PRC Influencer ... or Loyal Canadian ...

"The so-called 'forced labour' accusation has long been an absurd lie fabricated by certain Western forces based on ideological bias."

"It has long been divorced from facts and lacks empirical evidence, yet it has been repeatedly used to smear China."

"This person [China expert Margaret McCuaig-Johnston] has repeatedly acted as an anti-China pawn in public under the guise of a so-called 'expert' ...  becoming a notorious hardliner on China in Canada with a long list of bad deeds."

Observer Network, China

 

"He [Liberal MP Michael Ma] looks like a hero, because he took me on as a critic of the motherland."

"He is supporting the motherland and that makes him look very good and makes me look terrible."

" ... I think he thought it would be well-received by the Chinese embassy, which it  was."

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston

Liberal Member of Parliament Michael Ma along with other Liberal Members of Parliament in the foyer of the House of Commons. Photo by HYUNGCHEOL PARK /Postmedia

 

During a House of Commons industry committee meeting to discuss the recently agreed-upon trade issue during Prime Minister Mark Carney's trip to Beijing to promote a freer trade protocol between Canada and China, an exchange was made that satisfied both countries' priorities; 40,000 Chinese EVs would be allowed into Canada in exchange for Beijing reducing the steep tariffs it had imposed for Canadian canola, seafood and pork; in China's case a fungible alternative for products its consumers favour, and in Canada's case sacrificing its own auto industry's fragile future.

 

During the meeting, now-retired senior government bureaucrat Margaret McCuaig-Johnson brought forward conclusions of a Human Rights Watch report of 2024 that "dozens of parts in each Chinese EV are made with aluminum from Uyghur forced labour". This related directly to the Canadian House of Commons unanimously passing a  resolution identifying the Chinese Communist Party executing a 'genocide' on Uyghurs and the Turkic populations of Xinjiang Province.

 

On the committee, Mr. Ma sharply questioned that assertion, challenging Ms. McCuaig-Johnston, now a senior fellow with the graduate school of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa, for proof of such a purported genocide: "Have you witnessed this yourself?" This despite that experts with the United Nations express deep concern with respect to persistent charges of forced labour affecting Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz groups, along with Tibetans within the Autonomous Region of the Xinjiang Uyghur area and other parts of China.

 

 

 

That pointed skepticism aroused a chorus of disbelief and condemnation of the stance taken by MP Ma sitting with the Liberal caucus, for which he later half-apologized; he was misunderstood, it appears. He was not, he averred taking the side of the Chinese government which consistently denies all and any such accusations. After all, the House had adopted that motion against the People's Republic of China in 2021. 

 

Ms. McCuaig-Johnston expressed her opinion that her aggressive interlocutor was supporting the 'strategic partnership' the PM had struck with China, since he had formed part of the delegation to Beijing. His questions whether she had an "advanced degree in technology or cyber security", followed by whether the China Strategic Risks Institute she advises "specifically looks for risks when there isn't one", marked the  tenor of his questioning which he demanded strictly 'yes' or 'no' responses to.  

 

In her turn, Ms. McCuaig-Johnston explained that for the past 40 years as a federal government employee she had travelled to and conducted business with China. It was the arbitrary arrest of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor charged with spying on China and held for almost three years before they were finally released, that spurred her to look a little harder at human rights abuses beyond China's penchant for 'hostage diplomacy', to add to her experience and impressions of the PRC. 

 

Prime Minister Mark Carney is defending new MP Michael Ma after he apologized for making dismissive comments about the issue of Chinese forced labour last week. Ma, who defected from the Conservatives, earned sharp criticism from his former party over the comments.  Still from video, CBC

"Mr. Ma has apologized for his comments and directly and unequivocally recognized the seriousness of the issue, continues to be a member of our caucus, and I'll continue to work with him."

"I followed this issue over the years in China and elsewhere, and there is evidence of child labour around the world."

"Issues of supply chain integrity, including forced labour, child labour, and ensuring that those standards are in place will be part of those discussions, I'm certain."

"And ensuring that we have the adequate transparency for any good from any of our trade partners." 

Prime Minister Mark Carney 

Cornering the World Market on Fentanyl : Beijing's Industrial Complex

"We're looking to collaborate with China, because it's not an indictment against the Chinese government, per se."

"It's companies, chemical companies in China, that are engaged in this kind of conduct -- and the Chinese government has taken a lot of action in terms of regulating and prohibiting various [fentanyl] precursors."

