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 her latest book Made In China: A Prisoner, An SOS Letter, And The Hidden Cost Of America’s Cheap Goods. How the book Made In China: A Prisoner, An SOS Letter, And The Hidden Cost Of America’s Cheap Goods traces step by step the human rights concerns behind cheap Chinese goods, and how Xinjiang‘s concentration camps are replicating and expanding China’s much-criticized system of reeducation through labor.
Here is an interview between our reporter Jiajie Tang and Amelia Pang, author of the book Made In China.
From China’s Re-Education Through Labor Camps to Oregon, USA
Reporter: The book “Made in China” was inspired by a plea letter from China that had rocked 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 plea for help from a Chinese political prisoner. The Chinese prisoner, Sun Yi, was forced to work 18-hour days 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 U.S., even going back to the 1990s, but no one has really talked about it: the supply chain, through the products manufactured by forced labor that end up in our stores. I’d love to explore the underlying issues of how we source cheap goods from China, or even the problems that consumers can be involved in solving.
Forced Labor, Torture, Sexual Violence
Reporter: You touch on a lot of facets in the book, China’s vicious arrests of prisoners of conscience, the suppression of free religion, to the issues of forced labor, supply chains, foreign buyers, 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, and how widespread their torture, especially sexual violence, was. 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 Chinese prison stories? 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 and sentenced, they have the most basic opportunity to seek counsel and follow certain procedures. In China’s prisons, or under various other designations, detention centers, drug “rehabilitation” centers, guardhouses or so-called “vocational training centers” for Uighurs, these facilities detain people who have not been tried, who have no access to lawyers, but 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 Xinjiang situation is a worsening and expansion of forced labor.
The factory inspection system has gone terribly wrong
Reporter: A large part of your research explores the issue of the Audit system. What are the problems 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 health conditions in 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 functioning properly. They are unable to detect complex aspects, such as factories subcontracting certain production lines to forced labor centers.
It’s really not that hard to find this out, they can send secret inspectors to check the factory periodically and follow the factory trucks to see all the relevant supply manufacturers they have connections with. It is very common to outsource a particular production line to a labor prison. When I investigated in China in 2018, I visited drug rehabilitation centers and detention centers, and guards confirmed to me that the 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 an official Apple company supplier. 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.
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, how factories are sourced, and we have the right to demand that companies disclose more information about how they work with and audit factories, rather than just using marketing buzzwords to claim that their company cares about ethical issues and worker 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 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 being interviewed by us.
Amelia Pang: Thank you.
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