Western Companies Get Tangled in China’s Muslim Clampdown

May 16, 2019

Wall Street Journal Eva Dou, Chao Deng

In southern Xinjiang, the governments of Hotan and Kashgar announced in 2017 a three-year push to place 100,000 “surplus rural laborers” in vocational programs.

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In Aksu, officials have gathered up more than 4,000 residents over the past two years for deradicalization and textile-making courses under “concentrated, closed-off, military-style management” to meet factories’ labor needs, Aksu’s human resources and social services bureau said in a notice in December. Many were headed for textile factories, the notice said.

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During the Journal’s visit, village bulletin boards around Aksu displayed lists of residents below the poverty line, with their full names, national ID numbers and reason for impoverishment (“lack land,” “lack skills,” “lack motivation”). All of the dozens of listed names viewed by the Journal in two villages carried the same case resolution: “transferred to work.”

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A Uighur outside of the city remembers officials sweeping through villages to “organize” locals to work in textile factories last year. If the workers quit, the person said, officials return to organize them again.

“If the government tells you to go work, you go,” this person said.

Li Xinbin, propaganda chief of Aksu, said he and other officials are assigned individual families to lift out of poverty, defined as an annual income below 2,300 yuan ($340), by the end of this year. They use personal time and funds if necessary, and must log their progress in a smartphone app. Mr. Li said the city had no “training centers” of any kind.

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After the initial training, Xinjiang factories are expected to monitor workers and conduct periodic deradicalization programs, according to factory announcements. At the Aksu textile park, a subsidiary of Shanghai-listed shirtmaker Youngor Group Co. held such a session for 240 workers in May 2017 at the request of park management.

At the meeting, workers were told not to pray in public or keep books with ethnic or religious content, according to an online post by Youngor. The post said employees were told not to browse or spread online content harmful to ethnic unity, and that the company would tighten its internet oversight.