
U.S. to block cotton, tomato product imports from Xinjiang over forced labor - abc-xyz
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-xinjiang/u-s-to-block-cotton-tomato-product-imports-from-chinas-xinjiang-over-forced-labor-cbp-idUSKBN25Z29N
======
dehrmann
Does the US import that many tomato products from China? Most produce will be
domestic, Mexican, or Chilean in the off season. Is there significantly tomato
processing there?

Same with cotton. If this impacts clothes, that could be significant, but I
don't think of China as a big textiles player, and the US still produces a lot
of cotton, it just doesn't weave it or make clothes from it.

------
russli1993
"We have reasonable but not conclusive evidence that there is a risk of forced
labor in supply chains related to cotton textiles and tomatoes coming out of
Xinjiang,” Smith said in an interview. “We will continue to work our
investigations to fill in those gaps.”

Xinjiang produces 20% of the world's cotton. The reality is, most farmers in
Xinjiang are independent entities. They are the little guys. They grow cotton
or any other produces on their land, and sell the produces to distributors.
Many of these farmers are minority ethnicity, Uighur included, but there are
others as well. These people lived in villages and in the country side for
generations. Farming and the "primary" sector of the economy is how they make
a living for generations. They are the low to middle income bracket of the
society. They depend on agriculture to raise families, provide food on the
table, raise children, and take care of the elderly in the family. A blanket
ban of all cotton produced in this region will devastate the life of these
people. Think about it from the perspective of these people. They grew cotton
on their farm, and one day they are told "The U.S. stops buying your product
because they want to protect you from forced labor", and because of that, you
will be out of work. The farmer sits there and think "Wait, I am farming
because I need money to feed my families". This ban sounds like its standing
with the Uighur people, but in reality, it hurts them the most. Rights to
live, rights to livelihood, rights to income and bringing food to the table is
also human rights.

Target companies or organizations that actually committed forced labor and
present concrete evidence. Maybe require a document of the name of the farmer,
require disclosure and certifications of the practices of the producers. There
are many ways this could be done to both protect legitimate producers,
farmers, and rule out the bad actors. Or at least act like you are trying. A
blanket ban blew the covers off of the PR statement this is about protecting
human rights and stand with the people. Instead, the actual intent is to
suppress the Chinese economy, and prevent the people living there from getting
richer and achieve a better quality of life. Its sad that there are people in
the world who don't really care about other people's quality of life. They can
enjoy themselves a good paying job, nice cloths, good cars etc. While for
other people, farming, doing hard, manual and labor intensive work on the farm
is all they can ever dream of. And what little they have now will be "taken"
away from them.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Given this account's pro-CCP comment history and _exclusively_ commenting on
China-specific topics (seriously, nothing else) in its 8 month history, this
comment should be taken with a Honda Civic-sized grain of salt.

~~~
tom-_-
Is there substance in the comment that strikes you as misleading, an
exaggeration or just untrue? If so, you should speak to that instead of not so
subtly suggesting that the commenter is a Chinese misinformant, which is
against HN guidelines and probably untrue.

------
dirtyid
>“We have reasonable but not conclusive evidence that there is a risk of
forced labor in supply chains related to cotton textiles and tomatoes coming
out of Xinjiang,” Smith said in an interview. “We will continue to work our
investigations to fill in those gaps.”

...

>In March, U.S. lawmakers proposed legislation that would effectively assume
that all goods produced in Xinjiang are made with forced labor and would
require certification that they are not.

These sanctions are an of extension XPCC / bingtuan sanctions from a few weeks
ago. The organizations run XJ agriculture. Ultimately they're kind whatever,
XJ tomatoes are <1B export and will be redirected for internal consumption.
40-50B of cotton will be washed through SEA producers. In terms of human
rights, the reality is the ag workers particularly Uyghurs are going to suffer
more after XPCC sanctions - primarily because region can't import superior US
agricultural equipment. So they'll just end up working the people harder.
Obviously US equipment producers will also lose out. Decouple is expensive,
SMIC lose 4B, PSI loses 100B. The question is whether these moves are smart
and within stated interests. Regardless, hope the bar for more significant
escalation, particular military ones, is based on more conclusive findings,
but you never know with election politics.

