Xinjiang Sanctions Episode 2 - Adrian Zenz

Xinjiang Sanctions

In Episode 2 of Xinjiang Sanctions, James speaks with Dr Adrian Zenz, Senior Fellow and Director of China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Dr Zenz explains how many people are affected by Xinjiang forced labour, and James asks him about his sources, methods and the challenges of working on this issue.

Transcript

James Cockayne 0:01

Welcome to Xinjiang Sanctions, a podcast looking at the global response to forced labour in Xinjiang, China. I'm James Cockayne, a Professor of Global Politics and Anti-Slavery at the University of Nottingham. I've been working on modern slavery and forced labour issues for the last decade and researching Xinjiang forced labour for the last year. You can see the results of that research at www.xinjiangsanctions.info. In this short podcast series, I speak with global experts to understand why forced labour emerged in Xinjiang and what governments and business are doing to try to address it. My guest on this episode is Dr. Adrian Zenz Senior Fellow and Director of China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Dr. Zenz, welcome to the podcast.

Adrian Zenz 0:47

Thank you.

James Cockayne 0:47

Dr. Zenz I thought we'd start with a question about the scale of this issue. How many people in and from Xinjiang have been subjected to forced labour?

Adrian Zenz 0:56

Xinjiang is operating a very comprehensive system of forced labour – precisely, it is two different systems. One is through the Vocational Skills Education and Training Centres, which is the official sort of euphemism for the reeducation camps, the vocational camps, we can estimate at least several hundred thousand to be subjected to forced labour through that system. That's a conservative estimate. In addition, Xinjiang like the rest of China operates a programme called Poverty Alleviation through Labour Transfer. Labour transfers are a common feature of developing societies whereby agriculturalists, rural surplus labourers really, are being transferred to secondary and tertiary sector jobs industry, typically manufacturing. And of course, you find that throughout the world, throughout China, but in Xinjiang, and to some extent in Tibet, the programme is coercive, because it fulfils a political and other goals other than economic and there's a real distinct aspect of coercion to it. This system has been intensified and expanded recently, subjecting around or over 3 million people to labour transfers, we can estimate that possibly close to 2 million of these are at risk of coercion, and therefor of coercive labour. So the total scope I estimate to be between two and two and a half million.

James Cockayne 2:19

Those are very large numbers. How do you arrive at these numbers Dr. Zenz? Can you tell us a bit about your methods?

Adrian Zenz 2:25

Yes, so of course, I'm also someone who has been estimating the scale of the extra legal internment campaign into reeducation camps, which initially was estimated to be at least several hundred thousand. More recent and especially most recent evidence, also from leaked internal documents, such as the Xinjiang Police Files, points to a scope of one to 2 million. Within these vocational training camps are one component. One document from one prefecture alone spoke of placing 100,000 of these vocational camp detainees into labour placements in 2018 and it’s a conservative estimate to estimate that at least several hundred thousand are at risk or subjected to forced labour through that system. With labour transfer it is a bit more complicated because labour transfers are not inherently coercive. People can earn more money by working in a factory than previously being farming land. And the main reason why they might resist that is not just economic it is also because it tears apart community - it displaces people. The method is to estimate firstly, how many ethnic minorities are part of that system because you also have rural Han Chinese farmers, for example. And secondly, some groups are at higher risk of coercion. We have for example, academic studies, Chinese academic studies from previous years that estimated you know that quite a significant share of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities from Xinjiang were not willing to participate in labour transfers, oftentimes because they have for example, caretaking obligations. Women are taking care of children, families are taking care of elderly. The state is therefore instituting centralised childcare, centralised boarding schools, centralised elderly care. My estimate was that about 60 per cent of them are at risk of coercion and some of these would be at a higher risk of coercion, especially those who are characterised in academic studies and state discourses as ‘idle’.

James Cockayne 4:27

We often hear this phrase surplus rural labour in this context, is that one of the relevant concepts here that we should be thinking about when looking for indicators of coercion or where does that fit into this mental framework?

