The Emperor Far Away: Travels at the Edge of China
by David Eimer · 13 Aug 2014 · 316pp · 103,743 words
city close to Urumqi, the XPCC is in effect a parallel regional government, running whole towns and industries, including the lucrative tomato and cotton farms scattered across rural Xinjiang. The bingtuan has its own university, newspaper and TV station and currently accounts for around 10 per cent of Xinjiang’s GDP. An
Worn: A People's History of Clothing
by Sofi Thanhauser · 25 Jan 2022 · 592pp · 133,460 words
under desert. In the late 1980s, another large lake fed by the Tarim, the Taitema, became a dry basin. Uyghur farmers in southern Xinjiang were given both cotton and grain quotas in the 1980s and 1990s. Uyghur farmers had to grow cotton even if it would yield little or no profit. The
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“open up Xinjiang to the world,” and to transform the region into an economic powerhouse. Their strategy relied on massive investment to make Xinjiang into China’s biggest cotton-producing region, which would in turn, they boasted, raise living standards for all. From 1991 to 1994, infrastructure investment more than doubled. Following
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like Vietnam or Bangladesh. Central planners had felt since the nineties that China’s textile industry could become more competitive by being moved closer to Xinjiang’s cotton fields, and by making use of its cheaper rural workforce. By 2000, hundreds of thousands of spindles had been moved to Xinjiang from Shanghai
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, H&M, and The Gap. * * * — In 2019 two Japanese brands, Muji and Uniqlo, came under fire for their ad campaign advertising the softness of the Xinjiang cotton in their flannel shirts. “What?! They’re actually using that as a slogan?!” fumed Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch. One Twitter user declared, “Many
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Uyghurs love and idolize Japan, but this is a betrayal.” The truth was, however, that Xinjiang cotton had spread so deeply in the global supply chain that there were few global brands that could have accurately claimed their clothes did not contain
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international web of producers, it was as likely to be present in a garment marked “Made in Vietnam” as in one marked “Made in China.” Xinjiang cotton appeared for a time to be guilty merely by association—with a region rife with human rights violations. It was soon revealed to be directly
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-labor regime, too. Shortly after the release of Zenz’s report, U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a Withhold Release Order (WRO) on all Xinjiang cotton and tomato products. Since the Tariff Act of 1930, it had technically been illegal to import goods made with forced labor into the U.S
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’s practice of forced labor in Xinjiang are undeniable. The past repeats, but with variations. In the annals of remaking land to grow cotton, what is occurring in Xinjiang does not precisely follow what had happened in America, where indigenous inhabitants were eliminated and replaced with vast numbers of slaves forced to
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grow cotton. Nor does it perfectly follow the model of the British in India, who forced the native inhabitants to grow cotton themselves. In Xinjiang, cotton agriculture is replacing native people with uninhabitable desert. Cotton is the means, rather than the ends, of elimination. The Uyghurs are being killed
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total garment and textile exports. Activists note that Customs and Border Protection’s lack of transparency makes it impossible to see how, or whether, the Xinjiang cotton ban is being enforced. What can be safely said, however, is that regimes of genocide, forced labor, and environmental devastation in the service of growing
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REFERENCE IN TEXT “What?! They’re actually”: Handley and Xiao, “Japanese Brands Muji and Uniqlo Flaunt ‘Xinjiang Cotton.’ ” GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Many Uyghurs love”: Handley and Xiao, “Japanese Brands Muji and Uniqlo Flaunt ‘Xinjiang Cotton.’ ” GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT In December 2020: Zenz, “Coercive Labor in Xinjiang: Labor Transfer
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in the Creation of an American Myth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 139. Handley, Erin, and Bang Xiao. “Japanese Brands Muji and Uniqlo Flaunt ‘Xinjiang Cotton’ Despite Uyghur Human Rights Concerns.” ABC News, November 3, 2019. https://www.abc.net.au/news. Hanes, William Travis, and Frank Sanello. Opium Wars: The
