Kuche Pomegranate Seed Apparel Co., Ltd. location (photo by Liu Xin)
"500,000 pickers every year"? Xinjiang’s mechanized cotton production debunks anti-China scholars’ rumors
“New evidence shows that every year more than 500,000 ethnic minority workers are assigned to participate in seasonal cotton picking work, and their working environment may be highly coercive.” The BBC report quoted The so-called "research" of Zheng Guoen, a senior researcher at the US anti-communist organization "Communist Victims Memorial Foundation", made this conclusion. In recent years, Zheng Guoen has become famous by relying on the false academic achievements of concocting anti-China issues, and he is the backbone of the anti-China research institute established by the US intelligence agencies. Prior to this, on December 2, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that the country’s Customs and Border Protection personnel would detain cotton and cotton products from China’s Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps at all ports of entry in the United States on the grounds that the Corps “exists forced labor. ".
Kuqa pomegranate seed clothing company's production workshop work scene (photo by Fan Lingzhi)
The BBC report also stated that in 2018, Aksu and Hotan regions “sent 210,000 workers through labor transfer” to produce for the “Chinese paramilitary organization” Xinjiang The Construction Corps picks cotton, "There are many signs that this kind of participation is not entirely voluntary."
However, a "Global Times" reporter in Xinjiang found that there was a huge factual error in the BBC's report: Xinjiang's cotton production has been highly mechanized, and even in the busy picking season, there is no need for a lot of "flower pickers". A practitioner in the local cotton industry told reporters that if the efficiency of manual cotton picking is followed, the harvesting is often unfinished every December. However, in several "ginning factories" (cotton processing enterprises) visited by the reporter, the harvest of cotton has already been completed, and the processed cotton bales are neatly stacked in rows, waiting to be shipped to downstream enterprises.
The primary school uniforms produced in the production workshop of Kuche Pomegranate Seed Clothing Company (photo by Fan Lingzhi)
Bayingoleng Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture Taichang Agricultural Development Co., Ltd. Legal Representative Li Chengjun has been in charge of the company's agricultural sector for 12 years. In an interview with the Global Times on the 22nd, he said that since 2015, most of the agricultural cotton output in the Bazhou area has been machine-picked cotton, and the mechanization of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps has been realized earlier. The amount of cotton labor is very large. At most, more than 3,000 workers are recruited from Henan, Sichuan and other inland provinces to pick cotton. The efficiency is low. Now, a cotton harvester can harvest 400 acres a day, and the company’s 60,000 acres of land is machine-picked. In 15 days, 85% of the harvesting is basically completed. It only takes one or two hundred people to clean the cotton in the fields.” Li Chengjun is not a boast. The reporter learned that highly mechanized cotton production is indeed no longer fresh in Xinjiang. Xinjiang Haoxing Cotton and Hemp Co., Ltd. has been purchasing cotton produced by Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps for many years. The company’s business manager Gao Ruinan told the Global Times reporter on the 25th that the mechanization of the Corps was earlier than that of local governments. It has exceeded 90%, and in some places it has even reached 100%. The
BBC reporter said that “filming in public areas was blocked.” The parties involved responded to the
BBC report with full imagination. According to the report, Xinjiang "many factories appear within the walls of the're-education camps' or not far away, indicating that large-scale employment and detention are two parallel goals." The report also distributed satellite images of Aksu Kuche City to prove that "the factory and the camp now seem to have merged into a large factory complex."
"I can solemnly say that the'Education and Training Center' will be closed in 2019." On the 24th, in what the BBC called a "large-scale factory complex"-Kuqa Pomegranate Seed Clothing Co., Ltd., the director Huang Bingyou was straightforward The local government responded, “We are just an ordinary factory, and the managers are hired from the mainland, not dispatched by the government.”
Kuqa pomegranate seed clothing company canteen is waiting to open, lunch is drawn (photo by Fan Lingzhi)
Interestingly, perhaps worried that the interview material is not enough to support his imagination, BBC reporter John Sudworth who wrote the report trumpeted it. He was "repeatedly blocked by police and local propaganda officials from filming, and was constantly being followed by vehicles driven by a large number of unidentified people, tracking hundreds of kilometers." Sha Lei and his team also announced that they were outside the Pomegranate Seed Company with many people. A middle-aged man blocked the footage of the quarrel with his hand. It was said that "Although the BBC team only filmed on public roads outside the factory, they were repeatedly blocked by officials of different identities."