"There's very little north-south movement of produced fentanyl across the borders [U.S./Canada/Mexico]."

"Even if [there's 0.01 of a pound or percent going across, my uber-focus -- while I suppose to a degree aspirational -- has been to lower that to zero, and to eliminate fentanyl the best as I can from a supply perspective, but also reduce demand in this country."

"[U.S. officials expressed] strong acknowledgment of the efforts being made and encouragement to continue on this path [tackling fentanyl, if not necessarily] satisfaction." 

Kevin Brosseau, Liberal government 'fentanyl czar'

 

 

In line with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's plan to visit China next year to confer with President Xi Jinping over trade issues primarily linked to poisoned diplomatic relations over the past several years when Beijing's hostage-diplomacy went a long way to alienating its regard in Canada, along with China's penchant for industrial piracy and cyber espionage as well as blatant interference in Canadian politics, a move is underway to collaborate with China for the purpose of putting a halt to the chemicals pouring into Canada used in the production of the synthetic opioid that has caused an overdose epidemic in Canada. 

 

Under successive Liberal governments, business and trade with China has always been seen as a high priority. This, despite China's investing in Canadian universities to launch China-friendly studies, and its record of criminally taking possession of industry and government blueprints to enhance and speed China's own industries at a cost to those whose successful systems, mechanisms and techniques made them world leaders in the world of  high tech. The end result has been China perfecting its rival industries and those from whom production expertise was surreptitiously taken saw their own collapse.

 

Canada's liberal governments were always able to overlook these inconveniences in favour of smoothing over differences and getting on with what they considered to be the more important work of benefiting from trade and cooperation with the world's industrial colossus. Years ago the United States managed an agreement with Beijing to help ensure that opioid-type drugs and their chemical precursors would be monitored in an effort to stop the carnage in human lives they cause as they flood into the West. The situation has persisted and continues to take its toll.

 

 

 

To believe that the Chinese Communist Party is incapable of fully controlling the flow of fentanyl and its precursors produced by chemical producers in China, is to disregard the total control it has over its industries, many of which have direct ties to the government or to the Peoples' Liberation Army. China monitors its population carefully and closely, thanks to face recognition technology and the ubiquitous presence of closed circuit cameras and apps Chinese must download to their iphones. To assume it has little knowledge of fentanyl production and trade is naive. It is just another industrial production that Beijing nurtures in control of a lucrative market.

 

The punitive tariffs that the Trump administration has slapped on trading partners throughout the world has made strange bedfellows in any event. U.S. President Donald Trump, in his insistence that the United States would no longer be taken advantage of through what he claims is uneven trade, has upended the world economy as a struggle ensued to plead for a more moderate tariff toll on those who consider themselves allies of the U.S. who have been  hit just as hard as those the United States considers adversarial countries.

 

Donald Trump in talks with Xi Jinping (Daniel Torok/White House Photo)

 

Citing illegal migration crossing the border from Canada into the U.S. as well as large fentanyl shipments entering across the border, the tariffs imposed on Canada as punishment for presumed laxity in those areas has been a stinging blow. Seizures of fentanyl at or close to the border with the U.S. are minuscule from Canada, averaging 3.5 pounds monthly over the past three years. In comparison those drug seizures with Mexico averaged slightly over 1,500 pounds per month. But even 3.5 pounds of a deadly opioid has catastrophic consequences. 

 

Citing China as "the primary source country for illicit fentanyl precursor chemicals" as well as pill-pressing equipment, U.S. intelligence agencies named India as second in line; the drug itself, acknowledges Brosseau, is produced now "largely" within North America. Adding that the US. produces its own fentanyl as well as what comes across its border from Mexico. Canada, on the other hand, is responsible for its own fentanyl production. In the background, President Trump signed one of his famous 'executive orders' classifying fentanyl as a "weapon of mass destruction".

 

Barrels of fentanyl production precursor materials displayed to the media in Pasadena, Ca, September 2025 / Getty Images 

 

China's Maritime Military Fleet Playing Catch-Up

"[China's third [aircraft] carrier is] by many measures more capable than the Liaoning and the Shandong."

"Overall, compared to the two preceding carriers which are ski-jump configured the Fujian has greater combat persistence and striking power."

Collin Koh, regional naval affairs expert, Nanyang Technological University

 

"After the ceremony, Xi Jinping boarded the Fujian ... and learned about the development of the aircraft carrier system combat capabilities and the construction and application of the electromagnetic catapult system." 

