbitrary detention hangs over minority citizens who refuse their government-sponsored work assignments.” 

It added that “local governments and private brokers are paid a price per head” by the Xinjiang provincial government to “organise the labour assignments,” which ASPI says a new phase of government “repression” of Uyghurs is underway in forced labor factories making products for Western consumers. 

The Shandong-based Taekwang factory is one of many factories Uyghurs have been forced into labor. Taekwang is owned by South Korean chemical and textile conglomerate (chaebol), is one of the largest manufacturers of shoes for Nike, turning out upwards of eight million pairs per year. 

ASPI said hundreds of Uyghurs workers did not choose to work at the factory; they were assigned by the government. 

“The Chinese government is now exporting the punitive culture and ethos of Xinjiang’s ‘re-education camps’ to factories across China,” said Vicky Xiuzhong Xu, the report’s lead author.

It was seen in some cases that Uyghurs were transferred from re-education camps directly to factories. 

 “For the Chinese state, the goal is to ‘sinicise’ the Uyghurs; for local governments, private brokers and factories, they get a sum of money per head in these labour transfers,” Xu added.

And while the appeal of cheap slave labor is enticing for Western companies, the Chinese government promotes Uyghurs integration in factories as their strong efforts at ‘multicultralism’…

 “By ‘encouraging’ ethnic minorities in Xinjiang to ‘interact and develop themselves,'” Wang Yang, an official in charge of Xinjiang labor policies, recently said. “China has immensely promoted interaction and integration among different ethnicities.”

As China attempts to restart its manufacturing base, specifically in the Hubei region, where shortages of workers remain because of the virus outbreak, it’s only a matter of time before the government sends in Uyghurs to pick up the broken pieces.