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A thread explaining why we will be finding Uyghur forced labor and Xinjiang abusive institutions involved in more and more things we buy: Starting ca 2010, PRC expanded the 援疆 Help Xinjiang / Partner Assistance / Mutual Pairing Program 1/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/world/asia/china-mask-forced-labor.html
This required 19 provinces and cities in eastern China to expend 0.3-0.6% of their income on Xinjiang development, pairing each with a city or county in Xinjiang: Shenzhen with Kashgar, Beijing with Khotan, etc. 2/
It's curious: this bypasses central government development efforts, calling on individual province and city level units to get directly involved in Xinjiang, send personnel, do joint propaganda. Billions poured into Xinjiang. 3/ https://www.amazon.com/Chinas-Assistance-Program-Xinjiang-Sociological-ebook/dp/B07G4N2KFD
(it's a throwback to the Qing empire, which likewise financed its rule over Xinjiang by making rich provinces to send huge amounts of silver DIRECTLY to Xinjiang. When Taiping rebellion broke out, this lifeline was cut off by turmoil, 4/
And then and only then Xinjiang people rebelled against rapacious Qing soldiers and officials—but that's another story) 5/ https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Pass-Economy-Ethnicity-1759-1864/dp/1503600629
Since 2010, successful Partners from China coast tried to implement their development model in southern Xinjiang, building Pearl River Delta style tax-free zones and industrial parks at an astounding rate, naming them after their hometowns —e.g.: 6/
"Kashgar Shenzhen City," or "Beijing Industrial Park" in Khotan. (Arguably onomastic colonialism, but never mind.) 6.5/
These provinces / cities also had to corral their local eastern companies into investing, building factories, parks in politically coerced public-private partnerships in remote Xinjiang, promising cheap labor 7/
But Kashgar is not the Pearl River Delta. Many over-built parks and zones were vacant, ghost towns in suburbs of Kashgar, Khotan, politics-driven, not market-driven or people-driven development (no one asked locals what they needed). 8/ https://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/2109555/ghost-cities-haunt-stability-dream-chinas-far-west
But Xinjiang has two things going for it: the cheapest labor left in China, esp. in southern Xinjiang, left undeveloped for decades, farm villages never given free public education, had PRC poorest people; 9/
And XJ has cotton: huge state farms run by Bingtuan (PCC) and smaller farms. ¼ of world's raw cotton is grown in Xinjiang. And public-private programs massively moved yarn and textile manufacture from east China to Xinjiang over past 10-15 years 10/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-cotton-insight-idUSKCN0UQ00320160112
From 2017, hi-tech surveillance, massive internment camps, so-called vocational training ("educational transformation") campaign locked up 1-2 millions.
Then from ca 2019, CCP began to move people from camps into factories—Where? 11/
Then from ca 2019, CCP began to move people from camps into factories—Where? 11/
To those same empty industrial parks and commercial zones built by ill-planned Partner Assistance Program! Here's the thing: 12/
"Public-private partnership" in Xinjiang, and in east China factories using forced transfer labor, many in Partner provinces, as well as and the whole Partner Assistance Program are complicit in internment, torture, and coerced labor of Uyghurs and other XJ indigenes; 13/
Like #HubeiHaixin, Hubei company now exposed for making and exporting masks with coerced Uyghur labor. Hubei! Where Wuhan is, and those great noodles. Why are they involved in Xinjiang atrocities? 14/ : http://www.hhdisposable.com/
But all 19 XJ "Partners" likely involved in the gulag to an extent: Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Henan, Hebei, Guangdong, Liaoning, Fujian, Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, Shanxi, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Shenzhen. And the companies they were forced to drag in 15/
China-produced masks, PPE, cotton yarn, clothing, electronics—all Xinjiang factories and many companies and factories not based in XJ are involved. Whole provinces and cities, many supply chains complicit. 16/
CCP assimilation assault on indigenous people in XJ has roped China's richest provinces, cities, companies into genocidal policies, tainted PRC exports on a massive scale. 17/
It's one huge genocidal turd in the punch-bowl of PRC foreign trade (and an unnecessary massive screw-up by CCP, due to crazy nativist dreams of homogeneous "zhonghua" people: a return to "politics in command") 18/
Deng Xiaoping would not approve. China is better than this. 19/
Foreign companies dealing with Chinese suppliers--take heed! Your due diligence must be more diligent by orders of magnitude. Don't be the genocide-friendly brand. And don't trust those third-party firms that will get you a certificate if you pay them enough. 20/
Details and references in my forthcoming second edition of _Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang_, now updated to July 2020. END. https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/eurasian-crossroads-2/