"[Xi also went into the carrier's control tower to learn about flight operations, and he] solemnly signed the ship's logbook." 

"[The atmosphere of the official commissioning on Hainan was] grand and enthusiastic."

Xinhua official news 

 

"Carriers are key to Chinese leadership’s vision of China as a great power with a blue-water navy, [or one that can project power far from its coastal waters]."

"A carrier doesn’t really help you in the First Island Chain, but it’s key to that contest, if you want one, with the Americans in the wider Indo-Pacific."

"[China’s] increasingly capable military [and ability to] project power globally [is one of the reasons the Pentagon in its latest report to Congress continued to call it] the only competitor to the United States with the intent and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order."

Greg Poling, director, Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, Center for Strategic and International Studies 

South China Morning Post

"[China is] extensively and rapidly strengthening its military power without transparency."

"We believe that China’s military intends to advance its operational capability at distant sea and air by strengthening sea power."

"[Japan is watching China’s military activity and would] calmly but decisively respond [if necessary]."

Minoru Kihara, former defense minister, now chief cabinet secretary in Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s new government 

 

"They want those aircraft carriers to play a part in kind of extending the strategic perimeter farther out from China, and one of the important things that an aircraft carrier can do is extend the range of China’s domain awareness to keep an eye on activities in the air, on the sea, and below the sea."

"The Fujian carrier is a big leapfrog for China in terms of the capabilities of its aircraft carriers compared to the first two."

"Really across the board, China’s closing the gap [between its growing military technology and that of the United States]."

"They’re fielding and building more aircraft carriers, they’re fielding more nuclear-powered subs, they are fielding more, larger destroyers and other vessels that carry a larger number of missiles. So they’re really catching up." 

Brian Hart, deputy director, CSIS’s China Power Project   

In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, China's third conventionally powered aircraft carrier, the Fujian, conducts a maiden sea trial on May 7, 2024. (Ding Ziyu/Xinhua via AP, File)

 

 In a not-too-subtle poke at Taiwan, Beijing's newly commissioned third aircraft carrier has been named after Fujian, the province facing Beijing-contested Taiwan. The technologically advanced aircraft carrier was commissioned at a naval port in the country's southern island province of Hainan with Chinese president Xi Jinping in attendance. Following sea trials over recent months, the Fujian now officially becomes China's third carrier in active operation. The Liaoning and the Shandong pre-dated this third of China's aircraft carrier fleet.

 

This third vessel -- produced at an astronomical cost, likely well over $10-billion (71,193,500,000.00 Chinese Yuan) -- has a distinct purpose, for Beijing to project its maritime power against that of the United States, amidst flashpoints such a territorial disputes in the South China Sea and Beijing's ongoing claims over Taiwan and its intentions of reunification with the self-ruling Republic of China which it claims is a breakaway province, historically part of China, albeit autonomously self-ruled since 1949.

 

The flight deck of China's third conventionally powered aircraft carrier, the Fujian during the electromagnetic catapult-assisted takeoff training at an undisclosed location AP Photo

 

Although not nuclear-powered, this aircraft carrier comes equipped with an electro-magnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS). Only  the USS Gerald R. Ford with the American fleet had formerly possessed this advanced launch system which now also allows the Chinese air force to deploy jets carrying large payloads and greater fuel amounts. The USS Gerald R Ford is capable of carrying 70 aircraft, and now the Fujian, though not quite as large, has a similar formidable capability, as the contest between the two world powers heats up.

 

Beijing still has a distance to traverse in its plans to match the size of the U.S. military fleet's might. The United States has eleven aircraft carriers in service, its military prowess unequalled by any other maritime power. Beijing has countered that distance by forging ahead with billions in a money-is-no-object bid to demonstrate its military credentials as a force to be reckoned with. A reality that Beijing pairs with its aggressive claims of ownership over disputed land, sea and air space unnerving other governments in East Asia with their own competing claims. 

 

 The flight deck of China's third conventionally powered aircraft carrier, the Fujian AP Photo

 

 

Sleepwalking Into a Colossus's Web of Monopolistic Influence

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the port of Piraeus, Greece, November 2019   Orestis Panagiotou / Reuters

"The original Maritime Silk Road, as laid out in Chinese documents, focused on three main routes. The plan has expanded to include the Atlantic and the Americas. Latin America is one of the fastest-growing destinations for Chinese port investments."

