Several Chinese factories under foreign contract appear to be resorting to forced labor from ethnic minorities. The suspicion stems from a report on the plight of China’s Uyghurs and other minorities recently released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) – a self-described non-partisan think tank founded in 2001 to influence Australia’s policy on national defense and security – following an investigation made by five members of its International Cyber Policy Centre.
According to the report, from 2017 to 2019, under a policy called Xinjiang Aid, the Chinese government forcibly transferred some 80,000 Chinese citizens, mostly of Uyghur ethnicity, from the western region of Xinjiang (formerly known as Chinese Turkestan) to other parts of China and set them to work in factories that feed the supply chains of at least 83 major international brands, among them Adidas, Fila, Lacoste, Nike, The North Face, Puma and Uniqlo, as well as BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Apple, Dell, Huawei, Microsoft, Nintendo, Samsung, Sharp and Sony. The report asserts in addition that “local governments and private brokers are paid a price per head by the Xinjiang provincial government to organise the labour assignments.”
Questioned by us, Adidas and Puma indicated that they have taken action to address the problem, but Nike failed to give us an answer.
Speaking to the BBC, one of the report’s authors, Nathan Ruser, said that “the dispossession of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang also has a really strong character of economic exploitation,” calling it a “previously hidden contamination of the global supply chain.”
The ASPI claims to know of 27 factories in nine Chinese provinces that now employ Uyghurs transferred from Xinjiang. It cautions, however, that foreign and even Chinese companies might be benefiting from forced labor “unknowingly.”
The report contains case studies of three such factories, supplying shoes to Nike, sportswear to Adidas and Fila, and components to Apple.
The ASPI describes the factory that supplies Nike – Qingdao Taekwang Shoes Co. of Laixi, China – as being “equipped with watchtowers, barbed-wire fences and police guard boxes.” An investigative report published in the Washington Post on Feb. 29 corroborates this. Taekwang Shoes has been a Nike supplier for some 30 years, and currently produces Shox, Air Max and seven other lines. According to Kim Jae-min, chief executive of Taekwang, the factory’s South Korean parent, the factory employs about 600 Uyghurs in a total workforce of 7,100. Nike’s manufacturing map claims there are 4,095 employees at the factory, 81 percent of them female. According to the Post, almost all of the Uyghurs are “women in their 20s or younger.”
The Post also mentions a “psychological dredging office” where officials from Taekwang’s women’s federation “conduct ‘heart-to-heart’ talks and provide psychological consulting to encourage integration.”
Speaking to the Post, a spokeswoman for Nike, Sandra Carreon-John, said that “we respect human rights in our extended value chain, and always strive to conduct business ethically and responsibly.” She also said that Nike is “committed to upholding international labor standards globally” and that its suppliers are “strictly prohibited from using any type of prison, forced, bonded or indentured labor.”
Adidas told us that, after the first allegations of forced and prison labor were made in the spring of 2019, the company “immediately and explicitly instructed our suppliers not to source any products or yarn from the Xinjiang region. The use of forced labor by any of our partners will result in the termination of the partnership,” Adidas said through a spokesman.
Puma said it has no direct relationship with Huafu Dyed Melange Yarn Co., one of the world’s largest cotton spinners, which is said to have been engaged in forced labor. Some of Puma’s Tier 3 suppliers of fabric buy yarn from that company, but a spokesman for the German firm said it was “closely monitoring the situation,” noting that it had already raised this issue with its manufacturing partners. “We continue to observe the case and conduct further investigations,” he added. Puma, which was recently re-accredited to the Fair Labor Association, monitors its Tier 1 suppliers frequently, and in the last three years it has extended the program to Tier 2 suppliers of fabrics and components. “For the lower levels of the cotton supply chain, we rely on industry partners in terms of ethical business conduct,” said the Puma spokesman.
The issue has become a hot subject in the U.S., where the American Apparel and Footwear Association and four others called on the U.S. government to take the lead in forming a working group to accurately assess labor conditions in the Xinjiang region. The group would then be asked to develop constructive solutions, targeting bad actors.
The ASPI believes that many of these new laborers have been transferred straight from detention camps and that their true numbers actually exceed 80,000. The laborers, the report says, are forced to live in “segregated dormitories,” are assigned minders and otherwise surveilled, may not go where they please, may not practice their religion, and undergo instruction in Mandarin and the ruling party’s ideology when not working or sleeping.
According to various reports, China has locked about a million Uyghurs – along with Kazakhs Uzbeks and others – into internment camps for what the government calls “reeducation” or “vocational training.” There they are obliged to pledge allegiance to the ruling party and renounce Islam. The ostensible purpose – in the words of Xinjiang’s governor, Shohrat Zakir – is to curb “terrorism, extremism and separatism,” although China appears to have leveled few if any accusations of crime against the interned. Government documents detailing some of the arrests and other practices leaked to the press in November. At least some Chinese officials, Zakir among them, are referring to those released, or moved, from the camps as “graduates.”
Apple has said that it is “dedicated to ensuring that everyone in our supply chain is treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.” Dell has pledged to investigate. According to the ASPI, a few of the companies involved, such as Abercrombie & Fitch, will be seeking other factories.
The Global Times, a tabloid controlled by the Chinese communist party, quotes an official from Xinjiang as follows: “This type of report is full of lies. The aid program is a beneficial scheme that helps Uygur people to earn income and learn new skills. Xinjiang workers are recruited in a formal and legal way, some through local personnel departments, and others via human resource agencies. They [the workers] are all voluntary.”
Photo by Ben Tatlow on Unsplash
