On March 25, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying used an old photo of a black slave to try to deflect accusations of forced labor in Xinjiang‘s “re-Education camps” in Europe and the United States.
Hua produced a black-and-white photo from more than 100 years ago, but did not explain the actual origin of the photo, the specific Time period or the context in which it was taken. And it is not possible to scandalize others or to embellish one’s own black history.
Sohu.com reprinted the article “Organizing students to collect cotton must not be profit-oriented” on September 24, 2007, from Beiqing.com – Beijing Youth Daily. The Beijing Youth Daily is the organ of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League.
According to the article, since 1994, Xinjiang has been organizing primary school students, middle school students and college and university students from the third grade onwards to participate in the “work and study” activity of collecting cotton. But according to the article, this activity of cotton picking by students first solves the problem of shortage of local labor.
Most schools have set a daily cotton picking rate of 30 to 35 kilograms, which is already too high for many students. According to past students who have picked cotton: from 9:00 am to 8:00 pm, noon meal spent a dozen minutes, exhausted for the “35 kg” busy, if you catch a better land, but also to complete the task, otherwise dry a day or failure.
Failure to complete the task is punished, including extended hours of labor. For those who are sick and can’t work, some schools ask to pay 0.8 yuan per kilogram, so 35 kilograms a day will cost 28 yuan.
The report comments that the money topping work is to treat students as the object of income generation, and the third review of leave is to treat students as the object of suspicion, these practices have deviated from the basic purpose of “work and study”. This makes people wonder if the school is driven by the impulse to generate income and treats students as cheap labor, even ignoring their physical and mental health.
According to China Education News, in 2005, 2,689 schools in Xinjiang organized work-study activities for nearly 1 million students of all ethnic groups to collect cotton, with a total revenue of 93.4 million yuan. This annual gain of nearly 100 million yuan was mainly taken away by schools and became their own funds, with only a small portion used to fund poor students.
Hua Chunying instead of spending energy blaming the 19th century black slavery history, why not humbly face and review the black history of cotton picking in Xinjiang in the 21st century, millions of students are used as cheap labor, if not involved is likely to get no diploma, especially even elementary school students are not spared, this can be too black-hearted.
In addition, the same day on the 25th, Xinhua News Agency official microblogging also published an article pointing out that China as the world’s largest consumer of cotton, the annual shortfall of about 1.85 million tons in recent years, Xinjiang cotton China’s own use is not enough.
But the back of domestic cotton is not enough, China is a net importer of cotton. According to domestic experts wrote an analysis, Xinjiang long-staple cotton production accounted for only 2.3% of all production, most of Xinjiang’s production is ordinary cotton. China relies heavily on imports of high-quality cotton, the domestic cotton industry has a shortage of “high-grade cotton” and “low-grade cotton” surplus of problems.
According to the CPC Development and Reform Commission’s “China Economic and Trade Guide” in June 2020, “China’s cotton imports on the international market dependence” report pointed out that China’s cotton imports are mainly due to the structural problems of the product, 61% of imported cotton is high-quality cotton from the United States and Australia. This report bluntly: “China’s dependence on U.S. cotton exports is the highest degree”.
No wonder this time on the microblogging “Xinjiang cotton” in the discussion, there is no shortage of objective comments: we really have a lot of things to be pinched neck.
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