This piece was originally published at Revue on October 27, 2021.
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The Shame of Removing the Pillar of Shame
In 2006, I left mainland China to study at the University of Hong Kong. Arriving on campus, I was stunned by a scary sculpture of dead bodies in bloody red, whose inscription reads “The Tiananmen Square Massacre” and “The old cannot kill the young forever.” I also saw shelves of books in the library about the same “massacre” and wondered what exactly they were talking about. Clearly, no one died in Tiananmen Square in 1989—according to what I was told by the Communist Party’s propaganda growing up.
I soon learned about the truth, of course—some 17 years after the fact!
Pillar of Shame (Jens Galschiot) at the University of Hong Kong c. 2009
For the few years I was at that school, I frequented the cafeteria next to the sculpture, known as the Pillar of Shame, because I got to take a good look at it every time I walked by. Today, the sculpture is on the verge of being removed by university authorities, erasing one of the last traces of Hong Kong’s memory of the Chinese people’s brief but deadly fight for freedom.
Forced Labor in China
Oppression in mainland China is much worse, of course. Anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang have been detained in forced labor camps, producing goods that are sold around the world. Liberal democracies are increasingly uncomfortable about it, as most recently seen in the G7 trade ministers meeting last week, but little has changed.
Consider the idea of banning all goods from Xinjiang unless they are verified to not be made with forced labor, as proposed by the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a bill passed by the Senate this year. Would that change Chinese behavior or at least shield American consumers from the atrocities?
Not really. In a recent event with Providence magazine, my colleague Christine McDaniel and I discussed the complexity of forced labor practices in China and the lack of effective responses in the United States.
Weifeng Zhong and Christine McDaniel Discussion on Forced Labor in China
First, Uyghur forced labor exists elsewhere in China. A 2020 report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) shows that more than 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of Xinjiang to work in factories across China between 2017 and 2019, and those factories were suppliers of 82 global brands, which everyone’s cousin knows about.
The Chinese government has facilitated the mass transfer of Uyghur and other ethnic minority citizens from the far west region of Xinjiang to factories across the country.
Second, not all forced labor is in internment camps. A BBC investigative report shows how China’s poverty alleviation campaign has led to widespread, “softer” forms of coercion. Deemed lazy by the Chinese government, millions from poor families have been mobilized to work against their will. Even if policymakers in Washington had the perfect intelligence to identify all Chinese detention camps—they don't—and ban the goods made there, Americans would still unknowingly consume Beijing’s “poverty alleviation.”
Alongside a large network of detention camps, allegations that minority groups are being coerced into working in textile factories have already been well documented.
Finally, it’s virtually impossible for many companies to prove that forced labor doesn’t exist anywhere in their global supply chains. Producing such a proof would require capable and willing labor auditors in China to work with foreign companies. But such auditors have become a rarity due to intense crackdown by the Chinese government, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
China Closes U.S. Auditor as Tensions Mount Over Forced Labor Allegations
Shenzhen Verite, affiliated with U.S. labor rights nonprofit Verite, was closed following an April raid on its offices by Chinese security forces.
"No Solutions, Only Trade-offs"
This famous Thomas Sowell quote couldn’t be more true to the forced labor challenge. Even if there was a perfectly effective policy to counter China’s coercion—there isn't—it remains a question how far the West would go to implement it.
In a recent Discourse magazine piece, McDaniel and I wrote about liberal democracies’ struggle when Beijing’s coercion is up against their stakes in the Chinese economy. Among G7 countries, the more they export to China, the softer their language on Uyghur forced labor.
The West Struggles To Respond To Beijing’s Forced-Labor Camps
The strength of a democratic government’s criticism of China’s forced labor is inversely related to its country’s exports to China.
Trade-offs are inevitable as always. In Washington, strong measures to improve human rights abroad have long been exceptions, not the norm. The Reagan administration, for example, turned a blind eye to the apartheid in South Africa in exchange for its government’s support in fighting the Cold War against the Soviets. Which of those two regimes was more atrocious?
Dig Deeper
On a more positive note, dealing with tough trade-offs requires good information, and there has been a promising increase of that about China’s forced labor.
Earlier this month, ASPI launched a new project that maps the forced labor “governance” structure employed by authorities in Xinjiang. The report unveils some 170 administrative entities that have participated in the oppression in Xinjiang since 2014, including prefecture-level public security bureaus, one of which Disney’s “Mulan” thanked in its credits.
The Architecture of Repression
For policymakers, this report will provide an evidence base to inform policy responses including possible sanctions.
Buzzfeed’s investigative series on Xinjiang’s forced labor that won its first-ever Pulitzer Prize this year was full of innovative techniques, including the use of satellite images and 3D architectural modeling. My favorite part is where the analysts cross-referenced China’s Baidu Maps, which heavily blanks out “sensitive” areas, with ordinary satellite images that don’t. This quickly tipped them off on where to look.
China Secretly Built A Vast New Infrastructure To Imprison Muslims
China rounded up so many Muslims in Xinjiang that there wasn’t enough space to hold them. Then the government started building.
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