Adrian Zenz 4:43

That is exactly right. So the Poverty Alleviation through Labour Transfer, which is the larger of the two systems, state sponsored labour placement systems that are coercive, or at least partially coercive, that system explicitly transfers so-called “rural surplus labourers”, which is an international concept not just found in China. You have rural surplus labourers anywhere - in our western societies we had simply too many people with population increase the arable land typically does not increase or not enough. So you have more and more people trying to make a livelihood out of the land. These people often transfer themselves they want to go into factory jobs, they want to go into industry or other jobs for various reasons. However, others do not want this. And it really depends on the context. And so in Xinjiang, we have a particularly problematic context of coercion, because the state is using labour transfers to tear apart ethnic communities to achieve political goals and to indoctrinate people and assimilate them culturally and spiritually. So rural surplus labourers are clearly the target of this campaign. And this is one of the keywords that researchers like myself and others have used to identify risk of coercion and implicate specific companies.

James Cockayne 6:03

So it sounds like very meticulous and demanding work that you've been undertaking Dr. Zenz because you have to, as you say, look, both at these structural patterns and policies, but then also at quite specific cases and see what's going on at the level of intent and voluntarity, at the specific level. What kinds of documents or other evidence are you able to use in understanding what's going on at those two different levels?

Adrian Zenz 6:31

Yes, it is a very complex, very complicated type of research that first and foremost requires us to clearly understand the conceptual dimension, the terminology, the policy, the policy framework, at higher, at different administrative levels, higher levels, and then local levels. It is very complex indeed. And it's crucially important – especially for implicating companies, for governments to draft sanctions for Western companies to divest from supply chains that are problematic – it's crucially important to understand the conceptual dimension, to understand the terminology and the systems that are in place. The research has involved documentary research at every imaginable conceptual level. Of course, there's important witness accounts - the witness accounts come almost entirely from the vocational camp network. We don't really have witness accounts from labour transfers, although some Western media has been able to conduct some investigations on that matter. At the highest level, some of the interesting documents that we have on the nature and the goals of labour, Poverty Alleviation through Labour Transfers, come from top secret speeches by Xi Jinping himself and several other government officials that were leaked first to the New York Times in 2019, and then to the Uyghur Tribunal in 2021. And in these documents, I found references, very important references, to the political goals that were already stated in 2014 of labour transfers, of employment placement programmes that we previously didn't know about, and these statements in 2014 really framed what was to come. The research is also chronological, so we carefully examined labour transfer started in the early 2000s, in these regions, state sponsored ones. And then after 2014, they became significantly more coercive, we now know why, because in top secret internal speeches, Xi Jinping and other government officials spoke of the danger of idleness, of unemployment, of rural populations being susceptible to extremism, and also how enterprise work is conducive to learning and acquiring Chinese culture and language meaning to assimilation.

James Cockayne 8:43

So in the field of anti-forced labour, studies in work and anti slavery work, we often hear the rationale for these practices being framed in terms of greed - business, greed, corporate greed - but it seems that what you're suggesting here is that there's some governmental policies that are involved in producing the context of coercion as well, is that correct?

Adrian Zenz 9:08

That is very true. Xi Jinping himself in a top secret speech said that economic growth by itself cannot guarantee political stability and he affirmed the primacy of political stability over economic development, and that economic growth has to be subservient to the goal of political control. At the same time, he did say the economic is still an important foundation, it’s still the foundation for political stability, you need it as well as a component. And so what we see is that labour transfers and internment camp labour is being used to put people into work and to grow the economy. One internal state document that I uncovered in 2019 even openly admits that the vocational reeducation camps that they have become an important driver of employment and economic growth in Xinjiang attracting companies and capital from eastern China. And the understanding that the primary goals are political is very, very important to also look at how to address forced labour. So the political goals are primary, but there are economic benefits. And of course Xinjiang is trying to make its police state economically sustainable and viable. And the latest development has been to take on a new Party Secretary to govern the region, a Party Secretary called Ma Xingrui who's from Guangdong, who's from eastern China, a technocrat with experience in economic development to succeed Chen Quanguo, the legendary, ominous figure who first pacified Tibet and then oversaw the campaign of mass internment.

James Cockayne 10:37

Why the focus on political stability in Xinjiang in particular? Is this a set of policies that are being tailored to the region for some reason, or are they policies that have been played in other parts of China as well that are just playing out this way in Xinjiang?

