A few days ago, China's autonomous administrative region, Xinjiang, located in the West of China, was globally accused of detaining Muslin and Uighur minority and use them as forced labor in cotton-growing industry.
As a result, major international fashion brands including H&M, Nike, Adidas and Burberry terminated the use of Xinjiang cotton. This sensational allegation caused China to strike back by boycotting these brands in the form of shutting down their online and local stores in China and several influential celebrities unilaterally terminating contract with these brands.
Chinese people living in the U.S. have been overwhelmed and annoyingly confused by the counterposing news content reported by Chinese and United States media regarding this matter.
Western countries focus on the human rights violation in Xinjiang, while Chinese media denies all the accusation related to detention and claims that the banning Xinjiang cotton is a sequel scheme of the China-United States trade war; used to attack China's economy, thus China fights back by shutting down their market in China.
Roughly since mid 2020, America has been reporting Xinjiang's "internment camp" where over one million people are detained, tortured, forced to work, and women were raped.
In one BBC news published February 2021, two Xinjiang female internment camp survivors who escaped the camp to the U.S., said while crying: "There were three men, not one, but three. They did whatever evil, their mind could think of, and they didn't spare any part of my body, fighting it to the extend that it was disgusting to look at. They didn't just rape, they were barbaric, they had beaten all over my body" (BBC, 2021).
On the other side of pacific, Chinese media confuses and shifts the attention of the public by doing three things. First, blocking the oversea reports related to human rights violation, which allows the media to claim the accusations "arbitrary, lack of evidence", since there is no traceable evidence.
Second, the internment camp is called "re-education" camp in Chinese, and it is claimed that the camp aims at Xinjiang people who lack education, legal knowledge, employment skills and are "affected by religious extreme thoughts". The purpose of the camp is to educate them by teaching them common language, legal knowledge, occupational skills and remove extreme thoughts, thus eliminating terrorism and religious extremism (Fan, 2020). By calling the internment camp a different name, involuntary detention became the government's aid policy.
Thirdly, immediately after the brands announced Xinjiang's cotton ban, many big movie stars posted on the main stream social media content like "I support Xinjiang cotton" and "We must defend our nation's dignity!", which momentarily arouse people's patriotism and lost part of their ability to critically think.
As a result, human rights issue easily slipped by under the public's nose; little to no attention is paid to study the truth behind the International boycott. The public arbitrarily comes to the conclusion that the boycott is another cunning attack targeted to weaken Chinese economy.
Picture of the internment camp by BBC, 2019
Chinanews. (2020, June 20). 梳理：反华势力针对新疆炮制的十大谣言及真相. Retrieved March 29, 2021, from http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2020/06-20/9217496.shtml
Matthew Hill, D. (2021, February 02). 'Their goal is to destroy Everyone': UIGHUR camp detainees allege systematic rape. Retrieved March 29, 2021, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071
Xinjiang Cotton: Western clothes Brands vanish as backlash grows. (2021, March 26). Retrieved March 29, 2021, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-56533560
Thanks for sharing! This issue has been a heated discussion among my Chinese friends. I did a bit research on that as well. Actually 40% of the cotton is collected by automachines. Hence, there is no need to abuse cotton workers. Xinjiang province has been an area with frequent anti-china activities. Many news are influened by an invisiable hand called "politics pressure."
Junru, I'm so glad I read this cause I'd never heard about this issue before. Scenarios of forced labor in China have been documented before but this case is just gruesome. The way those female survivors described the camp made it sound like it was hell on Earth. Worse yet, China doesn't even recognize it and decides to boycott the brands that stopped using their cotton. The more crazy stuff like this you hear about China the more you can see the comparison to atrocities committed in the past like internment camps for Jews during WWII. Overall, we can only hope that cases like these stop in China for the sake of those directly afflicted and for the sa…
Hi Junru,
Wow, I am in shock reading this. This is the first I have heard about the Xinjiang Cotton incident and am horrified to hear how their workers have been treated. It is scary to think how much the news has been able to sway opinions, including celebrities, into believing the cotton industry over the many personal stories of forced laborers. It is sad to hear that the Chinese and US political/economic battle has seemingly overpowered the rights of the workers. I hope that more writers like you will continue to share the stories of those being oppressed and abused in the work place.