Introduction
“Surplus labor transfers” are part of the PRC government’s program of government assistance for impoverished people nation-wide. Reflecting both socialist concepts effective methods for reducing underemployment and international development discourse, the PRC incentivizes people in the poorest parts of China to move into factory work, fulfilling the goal of national modernization and industrialization.
In Xinjiang – where threat of internment looms like a spectre in the daily lives of all Uyghur, Kazakh, and other minoritized people of the region, and where “refusing to receive government subsidies or assistance” on “the grounds of religion” was named as one of “75 religious extremist activities” – the government’s surplus labor transfer program is transformed from one of government assistance to one of government coercion. Islam was blamed for influencing people of the region to “refuse to improve their vocational skills, economic condition, and the ability to better their own lives,” thus reducing those who do not welcome the government’s assignment to work to the category of radical or extremist. Assigning people to work is described by the top party leadership, including Xi Jinping, as a way of “stabilizing” the region and undermining the purported terrorist influences that Beijing saw as infecting the region.
As the documents in this collection show, since as early as 2014, local and regional governments across Xinjiang, under the direction of the central government, have implemented a program of labor recruitment that begins with surveillance of all family households and the quantification of individuals in regard to their perceived threat to security. Labor agency representatives, cadres, work teams, and even prosecutors and prison bureau agents are sent door-to-door to assess each individual person in a village and to assign them a value that will determine where they will work. As many state media, corporate publicity campaigns, and academic reports attested, many Uyghur people were unwilling to move to factories for work. But people were not allowed to refuse. Agents were instructed to “educate” people to “want to work” and to “unburden” them from their children, elders, and farmland to ensure their compliance. Media accounts reveal people who are eventually coerced to move into factory work by the relentless insistence of the work teams.
Unlike in other parts of the country, the possibility of being sent to an internment camp if one refused made this a coercive state-sponsored forced labor program.
Between 2018 and 2021, local agencies were directed to have at least one person in every household assigned to work. By December of 2021, that quota was succeeded by another that indicated that every single person able to work should be in a job of some kind.
The programs are inherently grounded in racist generalizations about the behavior of Uyghurs and other Muslims and sought to change their cultures, minds, practices, and desires for freedom. The programs were meant to “change their long-cultivated lazy, idle, slow, and inconstant behaviors of personal freedom, to abide by corporate rules and regulation and work discipline, and to devote themselves to daily production.” (See the 2018 Qapqal County directive below) Labor transfers are designed to destroy the Uyghur culture and religious practice, and to create a docile workforce unable to resist the government.
The sources included in this collection paint a clear picture of repression and show that General Secretary Xi Jinping and top Chinese officials were responsible for the inception of the state-sponsored labor program in the Uyghur Region and that the central government continues to engage directly in the implementation of the program. The central government designed policies to enact their project of forced labor, from attracting businesses with tax incentives to creating policies that would coerce Uyghur, Kazakh, and other indigenous Turkic people in the region into the factories. The documents also lay out the justifications for the policies and a variety of local implementation plans, quotas, and practices.
“Guiding Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Supporting the Development of Xinjiang’s Textile and Garment Industry and Promoting Employment”This document describes the central government’s plans to rapidly expand textile manufacturing in Xinjiang and the expected number of people those factories should employ, clearly linking manufacturing growth in the region to the government’s goals of ensuring that Uyghur and other minoritized populations (particularly those in the southern XUAR) are “better integrated into cities and towns.” This is a feature of the government’s investment in “population optimization” by which they dilute the homogeneity of Uyghur communities by moving them into cities where they are less concentrated. State subsidies for companies willing to move to Xinjiang are outlined here. |
“Implementation Plan for Serving the Employment of Urban and Rural Surplus Labor in Chapchal County”Chapchal County created a directive in 2018 that instructed local governments to classify all of the people they deem to be “surplus laborers” (which often includes employed people) through a point system by which government agents can then assign them to factories either within the region where they can be monitored (for those deemed high security risks) or further away in Xinjiang or in other parts of China. This description of the point based system used to determine where Uyghur and Kazakh laborers should be sent and under what circumstances is the clearest available description of the population sorting mechanism inherent in the Xinjiang assigned or forced labor system in a Chinese government document. This document claims that the rural labor force is “unwilling to go out of their homes accept training, or stabilize employment.” |
Notice on Printing and Distributing the “Implementation Plan for Employment Training of Problematic Populations in the Kashgar Area”In this regional directive, the Kashgar government directs local governments in how to implement the labor transfer schemes. It described moving people from “Vocational Skills Education and Training Centers” (a euphemism for the internment camps) to industrial parks, setting out a quota of 100,000 people employed through this route in 2018. It also describes the creation of “satellite factories” in villages that will move people from farm work to low-skill industrial labor. It also describes the subsidies and incentives the regional government will provide companies for expanding production into the region. |
“Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang” from the State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of ChinaIn this official English language document, the central government responds to claims of state-sponsored forced labor in the Uyghur Region by justifying its actions as essential to the development of the people of Xinjiang. In the course of providing these justifications, the white paper blames Islam for purportedly making the people of the region resistant to economic improvement. “Terrorists, separatists and religious extremists have long preached that ‘the afterlife is fated’ and that ’religious teachings are superior to state laws,’ inciting the public to resist learning the standard spoken and written Chinese language, reject modern science, and refuse to improve their vocational skills, economic conditions, and the ability to better their own lives. As a result, some local people have outdated ideas; suffer from poor education and employability, low employment rates and incomes, and have fallen into long-term poverty.” |
Notice on Printing and Distributing the “14th Five-Year” Employment Promotion Plan of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous RegionWhile ostensibly promoting the protection of workers’ rights, this 2021 central government directive requires a systematic documentation of all people who are unemployed and indicates that “everyone who has the ability to work will get a job.” Despite international pressure to end the programs, this document continues to indicate that local governments should pursue labor transfers for all “rural surplus laborers.” It also provides some of the clearest total numbers of individual labor assignments saying that the state expects there will be between 3.2 and 2.8 million individual assignments by 2025. |
“Strengthen the Development of Rural Collective Economic Organizations in Southern Xinjiang”This policy paper outlines how rural collective economic organizations should be used as a mechanism to transfer trainees in closed concentrated education and training centers–otherwise known as reeducation camps–to factories. With this issue as the focus, this paper conducts on-site research and provides a detailed analysis of the role and existing issues of rural collective economic organization construction and collective economic development in the modernization of the governance system and capacity building in rural areas of Southern Xinjiang. This paper aims to put forward corresponding policy suggestions for further implementing the Xinjiang governance strategy established by the Party Central Committee in Southern Xinjiang, and closely adhering to the overall goal of “social stability” and “long-term peace” in Xinjiang–euphemisms that refer to the overall effort to remove, reeducate and proletarianize native Muslim populations in the region. |
Video of Surplus Labour TransferThis video depicts the work conditions of Kazakh and Uyghur workers who were transferred from Nilka County in Northern Xinjiang to Acbel Electronics Company in Xiantao, Hubei Province in 2018. It provides some of the most explicit imagery of assigned or forced labour conditions, showing how the workers are managed by a Communist Party cadre as well as a special forces police officer. It shows how they are required to study Chinese language and study government ideology. At the time of its filming, Acbel was within the Apple and Cisco supply chains, though it is unclear if they purchased materials made by the Kazakhs and Uyghurs pictured in the video. |