"China manages ports at both ends of the Panama Canal. It is building from scratch a US$3-billion megaport at Chancay in Peru that will transform trade between China and Latin America, enabling the world's largest container ships to dock on the continent for the first time."

Liz Sly/Julia Ledur, The Washington Post

 

"This is not coincidental."

"I firmly believe there is a strategic aspect to the particular ports they're [Beijing/Chinese Communist Party] targeting for investment."

Carol Evans, director, Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College

Voice of America

President Xi Jinping thinks long term, strategically. His is a carefully thought-out program to bring the China that he administers to the head of the global trade enterprise in every conceivable way. Once China was inducted into the global community through membership in the World Trade Organization thanks to then-U.S. President Bill Clinton's interpretation of the West's useful collaboration in trade with China, Beijing never looked back. In seemingly no time at all, cheap labour brought inexpensive goods manufactured in China to the world's consumers, bringing an end to domestic manufacturing in countries eager to please their publics with less pricey goods.

 

That loss of manufacturing stemming from an inability to compete with the manufacturing colossus, made those countries dependent on China's low-paid workforce in production of goods. China then turned to rare-earth elements, minerals that modern technical advances were dependent on, planning for a monopoly enabling China to cheaply produce highly technical products, leaving the world dependent on it once again. And when the economy was linked with the environment and a global agreement to reduce environmental carbon and GHGs, it monopolized alternate energy sources where China produces the world's greatest number of wind turbines. And electrical grids.

 

Beijing has stealthily established a secure network of global ports, central to world trade and navigation. Beijing presented its goal in these investments as commercial, but over time the United States and its allies have become increasingly thoughtful of the potential military applications and their implications for the future inherent in an expansion of Beijing's plans for the future. The port networks established to this point reflect China's ambitions, stated by President Xi as a Chinese "maritime superpower". 

 

VOA

A decade ago, when President Xi made that statement, China had global stakes in 44 ports; that has grown at the present to its owning or operating terminals and ports at close to 100 locations in over 50 countries, incorporating every ocean and continent on the globe, many located along the world's most strategic waterways. The investments made by companies owned in the majority by the government of China, making Beijing and the CCP the largest operator of ports supplying global supply chains. That represents critical domination.

Furthermore, these investments allow Beijing a window into business dealings of competitors, useful in aiding China to defend its own supply routes, to spy on any military movements of the United States and to engage potentially in U.S. shipping, analysts point out. Chinese warships already view these Chinese-owned ports or terminals as ports of call, like the Chinese flotilla entering the Nigerian port of Lagos this past summer.

Adjacent the Chinese-operated port of Djibouti, China acknowledged in 2015 that it was building a military base which officially opened two years later, a mere six miles from a U.S. military base in the country. Djibouti lies on one of the busiest shipping lanes -- located at the narrow entrance to the Red Sea -- in the world; ten percent of global oil exports and 20 percent of commercial goods pass through the narrow strait, to and from the Suez Canal.

 

Chinese-operated port of Djibouti. (Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images)

 

Many of the port locations are at strategic choke points, complete with high shipping traffic where sea routes are narrow and ships can be vulnerable. At Khalifa in the Persian Gulf by the crucial Strait of Hormuz, just 50 miles from an important U.S. military base, China has revived an intention to establish military facilities. Beijing's influence has also been increasing in ports on Egypt's Suez Canal where Chinese shipping companies announced investments in ports of Ain Sokhna and Alexandria terminals.

China's ambitions are large and far-seeking, to the extent that it controls or has major investments in over 20 European ports, allowing Beijing significant influence of the supply routes on the continent where many serve as vital logistics and trans-shipment points for NATO and the American Navy. "It's a significant national and economic security concern", stated Michael Wessel of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

A little-known software system named Logink -- a digital logistics platform owned by the Chinese government -- has enabled China to secure a commanding position that allows it access to vast numbers of normally proprietary information on the movement, management and pricing of goods moving around the world. At least 24 ports, including Rotterdam and Hamburg adopted the Logink system; an issue that compelled the U.S. Transportation Department to put out an advisory, warning American companies and agencies to avoid interacting with the system at risk of espionage and cyberattack.

 

A Tragic Misfortune of Alzheimer's Diagnosis in the Young

“He could not recall events from just one day prior or the places of his personal belongings. He also had difficulty reading and reacting. […] He could not remember whether he had eaten or not […] He was unable to complete his education and had to withdraw from high school, even though he had had an above-average academic performance before beginning to experience significant cognitive decline two years prior.”