It’s the reverse of black and white!" The Global Times reporter interviewed the man who blocked the camera in the video. His name was Jiang Yong. He was not a “government official” as the BBC referred to, but the director of the logistics and security department of the Pomegranate Seed Company. Jiang Yong restored the situation of the day to a reporter from the Global Times: "On the morning of November 19th, our security found that foreigners were using cameras to film the situation in the factory workshop. I walked out and told them not to take pictures. Who knows them? Turn the camera to me immediately. As a factory manager, I have the responsibility to protect the safety of the factory. As an individual, I also have my own portrait rights!" The Global Times reporter of
learned that after Sha Lei and others were discovered, their vehicles quickly He drove away and kept walking around and shooting secretly until he was stopped by the traffic police who received the alarm. Jiang Yong told reporters that at the time Sha Lei and others kept claiming that they were shooting in a "public area", he felt that this logic was absurd: "You see where they are standing, they are only tens of meters away from the workshop. According to their logic, if that The side is not the factory, but my home. I take a bath and use the toilet at home. Can I also let them take photos in the'public area' at will?" Jiang Yong said that he was most angry when one of the reporters apologized Later, he said that Jiang Yong’s image would not appear on any public platform. As a result, after the report was released, the picture he blocked the camera with his hand was taken out of context as "local officials blocked interviews", and was also called "this blocking action is even more suspicious." ". Jiang Yong felt ridiculous about this statement: "We have nothing to hide. The employees are working diligently. The reason why I was emotional at the time was that there had been foreign media who had secretly photographed before, and the reports were completely slanderous. "Z3z
Pomegranate Seed Plant Manager: There is no "forced labor" at all. What is there in the workshop of
Pomegranate Seed Company when the most troublesome employees are hopping? The mystery may make BBC reporters "disappointed." When a reporter from the Global Times walked here on the 24th, he saw the same situation as clothing companies in many parts of Xinjiang: spotless workshops, brand-new machines and employees in neat work clothes. According to public information, the pomegranate seed company established in March 2020 mainly produces school uniforms, luggage and other products, and orders mostly come from Xinjiang.
The 23-year-old workshop leader Aliye Ababakri is a girl who loves to laugh. This is her first formal job, and her monthly salary is about 2500 yuan. She told reporters that the most important thing is that she can realize her childhood dream here: learn to design clothes. The dormitory provided by the factory for workers is transformed from a spacious residential house, equipped with heating, hot water, and independent toilet facilities. Female worker Rena Guli Guharamu led reporters to visit her dormitory, and the paper flowers plastered on the walls attracted reporters. She said this was cut out by her and her roommate in their spare time.
The cozy dormitory of female worker Rena Guli Guharamu
In order to strengthen the outside world's association of "forced labor" in Xinjiang, the BBC report specifically emphasizes that the process of recruiting employees in factories has "government mobilization and organization." In this regard, the director Huang Bingyou told the Global Times reporter that this is not true. He said that when the factory was first established, the management staff took the job advertisements to the surrounding villages and distributed them, and each village had a contact person. The recruited employees who live close to their homes can come back and forth in the morning and night. Those who live far away have dormitories. At the beginning, more than 1,800 people were recruited. In the end, through training and guidance, more than 500 people stayed voluntarily. The factory will also subsidize part of the salary during the training period in order to meet the minimum wage standard. "There is no compulsion. Now when we are a company, the most troublesome thing is that employees privately inquire about the salary of other companies. Employees who have just been trained have to change jobs. There is really no way for companies.”
Kuche Pomegranate Seed Apparel Company staff dormitory outside scene
training workers with relatively low skills, but also subsidies for wages, which should be “profit first”"Why did the company travel all the way to Xinjiang to set up factories? When asked by a reporter from the Global Times, Huang Bingyou said, "Once our company earns money, it should invest in society to help solve more problems. The difficulties of low-income groups have allowed them to get rich together. This is something passed down from our Chinese civilization. "Z3z
Source: Global Times
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