When ‘poverty alleviation’ means forced labor for Uyghurs

The use of Uyghur forced labor in China’s so-called “reeducation camps” has been documented by journalists, scholars, and nonprofit organizations, based on eye-witness accounts, leaked official documents, and on-the ground reporting. There is some evidence to suggest that China is phasing out internment camps for Turkic, mainly Muslim minorities in the far western region of East Turkistan (Xinjiang). But according to a new report, a more insidious and creeping atrocity is taking place.
In a paper titled “The conceptual evolution of poverty alleviation through labor transfer in East Turkistan (Xinjiang) ” published yesterday, Adrian Zenz argues that China is pursuing a policy of mass coerced labor under a separate system from the internment camps. His report also provides the first witness testimonies that Uyghurs who refused these state work assignments were sent to camps.
Such coercion is illegal under the International Labor Organisation (ILO), of which China is a member.
Zenz is an anthropologist who, since 2018, has been doggedly documenting human rights abuses against Uyghurs using Chinese government documents, leaked police files, and eye witness accounts. He is a director and senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which was authorized by the U.S. Congress in 1993.
His new paper examines East Turkistan (Xinjiang)’s implementation of China’s National Poverty Alleviation through Labor Transfer program, under which “surplus rural laborers” are trapped in state-choreographed labor transfers under the banner of poverty alleviation and de-extremification.
This is a different policy from the mass internment regime that began in 2017 under then Party Secretary of so-called Xinjiang Chén Quánguó 陈全国, under which hundreds of thousands and possibly more than than 1 million Uyghurs were detained in euphemistically named Vocational Skills Education and Training Centres (VSETCs). Many of them have been transferred to factories in East Turkistan (Xinjiang) and around China, where they are forced to work.
However, there are millions more who have never been in a camp, but have been swept up in the Poverty Alleviation through Labor Transfer program. Documented examples include official government orders to withhold “subsistence allowances for individuals who repeatedly refuse to participate in poverty alleviation projects,” to coerce “elderly persons to participate in seasonal labor transfers, including picking cotton,” and a state plan in one area to “round up ‘all women and other surplus laborers’ — 500 persons from only 391 households — to work in neighboring cities.”
According to Zenz’s research, village leaders, some with Chinese state-ordered quotas to fill and others at the behest of multinationals searching for sweatshop labor for Western brands, go door to door to round them up, luring them with get-rich-quick stories and a way out of poverty.
The fine print, which they are never privy to, is that the placements often include tight surveillance, political indoctrination, compulsory Mandarin classes after a day on the shop floor, and the impossibility of returning home before the contract ends. To refuse this chance to “better themselves” also risks being singled out for detention as a troublemaker.
TWO TYPES OF FORCED LABOR
In his report, Zenz outlines the critical differences between the two major strands of forced labor and presents key new evidence testimony of punishments awaiting rural Uyghurs who refuse to participate in government work programs.
With the closure of many VSETCs, the Poverty Alleviation through Labor Transfer policy is assuming more importance in Beijing’s long term plan, which is to strengthen and institutionalize its policy of compulsory labor among the entire rural Uyghur population of East Turkistan (Xinjiang), according to Zenz.
Zenz told The China Project, that not only was the state-mandated labor transfer system “active,” but that in fact, it was expanding. “It’s increasing, it’s intensifying, it’s becoming normalized, institutionalized, and maybe less visibly coercive as a result,” he said.
“If policy makers in international institutions misunderstand and think that forced labor is only linked to the camps, then the implications are that we are likely to have a policy that doesn’t effectively address what’s going on,” he warned.
The government rationale is that while the VSETCs administer intensive de-extremification to “cure” persons already “infected” with the “virus” of “religious extremism,” labor transfers are to preventively inoculate those who are not yet “infected,” according to Zenz’ report.
There is a common end game however which is to bring the entire rural Uyghur workforce to heel, by whatever means, by imposing Beijing’s definition of social stability amid a regional atmosphere not unlike an “open prison”.
While, according to Zenz, there is evidence to suggest the camps are being wound down and the “camp-to-labor pipeline” is no longer pursued by the state, the other track to forced labor is alive and well.
Chloe Cranston, Head of Thematic Advocacy Programs at Anti-Slavery International welcomed Zenz’s report as a counter to the corporate sector pursuing “business as normal” in the region amid claims the situation has improved.
A SOURCE OF CHEAP LABOR
By 2022 labor transfer “person times” (as opposed to “people” since each person can be transferred multiple times) reached three million, and stable employment rates of 99.88% in one area at least observed by Zenz were maintained through “close monitoring.”
“Clearly,” says Zenz, “transferred Uyghurs constitute cheap and easily exploited labor amid soaring nationwide labor costs.”
But China’s forced labor policies directly contravene ILO rules that define forced labor as work that is involuntary, without free and informed consent, and enforced through a menace of penalty. Those who choose not to comply are at highest risk of punishment while those who opt in, also do so “in the context of multiple un-freedoms,” “and are unable to freely leave their work,” said Zenz.
Among the leaked cache of Xinjiang Police File documents, Zenz discovered a classified internal directive detailing the fate of those refusing to comply with poverty alleviation measures and labor transfers, who were liable to face “strike hard” detention. “Non-participation in state employment programmes also directly increased a person’s internment risk,” he found.
Abbas of the Campaign for Uyghurs confirmed Zenz’ findings. “Whether it is through the camp-to-forced-labor pipeline, the labor transfer system, or other methods of forced labor that have existed under the communist regime for decades, Uyghurs have no agency to refuse displacement or slave labor,” she said. “Dr. Zenz’s research also offers evidence that Uyghurs are punished for not participating in labor transfer programs. These conditions are forced upon the Uyghurs, as they have no option but to accept this fate for their existence.”
Uyghurs without stable or state-designated employment face higher risk of detention, said Zenz in his report, noting that Uyghur informants confirmed that in 2017 that participation in state policies was a “strategy for escaping internment.”
In his report, Zenz presents the first witness testimony to-date that confirms the practice of detention for refusing labor transfers. Gulzia (pseudonym), a former camp detainee, whose identity Zenz has confirmed and with whom he has spoken, testified how one of her cell mates from a rural Kashgar township had been detained for harboring “extreme religious thoughts” for wanting to stay at home to care for her two small children and help her elderly in-laws with farming, rather than accept a government-organized factory work assignment.
A second cell mate, likewise had been detained for “non-cooperation with [government] arrangements”, also a factory work assignment.
Beijing’s overarching goal through these policies is to enforce “lasting sociocultural change,” Zenz notes.
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