Photo by The White House (via Wikipedia)
In anticipation of upcoming APEC summit in San Francisco, the US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party has sent a letter to President Biden advising him on his planned meeting with Chinazi boss Xi Jinping. The letter outlines some must-haves that should be demanded in exchange for easing of tariffs and other forms of bilateral engagement:
For close to two years, your administration has not sanctioned a single PRC official for genocide in Xinjiang. Shockingly, your administration has sanctioned more PRC entities for illegal fishing than it has for genocide in Xinjiang.
….We urge you to demand Xi Jinping come to APEC with meaningful deliverables…
The list of demands includes releasing three Uyghur relatives of American citizens as well as a suspension of Uyghur forced labor programs:
Suspend the “mutual pairing assistance” programs in Xinjiang, which is a key program in the PRC’s forced labor programs in Xinjiang.
A State Department fact sheet says that “forced labor is a central tactic” of Uyghur persecution by China. The State Department accuses China of engaging in human trafficking:
In Xinjiang, the government is the trafficker. Authorities use threats of physical violence, forcible drug intake, physical and sexual abuse, and torture to force detainees to work in adjacent or off-site factories or worksites
The Chinese government pitches the program as a win-win for the laborers and businesses. China Daily (intentionally not hyperlinked), a mouthpiece for the Chinese government, quotes a member of the Politburo’s Standing Committee:
The pairing assistance programs have contributed to poverty alleviation and improvement of people’s livelihood in Xinjiang and promoted ethnic solidarity, showcasing political advantages of the CPC’s leadership and institutional strength of socialism with Chinese characteristics
Rather, it is a massive crime committed against the Uyghur people.
The China Project goes into the details of how these so-called “poverty alleviation” programs operate. The article summarizes some of the research of Prof. Adrien Zenz, director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
This is a different policy from the mass internment regime that began in 2017… 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 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.
Ruth Ingram. “When ‘poverty alleviation’ means forced labor for Uyghurs”. The China Project. Oct 26, 2023.
Some are induced to join the program with the threat of taking away subsistence support while others are sold “get-rich-quick stories”. But the labor conditions, “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.”
We have previously written about Uyghurs being forced to work in the seafood industry far from their families in Xinjiang. As a control tactic, it works to divide up the Uyghur people, making it easier to crush the people and their culture.
Who will bear the costs of saving the Uyghurs?
We should not trade with a country that uses a kind of slavery to achieve lower labor costs. The trade tether — low-cost goods — holds the United States and other countries tight to China. But the tariffs, such as those President Trump put on China, make the tether less tight, even as they increase costs in the US. The Tax Foundation refers to Trumps tariff policies as a “one of the largest tax increases in decades”.
Economists tend to look at where the burden of a policy falls, and they will argue that any tax may fall more heavily on the producer or the consumer depending on the shapes of supply relative to demand. This is not an economics lecture, but to emphasize that sometimes we take on more costs to support justice. Just as citizens pay taxes to support full-time police to go after local villains, tariffs could be seen as way of taxing ourselves to go after the Chinazi villains.
Mr. Biden and his team should look at all policy options for persuading Xi Jingping that he must also take action to protect the Uyghurs. Keeping (or increasing) the tariffs is a powerful mechanism that directly addresses the forced labor programs. To make it really stick, Biden could demand that China must make its industries more transparent with regards to labor practices. E.g. If the Chinazis do not allow auditors into a particular facility, whatever type of good being produced there gets heavier tariffs.
President Biden should channel Ronald Reagan’s famous speech where he called on the Soviet general secretary Gorbachev to free the people of East Berlin (and others behind the Iron Curtain), “Tear down this wall!”
Mr. Biden should simply say:
“No free trade until the Uyghurs are free.”