~~~
yc12340
> the reality is the ag workers particularly Uyghurs are going to suffer more
> after XPCC sanctions - primarily because region can't import superior US
> agricultural equipment

Could you tell more about "superior agricultural equipment"? I have only heard
about tractors with DRM, but I assume, that you meant something else.

~~~
dirtyid
From what I read, John Deere harvesters have lower error rates and better
efficiency than domestic machines which makes significant difference in cotton
production.

On DRM note, wonder if they're going to be forced to disable existing machines
in the region. That would be interesting. I think half of the cotton
production occurs in other provinces, so there's a loophole for more parts and
supplies if hacktivists can overcome geo locks or other restrictions. Maybe
John Deere will be incentivized to sell DRM free systems.

------
bamboozled
Pretty weak response from the US considering China actually have huge forced
labor camps.

How about even stronger sanctions?

I guess the US is now so dependent on China that they can't?

~~~
jonathannat
At least this US administration is standing up and doing something about it.
Do you see the Germany chancellor sanctioning for Xinjiang concentration labor
camps? UK prime minister? French president? Japanese prime minister?

Another reason this current administration's hands are tied because it's an
election year. And wall street has already raised more money for democrats
this past few months than republicans, because of the anti-China stance.

~~~
addicted
This administration messed up any opportunity to curtail China by dropping
TPP.

Everything they’ve done since then is a fraction of the massive gift they gave
the Chinese.

Heck, even the Chinese know what a joke this administration is which is why
they basically captured Hong Kong, are trying to destroy Vietnam, extracting
as much from Australia and India as they can in the past year while the going
is good with the administration.

Also, comparing to Germany, a country with a population less than 20% of the
US’s which has basically no standing army by design, and hosts massive
American bases within it is a complete non sequitur.

Why don’t you compare to India, for example, which within weeks of a small
border skirmish pretty much eliminated the entirety of Chinese digital
companies from the country. Setting aside the wisdom of that decision, if
you’re just comparing the actions taken by administrations, India has done far
more in far less time that has been far more effective than throwing random
tantrums after Xi refused to bribe your President enough.

~~~
jonathannat
> This administration messed up any opportunity to curtail China

Companies are stepping over each other to move factories out of China. Just
check chinalawblog. Any sane COO is de-risking right now. And what about
Pompeo's speech? tariffs? banning wechat? supporting Taiwan? There's an
endless list of this administration actions trying to curtail China.

> dropping TPP.

TPP was still an IF still when 2017 rolled around.

> Chinese know what a joke this administration is which is why they basically
> captured Hong Kong, are trying to destroy Vietnam, extracting as much from
> Australia and India

China is making stupid mistakes after mistakes. It managed to piss off almost
every surrounding neighbors: South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, India, Australia, New
Zealand, Vietnam, etc. It is basically at war with India right now. And US,
Canada, UK, France, and some EU countries are in conflict with China as well.
Just recently, even Germany, one of its last ally in Europe has condemned
China publically for the czech republic situation

China is so knee deep in trouble, with internal top leadership conflict,
coronavirus, job losses, suffering trade, flooding, food shortage, that it has
no choice but to establish internal "order" with inner Mongolia, Xinjiang,
Hong Kong, Tibet. But it is messing up there too.

> Also, comparing to Germany, a country with a population less than 20% of the
> US

That's just dishonest hand waving. Everyone knows Germany leads the EU.

> Why don’t you compare to India

China literally killed Indian soldiers - an act of war. There's no comparison
here. And again, this is election year. This US administration cannot piss off
every US companies by an absolute economic sanction on China.

~~~
ardy42
> with internal top leadership conflict

Source? My understanding is Xi has pretty effectively consolidated power, and
such internal struggles would be pretty opaque to everyone who doesn't have
access to a well-connected CCP member.

It does look like they're expecting a period of increased isolation in the
future though: [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/business/china-xi-
economy...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/business/china-xi-economy.html)

~~~
jonathannat
sinoinsider

------
excalibur
The US condemns the use of forced labor to produce cotton.

~~~
Zhenya
What's your point? Slavery was abolished a long time ago in the US. Any
pressure to stop enslavement or forced labor of humans should be celebrated.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Slavery was abolished a long time ago in the US

No, it wasn't.

 _Chattel_ slavery was converted almost overnight into _penal_ slavery, with
largely pretextual criminalization of the exact same group previously subject
to chattel slavery, a long time ago in the United States.

~~~
Zhenya
You're right.

We can go buy slaves today in the US. /s

Yes, criminalization of legal acts to recapture the free labor is abhorrent.
However, passing the 13th amendment and then fighting a civil war to enforce
it at least creates an incredibly strong legal footing for defending people
from forced labor.

