The truth behind US ban on cotton from forced Uyghur labor
the news heading in China newspaper said 新疆采棉已进入互联网时代，编故事者难道是强迫机器劳动？（ Cotton picking in Xinjiang has entered the Internet technology era. Is the storyteller try to reference forced labor as the machine is forced labor?）
It was H&M, a fast fashion brand famous for its poor quality, who kicked out this farce, announcing the ban on Xinjiang cotton.
The moral banner that is carried up is the legendary forced labor. This time it is the so-called conclusive evidence : It is said that 500,000 ethnic minority workers are forced to do seasonal cotton picking.
Sounds so horrible right? So how horrible those season cotton picking workers from Xinjiang China look like right now?
These cotton picker workers can earn more than 10,000 RMB in two months, so many people are eager to go there make money. Many local cotton farmers are so busy that they would spend their own money to hire additional workers from different regions to come help them. It is so profitable business that everybody really are willing to volunteered their time and money to do as much work as they can.
Xinjiang cotton production has been highly mechanized for a long time. This is the 21st century, not the era of slavery in North America 300 years ago. The efficiency of a cotton picking machine exceeds 500 manual laborers. And the cotton cleaning rate can reach as high as 93% Machine is working very well here. Basically, most of cotton picking workers are operating the machines in air-conditioned environment . Yeah, some media describe this as " horrible" working condition . Full of ignorance and exaggeration , the so-called forced labor has become an excuse for rejecting Xinjiang cotton importation.
Some people ask why they use cotton from Xinjiang as excuse, not honey melon from Xinjiang something else. I would say this is called " a sense of cognitive empathy " . People cannot imagine things they have never seen or experienced before. Using the common experiences from people's same history memory is the easiest way to get the message out. Most western countries people should have heard of the enclosure movement of the British sheep cannibalism. With the development of the American continent and the appearance of the cotton gin and the trade of the slave triangle began, cotton planting ( to support textile industry) becomes the most profitable and very low cost industry. I am not going to the details about this bloody history .This is like a really painful page in the western history book . It is so sad that whenever those western scholars think about textile industry, they thought about violence. Whenever they talk about cotton planting , their subconsciousness leads them to the sweat labor and slavery in their mind.
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion and treason, especially unsubstantiated allegations, resulting in defamation of character and reputation.
Xinjiang's cotton is not the goal, China's textile industry is their goal
You know, although the demand for cotton in the global market is very strong, there are not many areas suitable for cotton cultivation. There are only three core cotton-producing areas in the world: China, the United States and India. Although India has the largest cotton planting area in the world BUT not doing quite well in contribution per unit. The unit output has always been in the position of 20 kilograms per mu, which is a full half worse than the global average yield of 41 kilograms per mu, which is much behind than China. Talking about average yield of cotton seed, US Can reach 124 kg and XInjiang can reach 246kg!!! Obviously India is the last. So yeah, as you can see that China's strong textile industry is based on the natural geography advantage of Xinjiang Region .
During the epidemic, a large number of textile industry orders returned to China from India. Since May last year, orders for fabrics and textile raw materials in China have increased by more than 100%; orders in the clothing industry have increased by more than 200% year-on-year. You know, China's textile exports in 2019 were 120 billion US dollars, accounting for 39.2% of the world's total; while clothing exports were 152 billion US dollars, accounting for 30.8% of the world's total clothing exports, these two together, it is 272 billion US dollars in international business.
And India is always the follower of United States.
Political Agenda
Planting cotton is one of the most important economic industry in Xinjiang. Among those cotton planting workers, 70% from different ethnicity . For those who does not know , China is officially composed of 56 ethnic groups (55 minorities plus the dominant Han)The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has a population of 17.18 million of which the largest are the Uygur, Han, Kazak, Hui, Mongolian, Kirgiz, Tajik, Xibe, Ozbek, Manchu, Daur, Tartar, and Russian. Some minorities have totally different outlook than dominant Han but they are all China nationality. So if the cotton planting industry is going down, these minorities would lost job and lost income and may become dangerous force in the border.
You and money are not important to me, without you, it is important to me
-Says US to China
This is a competition. Today is forced labor, tomorrow will be something else.
Truth of Xinjiang
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the gross regional product has increased by 200 times after deducting the factor of inflation. From 2012 to 2018 alone, the central government provided 1.61 trillion in financial subsidies to Xinjiang Region. Xinjiang has implemented a nationwide free healthcare and established a critical illness insurance system to ensure that urban and rural residents are fully guaranteed the minimum life needs and medical care The life expectancy of Xinjiang people has increased from 30 years old to the current 72.35 years old from 1949 to 2018. In China, If you are minority ethnicity group, everybody is totally respect your religion, your traditional customs, your culture and your clothing of your free choice. There is no such thing as discrimination because everyone knows minority ethnicity groups are also part of China nationality residents.
You might agree , you might not agree. I am just telling the facts.