In Xinjiang, China Forces Uyghurs to Pick Cotton

Oct 13, 2023

Beijing has repeatedly claimed that there is "no forced labor" in Xinjiang. But now, as the European Union debates a ban on products made with forced labor, the evidence has just gotten stronger.

Beijing has repeatedly claimed that there is "no forced labor" in Xinjiang. But now, as the European Union debates a ban on products made with forced labor, the evidence has just gotten stronger.

My new research on Xinjiang's cotton production—the first such research published in a peer-reviewed academic journal—shows that coercive labor transfers for seasonal agricultural work such as cotton picking have continued through at least 2022 and remain part of Xinjiang's official Five-Year Plan for 2021-25. Economic incentives for this practice persist despite partial mechanization: State media reports from 2022 confirm that the premium-grade long staple cotton grown in southern Xinjiang still cannot be harvested by machines.

Labor transfers subject Uyghurs to state-assigned work placements. They often separate them from their families and communities, subjecting them to intensive surveillance, long work hours, and mandatory political indoctrination and Chinese language classes in the evenings.

When mass forced labor in Xinjiang's cotton industry was first uncovered more than two years ago, the U.S. government banned cotton imports from the region within a month. Then Congress passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in late 2021, banning all imports from Xinjiang on the presumption of forced labor unless businesses can prove otherwise. After slow initial enforcement, imports from Xinjiang are reportedly down 90 percent since the law took effect in June 2022. Xinjiang supplies more than one-fifth of the world's cotton. This makes the textile and garment industries highly exposed to forced Uyghur labor.

This year, the EU seeks to follow suit—but my research finds that if the proposed legislation is not updated to target Xinjiang specifically, cotton contaminated with forced labor will still find its way into global supply chains.

While the campaign of mass internment in Xinjiang has somewhat abated, forced labor programs have intensified. In their own words, top Chinese officials have confirmed that "full employment" in Xinjiang is not just about economic development but constitutes a political mandate that the state sees as key to China's national security. In secret speeches, Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping has stated that large numbers of unemployed persons are liable to "provoke trouble." In confidential remarks, Xinjiang officials bluntly argue that rural idlers "make trouble out of nothing," adding that alleviating deep poverty is "an economic issue as well as a political issue." However, many Uyghurs were successful entrepreneurs until the state curtailed their movements and even detained them for having contacts abroad.

Previously unpublished internal state documents, provided at the Xinjiang Police Files website, shed light on Xinjiang's most coercive phase of employment provision. They indicate that state efforts to compel Uyghurs into poverty alleviation measures further intensified after the mass internments peaked in 2018. Documents issued in 2019 found these efforts falling short of required goals, sternly warning officials of "severe" repercussions for not achieving mandated poverty alleviation and employment outcomes. Regions compiled lists of "lazy persons" deemed to have insufficient "inner motivation," some as old as 77 years. One internal directive stipulated that "lazy persons, drunkards, and other persons with insufficient inner motivation" would need to be subjected to "repeated . . . thought education" until this produced "obvious results." Students and persons older than 60 years old were made to pick crops including cotton, vegetables, tomatoes, and peppers. Local governments were instructed to organize centralized child care for toddlers so that their mothers could be subjected to seasonal agricultural labor.

In China, such urgent top-down directives are not ignored. Much like overzealous implementation of China's zero-COVID policies, the resulting pressures on local officials are severe, often leading to over-fulfillment of goals through heavy-handed enforcement.

The evidence further shows that increased mechanization fuels forced labor, rather than reducing it. Mechanized harvesting requires converting smallholder plots into large, contiguous plantations. The ensuing large-scale collective land transfers force Uyghur farmers to surrender their land usage rights to large private or state-owned entities. These farmers are then subjected to state-arranged labor transfers—typically low-skilled manual work in nearby factories or sweatshops. Hence, even where cotton is harvested mechanically, its production often results in more forced labor, not less.

Beijing's multiple systems of forced labor are still poorly understood, which can seriously impair the crafting of effective policy. Even seasoned experts and policymakers at times conflate labor transfers with camp-linked forced labor, or believe them to be concentrated in a few sectors, such as cotton or polysilicon. In reality, most forced labor in the region is unrelated to the camps. The bigger factor is coercive labor transfers, which are implemented as part of Xi's campaign to eradicate absolute poverty. These affect almost all forms of low-skill work, regardless of sector.

The forced transfer of Uyghurs into seasonal labor, such as cotton picking, operates separately from the reeducation camps—although the new research shows several prisons continue to operate cotton-ginning factories, and camp labor is used in textile and garment production. Instead, the state uses transfers of so-called surplus laborers to coerce Uyghurs into state-mandated work placements, including seasonal agricultural work. Those who fail to comply are liable to be labeled "extremists," a charge that usually lands Uyghurs in reeducation camps.

Since 2021, under Xinjiang's new party secretary Ma Xingrui, coercive labor risks are , even as some lower-security camps have closed. Xinjiang has recently increased both vocational training and employment requirements, and is pushing transferred Uyghurs into higher-skilled sectors under the mantra of "high-quality development." Over time, this means that sectors previously unlikely to involve forced labor are now increasingly at risk. Under Xinjiang's last Five-Year Plan, covering 2016-20, state documents mandated that at least one person per household must work, often against their will. The new Five-Year Plan for 2021-25 adds a "full employment" requirement, whereby all persons able to work must work.