Adrian Zenz 10:54

Large restive minorities that are culturally and spiritually very different from the Han Chinese majority, such as Tibetans and Uyghurs, have long been a challenge for Beijing. Things came to a head with, for example, the riots in the capital of Ürümqi when Uyghurs and Han were clashing and many people died in 2009. And since then, the Chinese really set up a very comprehensive and sophisticated police state. Ultimately, choosing and opting for a campaign of mass internment and reeducation camps, and important new evidence on that campaign was just published in the Xinjiang Police Files in May this year. And because of the special situation and challenge with the Uyghurs, the Chinese state has instituted a set of unprecedented policies in the region, the most unprecedented being the campaign of mass internment. But coercive labour transfers you also find in Tibetan regions, for example, because the state is achieving goals of political stability through putting ethnic groups into full time employment where they're easier to monitor, easier to survey, easier to control, easier to divorce them from spiritual practice. You don't build a mosque, you don't build a Buddhist temple on a factory park. So you try to modernise people, assimilate them, and that is an important goal of Beijing's ethnic policy.

James Cockayne 12:15

You've mentioned the Xinjiang Police Files Dr. Zenz. Can you tell us a bit about those files? What do they tell us that's new?

Adrian Zenz 12:22

The Xinjiang Police Files is a set of, a huge cache of internal documents and images obtained directly for the very first time from internal Xinjiang police computers through hacking. And these files contain images of how police guards reeducation camps, you know, showing heavily armed police with automatic weapons, showing detainees with shaved heads standing in uniforms in line, images of Uyghurs taken in police stations as they were photographed or detained or had been detained. And very important internal documents just really confirming that reeducation camps are not run as boarding schools, vocational boarding schools, they are run like high security prisons and internal speeches by high level officials, such as Party Secretary Chen Quanguo openly saying to open fire on those who try to escape, openly talking about the fact they were building so many prisons and that the prisons were still overcrowded, even though they were building so many.

James Cockayne 13:22

The Chinese government when confronted with this kind of evidence, sometimes points to the fact that these centres have now been closed. Is that the case? And if it is, does that mean that forced labour is a thing of the past now in Xinjiang?

Adrian Zenz 13:39

That is a very difficult question to ascertain. Indeed, in 2019 the Chinese government did say that the so called students of the vocational schools have been released and found and then placed into employment. Satellite imagery does confirm that a lot of these lower security reeducation camps were de-securitized. We also have some witness testimony that shows that people were indeed put into forced labour after they were being released from camps. At the same time satellite analysis shows that a whole number of higher security, prison and detention complexes either were newly constructed or have been expanded. We also have significant evidence that a lot of Uyghurs were sentenced to long prison terms, oftentimes straight from the camps. Now, since late 2019, we really have virtually no new information about the policy or development of the forced labour related to the vocational internment camps. It is unclear to what extent that system continues or not. I suspect that there is significant forced labour in China's prison and extra-legal detention system in Xinjiang, which as we know continues to operate, but we don't really have information on it. On the other hand, the Poverty Alleviation through Labour Transfer programme continues to be well documented continues to expand in scope, and new developments can be detected, ongoing risks of coercion on both policy and implementation levels can continue to be assessed. My latest report on that came out in June, assessing how now the Chinese are trying to normalise the system by keeping people in their jobs through a system of unemployment monitoring and surveillance and early warning.

James Cockayne 15:29

What implications does that have for businesses that are trying to identify whether they're connected to forced labour in their supply chains? In the past, perhaps they were looking for a connection to one of these so-called Vocational Skills and Education Training Centres. But if people are now moved out of those centres, or indeed, finding their way into coerced work through the Poverty Alleviation programme, is that going to impact the way that business should be examining their own supply chains for these indicators of forced labour?

