An interesting opinion piece from a British newspaper - and so with a British slant in some of its observations. https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...d-eye-to-china
Today’s confrontation with the slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries could puff us up and make us feel better about ourselves were the slave trade of the 21st not thriving. We will remember 2020 for the crowds taking down statues of Confederate generals and English slavers; of Black Lives Matter protests against slavery’s continuing legacy of condemning African Americans to suffer as their country’s lowest caste. [...]
But it is not a victory for today’s slaves. Forced labour is an essential part of the Chinese state’s programme to humiliate and destroy ethnic minorities. The parallels with the antebellum south reach to the cotton fields. The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) runs prison factories and its own paramilitary force to keep its captives in line. It helped create the Chinese cotton industry, which now supplies 20% of the world’s cotton market and, maybe, the clothes on your back. XPCC sends forced labour to pick cotton because no one has ever picked cotton unless poverty or slave masters forced them to. It’s hard to know what is worse: the backbreaking work or the exposure to pesticides.[...]
No one is more determined to obscure than the corporations that boom out their opposition to racism. Last month, the Washington Post quoted congressional staffers saying Apple was lobbying against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which would require US companies to guarantee they do not use imprisoned or coerced workers from Xinjiang. The New York Times added that Nike and Coca-Cola were lobbying too. They all condemn forced labour and the ethnic persecution in Xinjiang and, in the words of Apple, say they have “found no evidence of forced labour” on their production lines. Nevertheless, they fear the act’s ambitious requirements could wreck their supply chains in China. [...]
China prevents journalists and diplomats reporting from Xinjiang except in the most tightly controlled circumstances. Clothing firms once sent auditors to Xinjiang to check forced labour was not in their supply lines. But the authorities started treating them as suspects and they pulled out. Think then about the visible smartphones, smart clothes and smart trainers around you. Do consumers want to know where they come from or have their supply disrupted by prohibitions? [...]
Like the Atlantic slave trade, forced labour in China can seem too convenient to challenge. It’s one thing to go on a Black Lives Matter demo, another to tear up your phone contract. China, like the old slave power in Britain and America, can seem so strong and so embedded in global patterns of consumption that taking it on feels a doomed enterprise. [...]
Last week, MPs in the China Research Group recommended that Britain join with Biden’s America and other democracies, not for a cold war, but to ensure basic protections. Included among them was the requirement that “supply chains are free from slave or child labour from political prisoners and persecuted ethnic minorities in China”. Most may still not want to look, but the world has gone past the point when it can pretend slavery is history.
Today’s confrontation with the slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries could puff us up and make us feel better about ourselves were the slave trade of the 21st not thriving. We will remember 2020 for the crowds taking down statues of Confederate generals and English slavers; of Black Lives Matter protests against slavery’s continuing legacy of condemning African Americans to suffer as their country’s lowest caste. [...]
But it is not a victory for today’s slaves. Forced labour is an essential part of the Chinese state’s programme to humiliate and destroy ethnic minorities. The parallels with the antebellum south reach to the cotton fields. The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) runs prison factories and its own paramilitary force to keep its captives in line. It helped create the Chinese cotton industry, which now supplies 20% of the world’s cotton market and, maybe, the clothes on your back. XPCC sends forced labour to pick cotton because no one has ever picked cotton unless poverty or slave masters forced them to. It’s hard to know what is worse: the backbreaking work or the exposure to pesticides.[...]
No one is more determined to obscure than the corporations that boom out their opposition to racism. Last month, the Washington Post quoted congressional staffers saying Apple was lobbying against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which would require US companies to guarantee they do not use imprisoned or coerced workers from Xinjiang. The New York Times added that Nike and Coca-Cola were lobbying too. They all condemn forced labour and the ethnic persecution in Xinjiang and, in the words of Apple, say they have “found no evidence of forced labour” on their production lines. Nevertheless, they fear the act’s ambitious requirements could wreck their supply chains in China. [...]
China prevents journalists and diplomats reporting from Xinjiang except in the most tightly controlled circumstances. Clothing firms once sent auditors to Xinjiang to check forced labour was not in their supply lines. But the authorities started treating them as suspects and they pulled out. Think then about the visible smartphones, smart clothes and smart trainers around you. Do consumers want to know where they come from or have their supply disrupted by prohibitions? [...]
Like the Atlantic slave trade, forced labour in China can seem too convenient to challenge. It’s one thing to go on a Black Lives Matter demo, another to tear up your phone contract. China, like the old slave power in Britain and America, can seem so strong and so embedded in global patterns of consumption that taking it on feels a doomed enterprise. [...]
Last week, MPs in the China Research Group recommended that Britain join with Biden’s America and other democracies, not for a cold war, but to ensure basic protections. Included among them was the requirement that “supply chains are free from slave or child labour from political prisoners and persecuted ethnic minorities in China”. Most may still not want to look, but the world has gone past the point when it can pretend slavery is history.
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