Other state documents reveal plans to ensure that forced labor placements are permanent. In 2021, Xinjiang sent 400,000 cadres to investigate the incomes of 12 million rural households through an "early prevention, early intervention, early assistance" campaign, which identified 774,000 households for "real-time monitoring." That year, the number of transferred laborers in Xinjiang reached a record high. The mobilization of new rural populations into such programs raises coercive risks dramatically. Even Chinese academic research has shown that a large portion of Uyghurs who resist labor transfers are women with caretaking responsibilities for young children or for the elderly. The new evidence shows that the state forces even elderly Uyghurs to pick cotton or perform seasonal agricultural work.

Unfortunately, the international community is ill-prepared to counter Xinjiang's growing forced labor problem. State-sponsored forced labor not linked to prisons or internment camps is poorly understood. There are almost no academic publications analyzing this, and—perhaps worse—no dedicated indicators to measure it.

As a result, policy initiatives designed to counter forced labor may not succeed. The European Union's proposed forced labor legislation—being negotiated this year in the European Parliament—is mainly designed to address company-based, rather than state-sponsored, forced labor. This is because the law relies on 11 indicators of forced labor published by the International Labor Organization (ILO). Developed in 2012, these ILO indicators statically measure coercion linked to specific workplaces, as well as recruitment practices based on deception or debt bondage. In Xinjiang, however, the taint of forced labor affects the entire region. Worse, factories across Asia use inputs from Xinjiang, especially cotton products, as Xinjiang now produces more than 90 percent of China's cotton.

To fill this gap, my research compares coercive recruitment in Uzbekistan and Xinjiang, two post-communist regions with labor-intensive cotton industries. For decades, until 2021, Uzbeks were drafted into coercive labor to pick cotton. The way forced recruitment worked on the ground is surprisingly similar. Uzbekistan and Xinjiang both maintained a coercive surveillance state with strong, centralized decision-making structures and unprecedented abilities to mobilize populations through armies of local officials. Both regions systematically incentivize and commandeer relevant economic actors (private and state enterprises), then leverage their grassroots resources to mobilize workers at the community level. In both cases, forced labor transfers into cotton picking are achieved through a whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach. Aside from seasonal agricultural labor transfers, Xinjiang subjects large numbers of ethnic minorities to longer-term labor transfers in factories.

To detect and measure these forms of forced labor is far from easy. Company-based forced labor can be measured in specific times and places. By contrast, noninternment state-sponsored forced labor applies its coercive pressures mostly during the initial recruitment, training, and transfer stages. The resulting work contexts may not look much different from a normal workplace. Companies accepting Uyghur workers may feature security features common to most work environments in Xinjiang, such as fences, walls, or entrance/exit controls.

This may explain why China was willing, in August 2022, to ratify ILO conventions banning the use of forced labor. To understand and evaluate the dynamic, whole-of-society nature of state-led coercive work placements, international inspectors would have to conduct extensive fieldwork in relevant rural settings—something impossible in Xinjiang. While under the previous party secretary Chen Quanguo, labor transfers involved intense mobilization campaigns and were therefore more visible, the system is gradually becoming more institutionalized under his successor, Ma.

Several of the ILO's 11 indicators capture labor coercion in Uzbekistan, where the primary motivation for forced recruitment was economic: Cheap labor for cotton harvesting benefited the kleptocratic elites. While Uyghurs are paid much less than their Han Chinese counterparts, Xinjiang's labor schemes are mainly driven by political mandates to shift Uyghurs into full employment. Xi himself said that when ethnic minorities work in factories, they are less likely to commit actions of "religious extremism" and more likely to assimilate into Han Chinese language and culture. This means that efforts to detect forced Uyghur labor have to look beyond economic exploitation.

What are the lessons for policymakers? The first is that forced cotton picking continues despite Beijing's claims. Second, ILO indicators as currently formulated can be circumvented on the ground: While camp detainees have reported abusive and securitized work environments, work conditions of transferred laborers may not be exploitative enough to raise red flags during an inspection. Third, the national security rationale behind Xinjiang's labor programs means a boycott of Xinjiang products may not be as effective as it was for Uzbekistan. A global campaign boycotting Uzbek cotton between 2011 and 2021 ultimately succeeded because it dented elites’ economic profits.

By contrast, Beijing has singled out Western companies that publicly renounce the use of Xinjiang cotton with nationwide boycotts, and in 2021 enacted a counter-sanctions law penalizing businesses that comply with Western sanctions. This doubling-down is enabled by China's economic heft, but also by the national security framing of Xinjiang's full employment mandate. In light of this, asking businesses to decouple out of sheer "moral responsibility" seems futile.

Much now depends on the actions of legislators and policymakers. To combat Uyghur forced labor effectively, international efforts must be multilateral, coordinated, and long-term. The EU's proposed forced labor ban must be designed to accurately conceptualize, measure and counter Xinjiang's brand of state-sponsored forced labor. The 11-indicator ILO framework requires urgent adaptation. If these measures are not taken swiftly, consumers around the world are liable to become complicit in Beijing's strategy of slow genocide in the region.

Adrian Zenz is a senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington and supervises doctoral students at the European School of Culture and Theology in Korntal, Germany. His research focus is on China's ethnic policy, public recruitment in Tibet and Xinjiang, Beijing's internment campaign in Xinjiang, and China's domestic security budgets. Zenz is the author of "Tibetanness" Under Threat: Neo-Integrationism, Minority Education, and Career Strategies in Qinghai, P.R. China and co-editor of Mapping Amdo: Dynamics of Change. He has played a leading role in the analysis of leaked Chinese government documents, including the "China Cables" and the "Karakax list." Zenz is an advisor to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and a frequent contributor to international media.

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