Journal of Alzheimer's Disease

The young man started having difficulty concentrating in school, which soon progressed to significant memory impairment. Image credit: Burdun Iliya/Shutterstock.com

‘This is the youngest case ever reported to meet the diagnostic criteria for probable [Alzheimer’s disease] without recognized genetic mutations.’ 

"Exploring the mysteries of young people with Alzheimer's disease may become one of the most challenging scientific questions of the future."

Beijing Research Team

A 19-year-old has been diagnosed at a memory clinic in China as being the  youngest person ever to have presented with Alzheimer's disease. Capital Medical University's Xuanwu Hospital in Beijing neurologists explained that the patient's brain indiacted early symptoms of the neurodegenerative disease; among them memory loss, hippocampal atrophy and shrinkage. 

Other possible causes of cognitive decline were ruled out leading to the teen's diagnosis with early onset Alzheimer's. This most common form of dementia detected and diagnosed in the brain of a 19-year-old upsets the view long-established verity that the disease is associated with aging, and at the same time emphasizes a requirement for ongoing study in young people.

According to new data from Blue Cross Blue Shield, Alzheimer's diagnosis accelerated 200 percent between 2013 and 2017 among individuals between the ages of 30 and 64; the average age of early onset diagnosis considered to be 49 years old. Prevalence of the disease increases with age, with roughly five to six percent of people diagnosed developing characteristic symptoms prior to age 65, according to the Mayo Clinic.

 

 The teen began experiencing an inability to focus in class some two years prior to the consultation with the clinic. He experienced problems reading, remembering events from the day before, and would misplace his belongings as his cognitive ability deteriorated. Unable to complete homework, the teen soon became incapable of recalling whether he had eaten. His reaction to events lagged badly, leaving him little option but to leave his studies in high school.

A memory disorder was further confirmed resulting from an auditory and learning test, placing him far distant from his student peers in short- and long-term memory recall. A high concentration of p-tau181 was revealed when a sample of the adolescent patient's cerebrospinal fluid was tested. Mild hippocampal atrophy was recognized through a PET scan; both indications that led the study authors to diagnose him with "probable" Alzheimer's disease.

What's more, a genome sequence came up with no inherited gene mutations for the condition, typically seen in younger patients. And nor was there any family history of the disease. UK experts revealed 12 lifestyle factors that could slash a person's chances of dementia by up to 40 per cent, such as regular hearing checks, seven hours of sleep a night and more exercise.

 

Disappearing CPC Critics

"On November 17, China Global Television Network (CGTN), the international arm of the Chinese state broadcaster China Central Television, released the text of an e-mail, in English, purportedly written by Peng. In that message—correctly described by many as "creepy"—she said she was "fine." Peng also said the "news" released by the Women's Tennis Association "including the allegation of sexual assault, is not true." Almost nobody believes that the message is both authentic and not the result of coercion."

"Peng is not the only high-profile figure detained in recent months. Businessman Jack Ma, citizen journalists Zhang Zhan and Chen Qiushi, and celebrity Zhao Wei were all disappeared. Consider it a pattern."

Gordon Chang, Gatestone

The disappearance this month of tennis star Peng Shuai (pictured) has led many around the world to question the holding of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Now, only the morally bankrupt could think it is a good idea to allow the hostage-taking, rapist-protecting, genocide-committing Chinese regime to host this competition. (Photo by Wang He/Getty Images)

China, under Xi Jinping is known internationally for its quick temper, setting its diplomats free to use decidedly undiplomatic, insulting language when defending China's now-brittle reputation from its international critics. Under President Xi's direction the Chinese Communist Party now indulges in international abductions, popularly known as 'hostage diplomacy', detaining, imprisoning and charging foreigners in China on the pretext of protecting its national interests from malign forces, as a method of warning to other countries with which it has disagreements.

That Beijing also kidnaps its own citizenry as a method of restraint when they manage to become too 'individual', too influential and in any way, shape or form pose a potential challenge to the ruling party, they are 'disappeared' to silence them and to reduce the level of their influence. No one can escape, not even the man who is the proprietor and inventor of the popular social media sites operated through the tech giant Alibaba with its 800 million users, the multi-multi-billionaire, Jack Ma.

Jack Ma - seen here at an Alibaba event - is estimated to be worth more than $50bn  Getty Images

"The Alibaba founder had accused Chinese banks of operating with a "pawn-shop mentality". He had also claimed that the authorities were trying to "use the way to manage a railway station to manage an airport" when it came to regulating the new world of digital finance."