Adrian Zenz 16:05

A lot of Western business exposure to forced labour in Xinjiang, connects most clearly to the labour transfer scheme. Linkages to the vocational internment camp forced labour schemes have always been much harder to prove, and are more limited. For example, the picking of cotton is almost entirely all the evidence that we have, or 99% of the evidence is linked to labour transfers, and not directly to internment camps or prisons, although the subsequent processing of textiles is linked to it. So the situation is made more complicated for companies through the latest development, that China is now publishing much less information about specific companies being involved or implicated in Poverty Alleviation policies, and that has two reasons. Firstly, of course, international criticism and sanctions making the topic sensitive. But secondly, and more importantly, it's because of an effort to really normalise and institutionalise the system. So, between 2016 and 20, you had a highly mobilisational campaign style efforts to put entire villages into labour transfers to really mobilise hundreds of thousands, especially ones that had never done it before. And you have propaganda accounts, local implementation accounts, and they were local media was writing, this is wonderful, and we've, we've mobilised 200 people in this village, and they are now working at these particular factories. You don't really have much of these reports anymore. And the reason is that now these people have been mobilised, they are working. And the main system is now to monitor and survey them and keep them in place. And that dramatically affects the evidence situation, which is why individual companies trying to monitor to audit their supply chains to Xinjiang is almost futile. Basically, you have to stay away from it.

James Cockayne 17:51

For Western listeners, I think the scale of this can sometimes be difficult to get one's head around. The Chinese state has moved hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the last few decades. That's been hailed by many, including in the West in multilateral institutions like the World Bank as having immense welfare gains for those people but also for the global economy. And this emphasis in China on poverty alleviation as a central driver of their policies and strategies is very clear. What do you say to the justifications that are offered for policies in Xinjiang based on poverty alleviation, or indeed on stability, national security grounds? Are these not legitimate policy goals for the Chinese state to be pursuing?

Adrian Zenz 18:46

If you look at the iron law of organisation, an organisation always tries to preserve its existence and the Chinese Communist Party is certainly doing everything it can to preserve its existence through increasingly authoritarian means, not just towards minorities, but also towards their own population. And just look at Hong Kong. Chinese poverty alleviation has been successful, it has lifted many people out of poverty. It also has been coercive, also in other parts. I mean, there are academic research accounts that indicate coercion, especially through relocation, but it's been more subtle. It's not been as targeted. What we're now seeing and Xinjiang, and to some extent Tibet, is unprecedented. And what that means is that development is delivered, but it's authoritarian. Potential benefits may be delivered, but they come at a significant cost. The cost to the ethnic minorities is a loss of community cohesion, a loss of freedom over their livelihoods, over their lifestyles, family units being torn apart, kids being put into full time boarding school, elderly put away into state care, families torn apart working in factory parks. And this also, to some extent, this is part of a potential genocide because optimising the ethnic population structure as part of the Chinese goal also for systematic birth prevention and reduction of birth rates, and part of that is achieved by moving Han settlers to southern Xinjiang, the Uyghur heartland. The plan was to move 300,000 Han settlers to southern Xinjiang by 2022. And to move Uyghurs out. And one internal report by an academic university called the Nankai Report stated that labour transfers serve to reduce the population density of ethnic minorities, so they're not all just sitting on top of each other, but can be better assimilated. So you can have poverty alleviation, sometimes even genuine, which at the same time can be highly coercive and come with significant drawbacks and disadvantages for those ethnic groups involved. At the same time, we have to be careful, I think a number of witness statements from the internment camp labour system have clearly spoken of very poor remuneration almost at slavery levels. We also have very problematic accounts of how much is paid for those who pick cotton, some can maybe pick more and earn more others pick less and earn less, and it's back breaking work. So at the same time, we have the potential aspect of enslavement, the potential aspect of economic exploitation, wherever there's a power asymmetry, you have the potential for economic exploitation. And the Nankai report says that eastern Chinese regions should introduce quotas, because they can reduce their labour cost. Eastern Chinese Han Chinese labour costs have risen dramatically, significantly in the last 10 years. And so using Uyghur labour instead is a way to reduce cost. This can lead to economic exploitation.

James Cockayne 21:46

Dr. Zenz, your works been critical, really in the last few years for establishing the complexity and the nuance of these facts around what's going on in Xinjiang and relating to Xinjiang. And you've become as a result, a go to expert for policy actors in Washington, in Brussels, in London, in other capitals, as they try to understand what's going on and develop responses. How would you rate that Western policy response to date?

