The International Symposium on Employment and Social Security in Xinjiang took place in Urumqi on December 16, 2024. It was attended by many distinguished international and diplomatic guests, including representatives of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Institute, as well as diplomats from Azerbaijan, Gabon, Guinea, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Moldova, Niger, Pakistan (ambassador), Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Togo, Uzbekistan and Yemen (ambassador).

Additionally, a large number of international guests from various countries were present, including representatives of organizations promoting human rights, several prominent academics, particularly foreign scholars working at Chinese universities, and journalists from Radio France, the Irish Times, China-Arab TV, Folha de S. Paulo, News 1 Korea, the Associated Press of Pakistan, Antara, Prensa Latina, and a major Spanish television channel.

Ella Rule speaks at the International Symposium on Employment and Social Security in Xinjiang, which was held in Urumqi, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Ahead of the seminar, participants arrived a day or two early in order to be able to see something of local economic life. Visits were arranged to the Xinjiang Tianshan Wool Textile Co. Ltd., an exhibition on the fight against terrorism and extremism in Xinjiang, and the Xinjiang International Grand Bazaar. Unfortunately these visits took place on the day of my arrival, before I was able to take part. However, on Sunday, December 15, I was able to visit the Changji Esquel Textile Co. Ltd., the Baowu Group Xinjiang Bayi Iron and Steel Co., Ltd.(Baowu Xinjiang Bayi). and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region branch of China Railway Construction Heavy Industry (CRCHI), all of which were extremely interesting.

Before arriving at Changji, which is approximately 35 km away from Urumqi where we were staying at a government rest house, we were informed that Changji Esquel Textile Co. Ltd. – which produces pure cotton cloth from the cotton crops – had been subjected to unilateral sanctions by the United States on the pretext of allegedly using forced labor. Because U.S. sanctions have extraterritorial effect and are imposed on any entity doing business with the sanctioned company, it lost nearly all its international customers overnight. As a result of this loss of business, the company had to reduce its workforce from 50,000 to 25,000 across its four factory sites in China, causing great hardship to workers made redundant, who didn’t understand why American policies should be intervening to deprive them of the comfortable living they had been enjoying.

It is so highly mechanized that there is no scope for employing slave labor. The room we were shown, where the raw cotton was spun into yarn, was filled with hundreds of spinning machines spaced some 5 feet apart, with very few workers in this giant room supervising their operation. We were informed that the business is deeply committed to research and development at every stage of the process, from the development of the seeds from which the cotton is grown to innovations in the properties of the cloth produced.

We were shown pure cotton polo shirts that are impermeable from the outside but fully permeable from the inside, so that perspiration from the wearer can escape while preventing the garment from getting wet otherwise. Great emphasis is placed on improving the company’s ecological impact. They were very proud of the fact that they had developed a method of producing cotton cloth that uses only 10% of the water typically required for such processes. I had not expected to have any opportunity to spend money and had therefore not brought any means of payment with me, so I was unable to purchase any of the company’s products, which would have made excellent Christmas presents.

We then went on to the Iron and Steel works back in Urumqi. First we were taken around a factory museum where all the measures taken to secure the health and safety of workers in what is universally acknowledged as a dangerous occupation were on display；some of these measures were invented by workers themselves to prevent accidents at work. Additionally, at every stage of steel production，the company is strongly focused on protecting the environment. It has its own on-site sewage treatment facility that enables it to purify the water it has used, resulting in net-zero water usage. The company also focuses on reducing its carbon footprint as much as possible and claims a 25% reduction in this endeavour. We were most impressed by the sheer scale of the enterprise and its ultra-modern equipment, which enables it to produce various types of steel at highly competitive prices.

In the afternoon we visited the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region branch of China Railway Construction Heavy Industry (CRCHI), which, as its name suggests, produces some extremely heavy industrial machinery. There was no railway construction in sight, but a great deal of agricultural machinery – massive mobile machines with wheels 6 feet in diameter that have been designed to perform major agricultural tasks such as ploughing, seeding and harvesting. One of the machines had been adapted for the harvesting of tomatoes.

It was able to accomplish in one hour the work that 122 manual workers had previously been doing. The very availability of these machines, which are a great deal cheaper than any equivalents produced in other countries, makes accusations that China employs forced labor seem baseless.

Obviously such machines can only sensibly be used on enormous farms, so one delegate raised the question of the forcible ejection of peasants from their land in order to create massive farms. It was explained to me that no peasants were dispossessed; but on the contrary, they were paid rent if their land was used for mass production of agricultural produce. Small farmers in various areas, finding it profitable to do so, grouped together to pool their land in order to create fields large enough to make the use of modern machinery economically viable. Their reward was not only the receipt of rent but also the entitlement to a percentage of the produce.

Ella Rule is the Chair of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist).

Planner : Jie Wenjin

Reviewers : Hou Weili and Cheng Li

Editors: Gvlzar Mijit and Song Duer