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–71, 72, 300 small-scale spinning of, 300 spinning mills for, 74, 75–77 water shortages and, 69–70, 72, 74–75, 80–81 cotton production in China (Xinjiang), 44, 83, 89–91, 92–96 environmental degradation from, 45–46, 48–49, 63, 78, 86–87, 89, 90, 94 first New England
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ITG (International Textile Group), 242 J Jamaica, 205–7 Japan denim processes and dyes in, 239–40 textile and garment production in, 185–88, 193 Xinjiang cotton in, 93, 95 JCPenney, 218 Jefferson, Thomas, 17 Joniak-Lüthi, Agnieszka, 90 Journal of the American Medical Association (1938), 172 Judd, Sylvester, 19 K Kansas
Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order
by Bruno Maçães · 1 Feb 2019 · 281pp · 69,107 words
in Kashgar to develop the city into an industry cluster area integrating textiles, printing and dyeing, cloth weaving and garment processing.” By 2023, Xinjiang will become the largest cotton textile industry base of China and the most important clothing export base in Western China. The largest city, Urumqi, will turn into the
How the World Ran Out of Everything
by Peter S. Goodman · 11 Jun 2024 · 528pp · 127,605 words
worker exploitation. This was the result of accounts of systematic human rights abuses against the ethnic minority Uyghurs in the Chinese province of Xinjiang—a major source of cotton. The Biden administration accused China’s government of genocide12 in its repression of the Uyghurs, citing reports of forced labor. American sanctions broadly
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prohibited products linked to Xinjiang13 from entering the United States. And when multinational companies complied, vowing to avoid Xinjiang cotton, they enraged Chinese consumers, making themselves vulnerable to boycotts14. Reducing the world’s reliance on Chinese factories seemed certain to increase prices on a vast
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logistical, financial, and legal challenges. Shupe had to factor in the pitfalls of continuing to rely on socks from China, given the prevalence of cotton harvested in Xinjiang and the threat of sanctions against companies that traded in that commodity. More broadly, he recognized that China had become a branding liability. He
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, June 22, 2022, B1. 14. vulnerable to boycotts: Peter S. Goodman, Vivian Wang, and Elizabeth Paton, “Global Brands Find It Hard to Untangle Themselves From Xinjiang Cotton,” New York Times, April 6, 2021, A1. 15. first months of the pandemic: Thomas Baumgartner, Yogesh Malik, and Asutosh Padhi, “Reimagining Industrial Supply Chains,” McKinsey
Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside
by Xiaowei Wang · 12 Oct 2020 · 196pp · 61,981 words
across the country. Since the demand for drone operators is high, he helped spray crops everywhere from his home province of Anhui to the cotton fields of Xinjiang. He says he loves all the travel, and the unexpected situations that arise on the job—drone breakdowns with immediate fixes required in remote
Making It in America: The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S.A. (And How It Got That Way)
by Rachel Slade · 9 Jan 2024 · 392pp · 106,044 words
of the country’s 12.8 million Uyghurs, an ethnic Muslim minority. Reports of concentration-camp-like conditions had been trickling out of the cotton-producing region, Xinjiang, in northwest China, where the Uyghurs have lived for more than 1,200 years. Those who managed to escape spoke of forced labor, child
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Uyghurs’ plight, which made brands nervous. Chinese retaliation was a real concern. When fashion giant H&M announced that it was severing ties with some Xinjiang cotton suppliers due to concerns that it might be associated with Uyghur slave labor, the Chinese government quickly unleashed a youth army to attack the company
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trouble, but we are not afraid of trouble either.” Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, announced, “These foreign companies refuse to use Xinjiang cotton purely on the basis of lies. Of course this will trigger the Chinese people’s dislike and anger.” Whether China’s 2021 cotton buying spree
Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters
by Oliver Franklin-Wallis · 21 Jun 2023 · 309pp · 121,279 words
it as more ‘sustainable’ than alternatives. (Another reason for the pivot, which you won’t see in the ads: it reduces the use of exploitative cotton from Xinjiang.) In actuality, clothing made from blends of recycled plastics and organic fabrics – cotton and polyester, say – are typically less recyclable than those made from
Deep Sea and Foreign Going
by Rose George · 4 Sep 2013 · 402pp · 98,760 words
the journey of a typical T-shirt from a Chinese factory to an American back. This imaginary TEU was packed with 16 tons of cotton in Urumqi, Xinjiang, and sent to Denver, Colorado. If it went by truck to Shanghai, by air to Los Angeles and by truck again to Denver, its