Adrian Zenz 22:14

The United States acted quite early. In 2019 they were responding to mass internments. They were responding also to forced labour. I was invited to testify at the hearing of the Congressional Executive Commission on China in October of 2019, and I submitted what soon after became the first major academic report on forced labour in Xinjiang. And this report, this research became very much the foundation for the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which was subsequently drafted and recently was enacted as law in June, just last month. And I was very pleased to see that my core recommendation was being implemented and it's now law in the United States, my core recommendation was precisely what is called the rebuttable presumption, meaning that to presume that because of the two concurrently operating forced labour systems in Xinjiang, goods made in Xinjiang, there must be an assumption that they are made with forced labour, that it’s a tainting. So it's very good to see this in action. Other places have been much slower to act. Of course, even in the US it took several years to do this. After my research on cotton, the United States then soon after banned cotton imports. But in Europe, things have been much slower. It's been very encouraging to see more recent developments. Just last month, the European Parliament passed a resolution specifically on forced labour, which mentioned that in regions where there's systematic state sponsored forced labour, import bans should be enacted. And several of the language we see in that resolution mirrors what we see from the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the import ban enacted in the United States. However, the European Commission is more interested to push back on that they want a due diligence law. Due diligence since laws may be effective in classic forced labour settings, but they're not effective in a forced labour setting, such as Xinjiang, where you have the government itself being behind it. And there's political goals, not just economic ones. Due diligence is ineffective also, because you cannot conduct a meaningful audit, you cannot go to Uyghurs and say are you voluntarily choosing this job? Because if they said no, they would end up probably in a reeducation camp. Overall, therefore, their response has been slow. And I was quite disappointed, especially in Europe, and also the Biden administration was dragging its feet there were concerns about, you know, hampering the Green Revolution and other things. There was delays in 2021. But thankfully, we are now seeing some very promising developments and by promising signs, we'll see what happens in Europe by the end of the year. The biggest disappointment in my opinion, is at the multilateral level, multilateral institutions. We really need the United Nations. After Michelle Bachelet Human Rights Commissioner had a disastrous visit to the region, parroting Beijing's propaganda framing it in Beijing's terms, the long awaited report on Xinjiang by the United Nations Office of the Human Rights Commissioner, is now due to come out in by September, and we'll see to what extent also there will be references to forced labour.

James Cockayne 25:23

So what kind of other action would you be looking for, let's say at the United Nations, we know that China has a veto in the Security Council so that's not a path that's going to happen, or going to lead to multilateral action. Are you looking for the engagement of the General Assembly or the Human Rights Council? What could be expected?

Adrian Zenz 25:42

What could be expected is that at least the commissioners make strong statements, issue strong risk reports, that China would be subject to strong verbal and written diplomatic criticism. And that China would be really in the spotlight when they're still reviews, you know, the Human Rights Review, and other reviews, for example, racial discrimination, one that you know, in 2018, and China, in the midst at the height of the internment campaign basically was absolved, you know it, the United Nations, basically, by majority, cleared China's track record and said this China passed the exam, basically. And that, of course, is reflective of China's strategy of elite capture, capturing the elites, capturing governments is being successful also through the Belt and Road in making developing countries dependent on it, or capturing them for the narrative also, like an anti-American narrative, and that shows how one influential superpower can hijack the UN system. So I think we have to really think well, is the UN system broken? As many activists said after Michelle Bachelet's visit to Xinjiang.

James Cockayne 26:48

What about business? Where does business fit in? You've just mentioned this idea of elite capture. We know that in many countries, even in the US where there are restrictions on businesses importing goods made in Xinjiang, on the grounds that they might be made or are made with forced labour, those same businesses can have Western investors. Where does Western business fit in this mix? And what can we expect from them going forward?

Adrian Zenz 27:17

Businesses are typically there to make money and I think that's what's exactly it's been happening. Businesses have been dragging their feet and when they were finally forced to do something, then a little bit and some issued statements. But then companies like H&M faced a huge backlash in China, after they did make statements on Xinjiang. And then lots of these companies pulled the statements off their websites and are saying nothing. And that's, you know, because some of them have significant business in China. And then they have to choose and China even instituted an anti-sanction law, trying to hit back at anybody trying to sanction or divest. So this has become very problematic. But I have early on argued that this cannot be left to business, this has to be solved at a political level, you have to create a political reality, you have to do an import ban, shift supply chains away, create alternative production, this can be very costly for us. But you know, not supporting forced labour does have a price tag. And that's one that we need to pay. If we value what we value, the values that we value. Valued values have a cost, they have a value and one has to pay the price for them, or else they're not our values. And so this needs a political solution, the business response has been largely disappointing. Not surprisingly, in my opinion, there, of course, has been positive examples. And that oftentimes, like especially in the early days, business has to be chased. You know, like there has to be a media report, and then the business might divest, you know, but they don't do it before that. Now they try to lobby against Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act as well, trying to dilute it.