Criminals paying back their debt to society is a different conversation in
terms of the length and harshness of the penality.

~~~
dragonwriter
> We can go buy slaves today in the US

No, slaves you can buy as an individual is what you have with _chattel_
slavery.

Slaves whose labor you can rent, or the product of whose labor you can buy,
from the state who holds them as convicts (or that the state uses directly for
it's own purposes under the same conditions) is what you have with _penal_
slavery.

> However, passing the 13th amendment and then fighting a civil war to enforce
> it

That...didn't happen. In fact, the Republicans, despite being an ideologically
abolitionist party, didn't pursue abolition as a policy, merely limiting (not
even stopping) the geographic expansion of slavery, specifically to avoid
splitting the union and provoking a civil war.

------
seibelj
I’m going to tell you a secret that maybe you don’t understand - these
tomatoes will be exported to another country and then imported to the US minus
the extra costs.

~~~
lightgreen
That extra cost might make tomato exporting to the US unprofitable.

> I’m going to tell you a secret

It is not a secret, and people working in US government agencies are not
stupid, they know about this scheme and a thousand others.

~~~
ospider
It's just a funny way to say. You're killing the humor here.

~~~
maest
Being patronising is hardly humorous.

------
nitrobeast
What’s the difference between forced labor in China, vs prisoner firefighter
in California?

~~~
phist_mcgee
One involves imprisonment with no chance of release with potential torture,
the other is allowed free after their jail term. I don't understand your
comparison?

~~~
berdario
Exactly, in the US you are left at the mercy of cruel jailors who will torture
you

[https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/08/wait-do-people-
actual...](https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/08/wait-do-people-actually-
know-just-how-evil-this-man-is)

You'll be forced to work and live in prisons overrun by the pandemic

[https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/coronavirus-
sweepi...](https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/coronavirus-sweeping-
through-massive-us-prison-population)

Even if you're released, you'll be jailed right away if the battery of your
electronic monitor will ran out

[https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-ankle-monitors-are-
anoth...](https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-ankle-monitors-are-another-kind-
of-jail/)

Tt'll be though rebuilding your life, since employment opportunities are
denied to ex-inmates, and thanks to probation fees, you'll be saddled with
debts hard to pull away from.

[https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2019/04/09/probation_incom...](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2019/04/09/probation_income)

Ultimately, if you fail to repay those fees, you'll be jailed again. The
system works wonderfully... for the for-profit prisons

[https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/capitalizing-...](https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/capitalizing-
on-mass-incarceration-u-s-growth-in-private-prisons/)

The US is a modern day dystopia, and I don't think that anyone seriously
thinks that China's prison system is as bad as the US'

~~~
phist_mcgee
I do think it's worse. You certainly do not get a lawyer, and you sure as shit
do not get the right to a fair trial in china.

~~~
berdario
You might want to educate yourself:

[https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/the-right-to-an-
attorne...](https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/the-right-to-an-attorney-and-
your-attorneys-rights/)

It's far from perfect, but better than in the US

~~~
phist_mcgee
> The criminal representation rate now is generally said to be somewhere
> between 30-50%.

Last I checked, in the US, every person is entitled to representation. You
want to argue that a country without a separate independent judiciary is
capable of producing fairer outcomes for individuals without political
collusion?

------
tehjoker
tbh, I'm not sure if I believe the allegations. Most of the most serious
assertions have come from people connected to the CIA and the various Radio
Free * newsources that come from the state department. Very few of these
stories are independently verified and the numbers claimed are comical. Of 11M
people, they claim 3M are in camps. A friend of mine's sister just visited XJ
and said it was fine. You can't hide 3M people out of 11M. Given the anti-
China stance of the ruling class right now, I am extremely skeptical of
various scurrilous claims being bandied about. The US routinely lies about
official enemies and has for decades (nay centuries), so their record should
speak for itself. A recent example is the Iraq War and WMD. Another famous
example is the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

For example, the US news reported that the UN had condemned the practices in
XJ, but in fact it was one US person on one commission that didn't represent
the UN as a whole. The US media has to do more than mere assertion. In any
case, the current fascist US regime has little credibility on human rights
issues given their open support for police murders and various policies of
ripping children away from travelers and imprisoning them.

I'd like to say show me the evidence, but unfortunately when I try to read
chinese government documents or political discourse I am befuddled by my
inability to read chinese. :-/ Note how many US reporters on these stories
cannot either.

