Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin Photo: fmprc.gov.cn

China is calling on the international community to conduct an in-depth investigation into the crimes of forced labor in the US, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday, while debunking so-called Xinjiang forced labor claims as a big lie cooked up by a few anti-China forces that runs counter to common sense, facts and law.  

Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at Wednesday's media briefing that workers of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region choose occupations according to their own will, sign labor contracts with relevant enterprises in accordance with the labor law and other regulations on the basis of equality, and they also enjoy complete freedom in choosing where to work.

For some time now, anti-China forces have repeatedly made claims about the use of forced labor in Xinjiang's cotton industry. The fact is that large-scale mechanized industrialization has become the norm in Xinjiang, and in cotton planting in Xinjiang, the comprehensive mechanization level in most areas exceeds 90 percent, Wang said.

It is absurd to apply the comparison of plantation owners in 19th century US who forced slaves to pick cotton to today's Xinjiang, Wang said. 

Now we see that a few people are spreading the lie of forced labor in Xinjiang's construction materials industry using the same tricks, although the script is constantly changing, Wang said.

Wang's remarks came after a report by the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University which claimed that Chinese building manufacturers are participating in forced labor programs in Xinjiang. 

Bloomberg noted the report was published days before the US ban on goods from Xinjiang goes into effect. US President Joe Biden signed into law the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in December 2021, and the law will be effective from June 21. 

The Chinese government has ratified 28 international labor conventions, including the 1930 Forced Labor Convention of the International Labor Organization. It has faithfully fulfilled its obligations under these conventions, actively absorbed international labor and human rights standards, and effectively protected the rights of workers and opposed forced labor through legislation and policies, Wang said. 

Wang said the US' Xinjiang-related law has no basis in fact, and requiring importers to offer evidence that goods are not related to forced labor is a presumption of guilt, which proves that the so-called forced labor is a political manipulation by the US to disrupt Xinjiang and curb China's development under the pretext of human rights.

Actually, forced labor is occurring not in Xinjiang, but in the US. The US has yet to ratify the 1930 Forced Labor Convention of the International Labor Organization, and in its immigration detention system, more than 70 percent of detainees are held in private detention centers. As the only country that has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the US still has half a million child laborers working in agriculture, Wang said. 

"We call on the international community to conduct an in-depth investigation into the crimes of forced labor in the US so that justice can be served," Wang said.