Uyghur-American journalist Amelia Pang took notice and launched a multi-year investigation. In her latest book, Made In China: A Prisoner, An SOS Letter, And The Hidden Cost Of America’s Cheap Goods
In 2012, an American woman purchased a Halloween decoration box that contained a note of distress from the Masanjia Labor Camp in Liaoning, China. The story caught the attention of Amelia Pang, a Uyghur-American journalist, and led to years of investigation. She shares with our correspondent Jiajie Tang how her latest book, Made In China: A Prisoner, An SOS Letter, And The Hidden Cost Of America’s Cheap Goods In Made In China: A Prisoner, An SOS Letter, And The Hidden Cost Of America’s Cheap Goods, we trace the human rights concerns behind cheap Chinese goods step by step, and how Xinjiang‘s concentration camps are replicating and expanding China’s much-criticized reeducation-through-labor system.
From China’s labor camps to Oregon, USA
Reporter: Made in China was inspired by a letter of distress from China that was a sensation in the United States in 2012. What drew you to this story and why did you keep following it?
Amelia Pang: I was interested in the story at the Time. A woman living in Oregon opened a Halloween decoration she bought from Kmart and found a letter of distress from a Chinese political prisoner. The Chinese prisoner, Sun Yi, was forced to work 18 hours a day for essentially no pay, and the note read in English, “If you happen to purchase this product, please forward this letter to the World Human Rights Organization.”
This isn’t the first time these kinds of letters of distress have been found in the United States, even going back to the 1990s, but no one has really talked about it: the supply chain, the products that are made through forced labor that end up in our stores. I would love to explore the basic problems we have with sourcing cheap goods from China, or even problems that consumers can be involved in solving.
A December 23, 2012, Oregonian story about a plea for help at the Shenyang labor camp. (Screenshot of The Oregonian’s webpage)
Forced Labor, Torture, Sexual Violence
Reporter:You touch on a lot of aspects in your book, from China’s vicious arrests of prisoners of conscience and suppression of free religion to forced labor, supply chains, foreign buyers, and fast fashion, what was the most difficult part of this whole investigation?
Amelia Pang: I think the most challenging part was listening to these survivors of reeducation-through-labor camps talk about their experiences, how widespread the torture was, especially the sexual violence. It was a very difficult process to listen to that pain and then rewrite it into a story for a book.
Reporter: Can you tell us more about these stories of Chinese prisons? How are they different from the prisons we see in the Western world?
Amelia Pang: It’s completely different. The Chinese government tries to claim that they are the same. But when Americans are incarcerated, when they are sentenced, they have the most basic opportunity to seek counsel and follow certain procedures. In Chinese prisons, or under various other designations, detention centers, drug “rehabilitation” centers, guard houses or so-called “vocational training centers” for Uighurs, these facilities detain untried people who have no access to lawyers and are often subjected to arbitrary “detention” for an indefinite period of time. In these places, they are forced to work 15 to 20 hours a day for little or no pay.
Xinjiang camps are an extension of China’s reeducation-through-labor system
Reporter: In the years you’ve been investigating these labor camps, the story of Xinjiang’s concentration camps and forced labor has slowly surfaced.
Amelia Pang: What happened in Xinjiang is very shocking, but it’s really an extension of a very old system of forced labor in China, and the scenarios and many of the stories don’t seem very different from the experiences of many people who were forced to work or “re-educate” themselves to stay alive. In a sense, it (Xinjiang concentration camps) is not really a new phenomenon in China, but I can also say for sure that the situation in Xinjiang is a worsening and expansion of forced labor.
A sewing class at the vocational Education and training center in Kashgar, Xinjiang, Jan. 4, 2019 (Reuters photo)
The factory inspection system has gone terribly wrong
Reporter:A large part of your survey explores the problem of the factory inspection (Audit) system, how did you conduct your survey? What’s wrong with the existing Chinese factory inspection system?
Amelia Pang: It is very important that I interview Chinese auditors who audit Chinese factories for Western companies to ensure that the labor conditions and hygiene of the factories meet the relevant standards. Most of these factories are the source of products for large multinational companies.
These auditors told me that with the way audits are currently designed by Western companies, it is difficult to detect forced labor in the supply chain. So even though companies like Kmart, H&M or Walmart pay lip service to the idea that we will never allow forced labor in the supply chain. They don’t actually take the issue very seriously because the factory inspection system doesn’t allow them to explore the fact that there is forced labor.
Reporter: Is it very difficult to find out if there is forced labor?
Amelia Pang: Many of the audits that companies do today are very superficial, costing a few hundred dollars to check the cleanliness of the factory, the quality of the product, and whether the equipment is working properly. They can’t find the complex side of things, such as factories subcontracting certain production lines to forced labor centers.
It’s not that hard to find out, they can send secret inspectors to check the factory periodically and follow the factory trucks to see all the related supply manufacturers they are connected with. It is very common to outsource a particular production line to a labor prison. When I was investigating in China in 2018, I visited drug rehabilitation centers and detention centers, and guards confirmed to me that inmates inside were engaged in manufacturing work. I followed trucks in and out of these centers and found that they were delivered directly to other factories, including a supplier to an official Apple company. Unfortunately, there is no law forcing companies to improve their factory inspection systems; there is no way around the underlying problem, and U.S. companies don’t want such norms written. But the Forced Uyghur Labor Prevention Act may begin to address these issues by ensuring that companies take more responsibility for preventing forced labor from entering their supply chains.
File photo: Workers labor on a production line producing protective clothing and masks at a factory of a medical equipment manufacturer in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China, Jan. 27, 2020. (Reuters)
Consumers are to blame
Reporter:As consumers at the far end of the supply chain, what can we do?
Amelia Pang: As consumers, we should be aware of how companies operate and how factories are sourced. We have the right to demand that companies disclose more information about how they work with and audit their factories, rather than just using marketing buzzwords to claim that their company cares about ethical issues and workers’ rights. In the age of social media, a follow, a tweet, a post from us can have an impact, and it can all start with consumers being conscious of a small thing.
Reporter: You mentioned that you’ve only been exploring your Uyghur identity for a few years now, how does that bring a unique perspective to your focus on these kinds of stories?
Amelia Pang: It definitely adds to my perspective that even though I was born and raised in the U.S., China’s forced assimilation policies towards minorities have actually affected me. My mother, her siblings had a hard time finding work and facing a lot of discrimination in China as Uyghurs, so they were encouraged to learn Chinese, Chinese Culture. In my generation, I thought I was Chinese-American until I was an adult, and then I realized that I was quietly a part of helping assimilation policies, so I’m going to continue to write and discuss this issue, and I’m going to continue to focus on what’s going on in Xinjiang.
Reporter: Thank you for the interview.
Amelia Pang: Thank you.
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