A new report by Washington-based think tank Center for Global Policy (CGP) says nearly 600,000 people in China’s Xinjiang province are forced to pick cotton, much of which ends up in the supply chain of the world’s leading brands, and thus as the clothes on our backs.
The news comes as hundreds of thousands of ethnic labourers are being forced to pick cotton by hand through a coercive state-mandated labour transfer and “poverty alleviation” scheme, with potentially drastic consequences for global supply chains.
Xinjian produces 85 percent of China’s cotton
Chinese cotton products constitute an important basis for garment production in numerous other Asian countries, indeed for the world. Over 20 percent of the world’s cotton originates from China, with Xinjian producing 85 percent of its country’s cotton.
Previously, evidence for forced labor in Xinjiang pertained only to low-skilled manufacturing, including the production of textiles and apparel. New reports by CGP and BBC provide fresh evidence for coercion specifically related to cotton picking affecting all supply chains that involve Xinjiang cotton as a raw material.
Manual labour
Despite increased mechanization, cotton picking in Xinjiang continues to rely strongly on manual labour. In 2019, about 70 percent of the region’s cotton fields had to be picked by hand, especially the high-quality long-staple cotton predominantly grown in southern Xinjiang’s Uyghur regions, where mechanised picking shares are low, says the report.
State policies have greatly increased the numbers of local ethnic minority pickers, reducing reliance on outside Han Chinese migrant laborers. The intensive two- to three-month period of cotton picking represents a strategic opportunity to boost rural incomes, and therefore plays a key role in achieving the state’s poverty alleviation targets.
Coercive labour
These targets are mainly achieved through coercive labour transfers. Cotton picking is grueling and typically poorly paid work. Labour transfers involve coercive mobilization through local work teams, transfers of pickers in tightly supervised groups, and intrusive on-site surveillance by government officials and (in at least some cases) police officers.
>China’s “tainted cotton” – BBC
The report provides a clear picture of the potential scale of forced labour in the picking of a crop that accounts for a fifth of the world’s cotton supply and is used widely throughout the global fashion industry, said the BBC.
The Chinese government denies the claims, insisting that the camps are “vocational training schools” and the factories are part of a massive, and voluntary, “poverty alleviation” scheme.
Most consumers believe forced labour camps to be unacceptable and would buy products elsewhere, but supply chains are complex, opaque and often difficult to trace, with much of raw materials sourced indirectly. Price is the main the driver, especially for fast fashion retailers who are selling high volume goods at low prices. With Xinjian producing the majority of China’s cotton is it is nigh on impossible for companies to know if a person of ethnic minority was coerced into picking its raw material cotton.
Since 2018, a huge industrial expansion has been under way involving the building of hundreds of factories, said the BBC. The parallel purpose of mass employment and mass internment is made clear by the appearance of many factories within the walls of the camps, or in close proximity to them, it said in a report.
According to the Chinese government the work will help transform the “outdated ideas”of Xinjiang’s minorities and remake them as modern, secular, wage-earning Chinese citizens.
The BBC approached 30 major international brands to ask them of their cotton sourcing and traceability. Three, including Marks and Spencer, Next, and Tesco, told the BBC they have policies in place that ensure products sourced from China do not use raw cotton from Xinjiang. Burberry said they do not use any cotton from China at all. Others, including those who don’t source direct from Xinjiang, were unable to guarantee its cotton didn’t enter supply chains elsewhere. Nine companies gave no response.
Currently the boundaries between mass labour and mass incarceration in Xinjiang remain blurred.
Article sources: BBC, Center for Global Policy; Image: cotton picking via Wikimedia Commons