Xinjiang officials on Monday hit out at H&M and other international fashion brands for their decisions to stop using cotton produced in the region because of human rights concerns, saying these companies blindly followed Western governments’ campaign to “bully” China.

Sanctions earlier imposed on a Xinjiang entity and officials by Western countries were intended to create chaos and undermine stability in the northwestern Chinese region, said Xu Guixiang, a spokesperson for the Xinjiang government’s information office.

Xu described the Swedish brand as an accomplice in the campaign, and warned that international brands should see that Chinese people won’t be bullied by Western countries.

Last week, the European Union, the United States, Britain and Canada sanctioned Chinese officials and an entity in Xinjiang over human rights abuses against ethnic Uyghurs in their homeland. Mainland media outlets and netizens quickly singled out H&M over a statement made last year regarding its concerns about cotton produced in Xinjiang.

On Monday, officials denied accusations of genocide against Uyghurs in the northwestern region, saying their population had grown from 10.17 million to 12.71 million between 2010 and 2018. The growth suggested that the alleged genocide did not exist, said Xinjiang government spokesperson Elijian Anayit, adding that the genocide claims were fabricated by anti-China forces to undermine the region’s stability.

However, population growth rates have fallen significantly, according to Voice of America, which cited data from the most recent edition of the China Statistical Yearbook. The birthrate in Xinjiang in 2019 was 8.14 births per 1,000 people, compared with 15.88 per 1,000 people in 2017, VOA reported. In Hotan prefecture, where the Uyghurs make up about 97% of the population, the birthrate was 8.58 per 1,000 people in 2018, down from more than 20 births per 1,000 people in the years before 2017, it said.

The drop in Xinjiang’s birth rates could be attributed to a number of factors, including urbanization, which could delay marriages, and people’s attitudes toward having children, Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,  was quoted as saying.

The reeducation camps in Xinjiang had also led to separation of families, thereby affecting fertility rates, Yi said.

Since 2017, ethnic minority groups had been changing their behavior amid fears of being sent to the camps, said professor Joanne Smith Finley, a China expert at Britain’s Newcastle University.

More than 1 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities had been interned in these camps, in many cases, because they had had too many children, a violation of China’s birth control policies, Smith Finley said.

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