"These statements angered the banking establishment and reportedly reached the attention of President Xi Jinping." 

BBC

Add it all up; China's aggression in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, claiming disputed territories as its own, and threatening its neighbours who believe they have territorial rights to the land, sea and airways under dispute. Beijing's treatment in Xinjiang of millions of Uyghur Muslims, through 're-education' by incarcerating them in guarded isolation centres, sterilizing Uyghur women, sending men to other provinces as slave labour, among its many affronts to human rights. 

No other nation nor group of nations is able to confront and oppose Beijing's aggression without paying dearly for it. Some labour under that humiliating and costly, threatening condition of being punished by China; Australia knows how its wrath striking trade and diplomacy can sting, and so does Canada, among others. So why is the world prepared to beat a path of competition toward Beijing's hosting of the 2022 winter Olympics?

Its much admired three-time Olympic tennis star revealed on social media that a former vice-premier of China, helped by his wife, coerced her into a sexual relationship, and the torment that brought her. Her post was online for less than a half-hour before disappearing. And suddenly Peng Shuai too disappeared. Chinese state media has responded to the alarm and concern being expressed in the sport world, by assuring an international audience that all is well. It is debatable how many in China are aware of Peng's sudden absence through China's heavily censored internet.

"The statement released today by Chinese state media concerning Peng Shuai only raises my concerns as to her safety and whereabouts."

"The WTA and the rest of the world need independent and verifiable proof that she is safe. I have repeatedly tried to reach her via numerous forms of communication, to no avail."

Steve Simon, chairman, Women's Tennis Association

"Peng's recent so-called statement that 'everything is fine' should not be taken at face value as China's state media has a track record of forcing statements out of individuals under duress, or else simply fabricating them."

"These concerns will not go away unless Peng's safety and whereabouts are confirmed."

Doriane Lau, China researcher, Amnesty International

International Olympic Committee

China Maximizing Its WorkForce

"This evidence underlines why businesses must urgently end all sourcing from the region, and why governments must ban imports from the region."

"There are no arguments for delay."

Chloe Cranston, Anti-Slavery International campaign group

"Some minorities may exhibit a degree of consent in relation to this process, and they may benefit financially."

"However ... it is impossible to define where coercion ends and where local consent may begin."

Adrian Zenz, author, Center for Global Policy report, Washington

 

"In all, ASPI’s research has identified 82 foreign and Chinese companies potentially directly or indirectly benefiting from the use of Uyghur workers outside Xinjiang through abusive labour transfer programs as recently as 2019: Abercrombie & Fitch, Acer, Adidas, Alstom, Amazon, Apple, ASUS, BAIC Motor, Bestway, BMW, Bombardier, Bosch, BYD, Calvin Klein, Candy, Carter’s, Cerruti 1881, Changan Automobile, Cisco, CRRC, Dell, Electrolux, Fila, Founder Group, GAC Group (automobiles), Gap, Geely Auto, General Motors, Google, Goertek, H&M, Haier, Hart Schaffner Marx, Hisense, Hitachi, HP, HTC, Huawei, iFlyTek, Jack & Jones, Jaguar, Japan Display Inc., L.L.Bean, Lacoste, Land Rover, Lenovo, LG, Li-Ning, Mayor, Meizu, Mercedes-Benz, MG, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Mitsumi, Nike, Nintendo, Nokia, Oculus, Oppo, Panasonic, Polo Ralph Lauren, Puma, SAIC Motor, Samsung, SGMW, Sharp, Siemens, Skechers, Sony, TDK, Tommy Hilfiger, Toshiba, Tsinghua Tongfang, Uniqlo, Victoria’s Secret, Vivo, Volkswagen, Xiaomi, Zara, Zegna, ZTE. Some brands are linked with multiple factories."

Australian Strategic Policy Institute

The coalition says workers face ‘vicious retaliation’ if they tell the truth about their employment conditions. Photograph: VCG/Getty Image

Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uyghurs along with other minority groups are being forced to pick cotton by hand, according to a U.S.based think-tank, in a report that has triggered calls on governments to ban cotton imports from the Xinjiang region of China. Roughly eleven million ethnic Uyghurs call the huge western Chinese Province their ancestral home, where they produce 85 percent of China's cotton, representing 20 percent of global supply, linked to worldwide fashion brands. 

