On March 24, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s Communist Youth League launched an attack on H&M, a Swedish multinational fashion retailer, on its Weibo account over a statement made by the company last October. It lambasted H&M for its “ridiculous belief that it can spread rumors and boycott cotton from Xinjiang while trying to make money in China.” Soon after the release of the social media post, all Chinese media organizations followed suit, triggering an enormous wave of foreign product boycotts. H&M products were pulled from online platforms, while politically astute Chinese artists have taken the initiative to announce the termination of their collaboration with the brands in question.

If looked at from a chronological point of view, the H&M case was a counterattack by the CCP over recent sanctions imposed on China by the EU, US, Canada and the UK. The relations between China and the Western world have not been improved by the transition of power in the US but have instead worsened to a point of seemingly no turning back. The incident is a reflection of a host of inextricably intertwined issues. It can be examined from the perspectives of human rights, political logic and economic interests.

Many people will link Xinjiang cotton – the focus of the incident – with the crisis of the genocide of Uyghurs. In terms of human rights, however, the Xinjiang cotton dispute actually involves the human rights violation of forced labor, which does not necessarily equal genocide. Labor rights, as a concept, are a focus of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as well as a series of core labor rights conventions of the International Labor Organization. The fundamental spirit is to ensure that workers can improve their material and spiritual well-being through the process of labor rather than be treated as a tool to satisfy employers in the form of slavery.

In the development of the human rights movement, the struggle for labor rights has been an extremely important motive force. Labor rights are also a value that the Communist Party, the self-styled vanguard of the proletariat, would defend to the death. In contemporary times, slavery has been discarded by the world, but in reality, phenomena of slavery still exist in the form of forced labor. For so long the Uyghurs in Xinjiang in the industry of cotton production have faced all kinds of obstacles and stress in the production environment. This is mentioned in a 2007 work by Chinese writer Wang Lixiong titled “Your West China, My East Turkestan”.

In all fairness, the existence of forced labor (its key indicators include the abuse of others’ vulnerability, deception, the restriction of movement, isolation, physical and sexual violence, intimidation and threats, the seizure of identity documents, the withholding of wages, debt bondage, harsh working and living conditions, and excessive overtime) is often a matter of degree rather than a matter of nature. Over the past decade, owing to Beijing’s tightening of its control and surveillance of the ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, it is reasonable to deduce that forced labor has worsened in the province.

China has slammed international fashion brands such as H&M for spreading rumors and smearing China. But China should also be faulted. As many media reports have indicated, international brands’ cessation of sourcing cotton from Xinjiang was a response to the regulations by the Better Cotton Initiatives (BCI) in Switzerland. BCI is a non-governmental organization. Its demands and actions are a reflection of the pursuit of progressive values in the era of globalization. Through a cotton certification mechanism, BCI hopes to further enhance the well-being of cotton producers.

As the norms of human rights spread across the globe, multinational companies have started to rely on commercial audits and other means to address customers’ concerns about human rights. Some reports say that due to human rights issues in Xinjiang, BCI halted the release of a “Cotton Certificate” in Xinjiang in March 2020. But the real situation could have been even more complicated.

First, the real problem lies not only with the detection of practices that violate human rights standards, but also with the difficulties in conducting effective audits. The US government issued the “Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Advisory” in July 2020, stating that the work of third-party audit mechanisms in China had been disrupted and hindered and thus could not be a credible source of information. In other words, BCI’s suspension of “Cotton Certificate” inspections in Xinjiang may also have been due to concerns about the personal safety of auditors. With the Cotton Certificate unable to be obtained or reissued for Xinjiang, it was natural that international manufacturers, which adhere to the concept of sustainable development, found it difficult to use Xinjiang cotton as their raw materials.

Second, the difficulty in conducting audits has been closely related to intervention by the Chinese government. The Law on the Administration of Activities of Overseas Non-Governmental Organizations within the Territory of China, which officially came into effect in 2017, is a pair of handcuffs for international non-governmental organizations operating in China, subjecting their work in China to serious challenges. The law also provides a policy tool for Beijing to infiltrate or influence NGOs, allowing the CCP to extend its control of civil society beyond its territory.

Take BCI as an example. Its statements on Xinjiang cotton released between 2020 and 2021 have been inconsistent. The claim of BCI’s Shanghai office (that there is no evidence of forced labor) is also clearly at odds with that of the headquarters. From China’s point of view, the incident is obviously an offensive carried out by Western countries with NGOs and non-governmental commercial organizations as the proxies. China believes that these organizations are in cahoots with the Trump administration, who has been focused on the genocide in Xinjiang since 2020, and this shows their sinister intentions. But Beijing has conducted political maneuvers in pretty much the same way and further incited nationalist sentiments.

Apart from the struggles about ideals and politics, there have also been considerations of economic interests. Xinjiang is China’s most important base for cotton production and its textile industry. The fact that international manufacturers such as H&M announced that they would stop purchasing Xinjiang cotton last year was not only due to the difficulties in conducting audits as mentioned earlier, but also related to the US government’s ban on cotton and tomato products that was announced on September 8, 2020. On January 14, 2021, the US government strengthened the ban further, restricting the import of manufactured products with cotton and tomatoes as raw materials. The blow to the Chinese economy is self-evident. The phrase “China’s pot is shattered” is more than rhetorical.

After decades of reform and opening up, China’s economy is no longer to be trifled with. That, however, does not mean that Beijing can withstand the impact dealt by the evaporation of the textile industry’s export market. Today, the textile industry still accounts for about 10% of China’s total export value. The industry’s labor-intensive nature means a large number of jobs are at stake. As long as the ban on Xinjiang cotton stays, the long-term economic losses will inevitably impact the social fabric especially in Xinjiang, the base for cotton production. This is why China is using its own markets as a way to browbeat international brands into changing their policies in the hope of breaking the blockade of Western countries on its textile industry.

However, the strategy adopted by China (taking aim at H&M) is hardly well-advised. A boycott of foreign goods runs counter to the “EU – China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment” signed late last year and is an impact on the approval process of the agreement. Perception-wise, the wall-to-wall cries of “support for Xinjiang cotton” on the Internet are nothing but confirmation of Beijing’s contempt for the rules-based international order.

(Yen Yung-Ming, Associate Professor of Department of Political Science, Tunghai University)

Click here for Chinese version

---------------------------------

Apple Daily’s all-new English Edition is now available on the mobile app: bit.ly/2yMMfQE

To download the latest version,

iOS: bit.ly/AD_iOS

Android: bit.ly/AD_android

Or search Appledaily in App Store or Google Play