James Cockayne 28:47

So part of the role of government here, if I'm understanding you correctly, Dr. Zenz is is to create the incentive structures that business responds to whether those are, you know, negative incentives to encouraging them not to do certain things not to continue to do business with Xinjiang or positive incentives to, for example, invest in alternative sources of supply of, say, polysilicon, which comes largely from Xinjiang at the moment.

Adrian Zenz 29:15

Exactly. Politics has to change economic reality and not the other way around.

James Cockayne 29:20

Are you optimistic that that's going to happen in the years ahead?

Adrian Zenz 29:24

Well, in the US, it is happening in Europe, it looks like it probably will happen because the European Parliament has to ratify, whatever the European Commission comes up with, and they will come up with something. Von der Leyen has committed to that it is happening, and it will be a battle. And if the European Parliament refuses to ratify a half baked solution, then it could drag out but the end result might be the desired result. So the main problem is timing. But at the moment, things are looking relatively positive. The problem of course, if this is limited to the West, what's the rest of the world doing? They're gonna buy Xinjiang cotton they're gonna buy, you know, products from Xinjiang. So China's economic strategy might shift to focus on Belt and Road countries and economies. And that's one of the big loopholes that we have here.

James Cockayne 30:12

Yes, although in some markets, we also see that this kind of what economists call social dumping, dumping of goods made below recognised international social and labour standards, leads to local producers being undercut. So in West Africa, for example, the allocation of tomatoes from Xinjiang, has led to a collapse in local production and processing. So I think there are political opportunities for the sanctioning coalition to recruit new supporters, maybe in specific markets in around tomatoes in West Africa and Latin America, for example, in cotton, Central Asia is an interesting question. And as you say, it's you know, very much at play in the Belt and Road Initiative, but also a producer of cotton and may have – governments in Central Asia may have – incentives, not to see their local producers undercut by cotton from Xinjiang or elsewhere. So a complex road ahead. We owe you Dr. Zenz a lot for helping us understand the complexity of these issues. You've mentioned that you've been working on this for many years now. And you have as a result been targeted for considerable pressure by the Chinese government, even formal sanctions. What do you think the Chinese government is trying to achieve with that kind of pressure?

Adrian Zenz 31:34

My work is heavily based on analysing, authenticating and examining Chinese government documents, the Chinese government's own documents, their own policy, and they themselves have been admitting almost anything that we need to know, some through publicly available some through internal documents. And this work has been especially dangerous and problematic for Beijing. As a result, they have not really been able to attack my work. In fact, they don't want to point people to my work. They have been trying to attack my person, through character assassination attempts. And that's been the main strategy also maybe to scare other researchers, you know, to scare others who might follow in my footsteps. Of course, these attacks are very much a sign of the effectiveness of this work, and of my work and of this methodology, which is also now being adopted by others. This type of methodology is being used now by other researchers, by other media outlets, etc. that I basically more or less developed in the last several years. And that's the way it is, it's a sign of success. And it's important to just keep going to continue to produce significant output, and to continue to establish our knowledge.

James Cockayne 32:43

Well, thank you for your ongoing commitment to this really important, critically important work, Dr. Zenz and thank you for your time today.

Adrian Zenz 32:50

Well, thank you, Professor Cockayne for inviting me on this podcast.

James Cockayne 32:54

It's a pleasure. Thanks for listening to this episode of Xinjiang Sanctions presented by me, James Cockayne. You can find out more about our research project at www.xinjiangsanctions.info, where you can download our study, our policy briefs and explore datasets on government, Chinese and corporate responses. Thanks to the University of Nottingham Rights Lab and to our funders, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office for their support with this research and the podcast which is available on all major platforms. Don't forget to subscribe if you're interested in accessing all the episodes from the series.

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