The report emphasizes the likelihood of a major proportion of cotton from Xinjiang was "tainted with forced labour". To which China's foreign ministry responds, in dismissing the allegations: "Helping people of all ethnic groups secure stable employment is entirely different from 'forced labour." According to spokesperson Wang Wenbin close to three million people in the region have been lifted out of poverty; a claim difficult to challenge or to dispel.

 

Workers at a cotton factory in Awat county, in China’s Xinjiang region. Photograph: Xinhua/Alamy

 

There have been undeniably, long-standing concerns within the international community over reports of a million people from Muslim minorities detained in camps situated in Xinjiang where they have undergone re-education workshops, and are then assigned to work in textile factories. The camps themselves, explains China in its defense, to an outraged world are vocational training centres and their purpose is that of fighting extremism. In other words, without China's official intervention to re-educate Uyghurs, they become terrorists.

The ILO [International Labour Organization] lists 11 indicators of forced labour. Relevant indicators in the case of Uyghur workers may include:

• being subjected to intimidation and threats, such as the threat of arbitrary detention, and being monitored by security personnel and digital surveillance tools
• being placed in a position of dependency and vulnerability, such as by threats to family members back in Xinjiang
• having freedom of movement restricted, such as by fenced-in factories and high-tech surveillance
• isolation, such as living in segregated dormitories and being transported in dedicated trains
• abusive working conditions, such as political indoctrination, police guard posts in factories, ‘military-style’ management, and a ban on religious practices
• excessive hours, such as after-work Mandarin language classes and political indoctrination sessions that are part of job assignments.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute

The Muslim world appears to tacitly agree for there have been no questions emanating from any Muslim country over the allegations, and no protests directed toward China from Muslim sources that usually speak up against prejudice targeting those faithful to Islam elsewhere in the world, just as there was little interest from the same sources in the plight of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

 

Yet according to the Center for Global Policy, Chinese government documents and media reports indicate some 570,000 people, representing three Xinjiang regions, have been sent to pick cotton through a coercive labour program meant to target ethnic minority groups -- adding that the true figure ensnared in slave labour conditions was certain to be higher than that stated by several hundred thousand.

"In March 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) published a report Uyghurs for sale: ‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang, which identified 83 foreign and Chinese companies as allegedly directly or indirectly benefiting from the use of Uyghur workers outside Xinjiang through potentially abusive labour transfer programs."

"ASPI estimates at least 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of Xinjiang and assigned to factories in a range of supply chains including electronics, textiles, and automotives under a central government policy known as ‘Xinjiang Aid’. The report identified 27 factories in nine Chinese provinces that are using Uyghur labour transferred from Xinjiang since 2017."

"ASPI reached out to the 83 brands to confirm their relevant supplier details. Where companies responded before publication, they have included their relevant clarifications in their report."

"Business & Human Rights Resource Centre invited Abercrombie & Fitch, adidas, Amazon, BMW, Gap, H&M, Inditex, Marks & Spencer, Nike, North Face, Puma, PVH, Samsung and UNIQLO to respond; the[y responded]. We invited Apple, Esprit, and Fila to respond; they did not. L Brands sent its response after publication of our Weekly Update, in October 2020."

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

In this undated video footage run by China’s CCTV, Muslim trainees work in a garment factory at the Hotan Vocational Education and Training Centre in Hotan, Xinjiang. Photograph: AP Video

 

The SARS/CoV-19 China Backstory

"Far from admitting its own culpability in trying to cover up the initial spread of COVID-19, China is busy fostering conspiracy theories about the origins of the virus [that it began outside China] and attack Western leaders for blaming the pandemic on a deliberate effort by China to destabilize Western economies."
David J.Bercuson, fellow, Canadian Global Affairs Institute, director emeritus, Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary

Masks are seen on a production line manufacturing masks at a factory in Shanghai, China on Jan. 31, 2020. Aly Song / REUTERS

China became a beacon of low-wage, efficient production, scalped-cost goods, attractive to American, Canadian and European production with an eagle-eye set on profit through outsourcing to China's vast factories. That manufacturing in the West sidled off to China, leaving millions of people who once had their living wage guaranteed by strong union demands, looking for other means of employment failed to register, even when products leaving China for points west were found to be substandard, dangerously adulterated and a threat to human health, it left little impression on the quest to lower production cost and raise the bottom line.

