'Forced Labour' Of Ethnic Minorities In China

[Globalfightback]

This long piece is very interesting but poses a whole host of questions. The basic premise is that ethnic minorities in China - mainly Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz communities - are being forcibly relocated to factories that are sometimes thousands of miles away to produce a diverse range of goods, often for Western markets. Whilst I have an enormous respect for what TBIJ does generally, I have to question here to what extent this can actually be defined as 'forced labour'. Whilst 'detention centres' are mentioned, there's no evidence provided of people being forcibly dragged away and put on transport, and the report cites a worker as stating they are paid more than they would be in their home region, so it's certainly not slave labour. The report does paint a picture of a deliberate attempt to assimilate ethnic minorities into the larger culture, but the actual scenario isn't perhaps as dark as the report implies. To an extent we are trying to pass judgement here on a culture that we perhaps don't have sufficient knowledge of to fully understand. I think this quote rather sums the dilemma up:

' "There’s a sense of defeat tied to the work that they’re doing,” said Steenberg. “And a feeling they’ve little other choice.” Whether that’s because of economic circumstances, discrimination, dispossession or coercion is hard to disentangle, he added. '

Regardless of the ethical rights and wrongs here, one observation I would definitely make is that the issues can be linked to the wider malaise that the capitalist system engenders. If there wasn't the need for cutthroat competition to ensure the economic (and ergo, physical) survival of people in regions and nations across the planet, humanity (and in most cases, specifically governments) would not have a need for any form of coercion at all. This feeds into a wider discussion of capitalist economics that can perhaps be explored at a later date.

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/s ... ed-labour/

[DownUnder]

The Yanks hate communists so you can't really rely on their take on China. But then, is China really a communist country anymore? It would certainly suit those on the right in the US to say yes.