~~~
colordrops
I agree. I've not seen a single piece of indisputable evidence - virtually
everything has been "take our word for it" or some indistinct satellite photo
of a building.

Considering that an anti-China stance is part of Trump's strategy, and
intelligence agencies have been caught lying countless times (e.g. Iraq's WMD)
to further their agenda, there's no good reason to believe these accusations.

The Chinese are certainly a totalitarian regime, and it is certain that the
people of Xinjiang are not in a good state, and there are certainly political
prisoners there. But, as you mentioned, the numbers I've heard of 1-2 million
prisoners (there are 10 million Uyghurs in total) in concentration camps and
slave labor etc seem extremely exaggerated. Pretty much everyone in china has
a phone with a camera, including Uyghurs. You'd think at least a few videos of
indisputable evidence would be leaked. If you want to accuse a nation of a
holocaust, you must have strong evidence.

And on a tangential note, the US has the world's largest prison population, at
22% of the world's prisoners, and a disproportionate number are black. The
Chinese could also spin the situation and say that the Americans are running
concentration camps for blacks and be on similar footing.

People mistake the frequency and breadth of repetition of a narrative as a
measure of truth value, and the three letter agencies take advantage of this
human bias, hence the downvotes for your salient comment. It's not easy to
take a contrarian stance in these times.

~~~
thoughtstheseus
Pretty sure there is no such thing as indisputable evidence. What evidence
would suffice for you though?

~~~
Aunche
Take a look at the "UN report" that was referenced in the article. It looks
like they just interviewed 8 villagers in different villages to estimate the
number of people being detained and extrapolated that to all of Xinjiang. Any
evidence less handwavy than that would be a good start.

[https://www.nchrd.org/2018/08/china-massive-numbers-of-
uyghu...](https://www.nchrd.org/2018/08/china-massive-numbers-of-uyghurs-
other-ethnic-minorities-forced-into-re-education-programs/)

~~~
_jahh
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGYoeJ5U7cQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGYoeJ5U7cQ)
how about drone video of hundreds of hundreds of 'detainees' being loaded onto
trains.

how about so many interned that they have to build new camps.
[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/china-new-
inter...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/china-new-internment-
camps-xinjiang-uighurs-muslims)

~~~
colordrops
These have both been widely circulated.

The video has a few problems: there's no indication of where in china this is;
there's no indication that these are uighurs; there's no indication that these
are any particular kind of prisoner (i.e. political vs criminal); and last
this doesn't provide any evidence of more than a few dozen or hundred
prisoners.

The BuzzFeed article has problems as well. They extrapolate too much from
scant or vague evidence. The satellite photos and maps don't provide any solid
evidence for their claims. Just pictures of buildings.

The HN crowd is skeptical of heavily documented scientific studies from
renowned scientists and picks them with a fine toothed comb, yet accepts
political narratives with patchy evidence put forth by parties with conflicts
of interest with little skepticism. It's kind of absurd.

~~~
ardy42
> The video has a few problems: there's no indication of where in china this
> is;

Someone actually figured out the exact train station and approximate date of
when the video was shot. He even showed his work, if you want to check it:

[https://observers.france24.com/en/20190925-drone-video-
shows...](https://observers.france24.com/en/20190925-drone-video-shows-mass-
displacement-prisoners-china-xinjiang-uyghur-region)

> there's no indication that these are uighurs; there's no indication that
> these are any particular kind of prisoner (i.e. political vs criminal); and
> last this doesn't provide any evidence of more than a few dozen or hundred
> prisoners.

> The BuzzFeed article has problems as well. They extrapolate too much from
> scant or vague evidence. The satellite photos and maps don't provide any
> solid evidence for their claims. Just pictures of buildings.

This isn't skepticism, it's denialism. There are hundreds of original reports
circulated in reputable journals and news outlets that assemble testimony,
documents, and circumstantial evidence that paint a pretty indisputable
picture there is some kind of ethnicity-based mass imprisonment program going
on in Xinjiang. The attempts of the Chinese government to suppress fact-
gathering in the region add even more credibility to picture. Sure, you're not
going to find some single piece of evidence that proves it all (e.g. a single
satellite image of a vast field of prisons capable of holding one million
inmates with a sign legible from space that says "Uyghur forced re-education
through labor prison complex, population 1,000,000. Don't tell the
foreigners!" and has all the inmates standing outside being counted), but to
expect something like that is unreasonable. Each article usually presents just
one new piece of the larger puzzle, which has been assembled well enough that
it's pretty clear what it's of.