The world became hugely dependent on Chinese production lines for an immense spread of medicines, for the supply of medical equipment the world is now finding itself in perilously low supply of. In the face of a pathogen that emerged from a 'wet' wild animal market in Hubei Province and inevitably spread outward from China when millions of Chinese, focused on traditional travel for Chinese New Year streamed out of Wuhan -- the city that became the epicentre of the epidemic because Beijing failed to take action -- the world also became indebted to China to provide it with the equipment it had trusted China to produce.

China had become the major producer of ventilators and respirators at the very time when the novel coronavirus had begun surfacing in Wuhan last December. Half of the medical masks dispersed around the world in normal times, before the advent of SARS-CoV02, are produced in China. The United States became reliant on China for 97 percent of its antibiotics by 2018, according to Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow, global health, at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations.

At the same time China had captured between 70 and 95 percent of the American market for vitamin C, ibuprofen, hydro-cortisone and acetaminophen, according to U.S. Commerce Department records. The United States sourced its surgical gowns and blood oxygen level measuring equipment through Chinese factories, along with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners. And then, Chinese officials authorized Wuhan's lockdown along with other cities in Hubei, leading Beijing to enforce official bans on export of medical equipment. From U.S.-owned manufacturers stationed in China.

The European Commission closed down the export of personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies so that the European Union and over 50 countries banned outright or imposed strict restrictions on the export of a range of medical equipment and PPEs, inclusive of masks, visors, hazmat suits and gloves. Canada, along with Australia, Brunei, Chile, Myanmar, New Zealand and Singapore signed a commitment to "maintaining open and connected supply chains", to oppose "trade restrictive measures on essential goods, especially medical supplies".

That, when the Canadian company Medicom was producing three million medical masks daily at its Shanghai factory, but was prohibited from exporting its masks out of China, to Canada. And nor was Canada only hit in this 'nationalization' of a foreign company's production; the very same situation impacted on American companies whose production facilities were located in China; American they might be, but shipping their products back to the United States at a time of desperate need was out of the question.

Suddenly and swiftly, companies whose exports out of China were forbidden, saw a light bulb explode in the realization that they owed it to their country of origin to return to producing badly needed goods right at home. Canada, like the United States, is facing a dramatically critical shortage of medical equipment, and in Canada, Medicom is among the firms enlisted to begin producing to make up a dangerous shortfall, poised now to open its first permanent factory in Canada, to help supply the country with the millions of masks and thousands of ventilators in short supply

Ottawa had sent along 16,000 tonnes of gear in February to aid China in its struggle to control their zoonotic outbreak; 1,101 masks, 50,118 face shields, 36,426 medical coveralls, 200,000 pairs of gloves and more; representing a tiny fraction of what China would require to quell the virus. Last month, a New York Times investigator discovered China had imported 56 million respirators and masks in just the first week of the Wuhan shutdown. Affiliates of the United Front Works Department, China's overseas propaganda and influence-peddling arm of the Chinese Communist Party are suspected to have been engaged in forwarding that critical bulk cargo.

The USNS Comfort passes the Statue of Liberty as it enters New York Harbor during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in New York City, U.S., March 30, 2020. The United States, like other western countries, is scrambling for medical supplies. ANDREW KELLY / REUTERS

Out of the goodness of their hearts, now that China has more or less subdued the galloping infection rate internally, Beijing has been busy ingratiating itself as a benefactor to countries all over the world, themselves now attempting to cope with the firestorm of infection rates they're experiencing. The Bank of China donated 30,000 masks and PPEs to Canada, and has forwarded supplies in a gesture of humanitarian forgiveness to the United States, briefly overlooking President Trump's insistence on naming the coronavirus the 'Wuhan virus'.

A fierce bidding war for desperately-needed medical supplies is breaking out all over the world, with hard-hit nations hoping to acquire sufficient supplies to enable their medical community to cope with the expected surge of hospital admissions due to the respiratory illness afflicting communities. The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency is alert to the dire state of U.S. medical supplies and the instructions that FEMA has been given is to lock down any and all supply it can locate, anywhere in the world.

Last Sunday's planeload of medical equipment landing at JFK airport, New York where America's premier city is struggling to cope with its current status as number one hotspot for viral infections, came courtesy of China, the country that is now busy burnishing its credentials as the saviour of the world, despite its purported conspiracy theory of having had the virus deliberately planted through a biological war bid, by the very country it is now attempting so nobly, to aid.

FDNY Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) secure a patient that was identified to have coronavirus disease (COVID-19) into an ambulance while wearing protective gear, as the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in New York City, New York, U.S., March 24, 2020. REUTERS/Stefan Jeremiah/File Photo