I love cotton, but I feel guilty wearing it sometimes. Not only does it require substantially more water to grow than other plant materials such as linen or bamboo, more than 20,000 liters of water is needed to generate 1kg of cotton fabric which literally only equates to a single t-shirt and pair of jeans, conventional cotton also uses so many pesticide- about 16% of the world’s insecticides actually- and because harvesting the plant requires taking it from its root, these chemicals then leech further into the ground. It’s for these reasons that those who are ecologically minded have been pushing for both more organic cotton production as well as recycled, or up-cycled, cotton.
I truthfully would love to even see more demand for organic linen and hemp production. Both crops require substantially less water and no pesticides. Linen, which comes from the flax plant, can grow in almost any soil quality, and hemp is great for both warm and light fabrics.
However, we still live in an age of cotton. It’s a versatile fabric, light and breathable, and can be spun into clothes for any kind of weather. Most clothes are made from cotton or its derivatives through chemical processing, and not surprisingly, 20% of the global supply of cotton comes from China with 85% of it coming from the Xinjiang region- an area that has gained much attention over the past few months with foreign governments and mainstream media because of the Uighur humanitarian crisis.
I first became aware of China’s horrific treatment of the Muslim population in 2017 after speaking with my father who had just returned from a business trip in Shanghai. He told me that one of his colleagues at the office there was of Uighur ethnicity and had opened up to him about the tragedies facing his community in the autonomous region of Xinjiang (which isn’t so autonomous from the Communist Party, much like the “state” of Tibet to its south) and other parts of China.
See, in 2017, President Xi Jinping issued a directive that “religion in China must be Chinese in orientation,” leading to new crackdowns on religious minorities, in which Uighurs were greatly affected. Uighurs are a mostly Muslim Turkic ethnic group. A majority live in Xinjiang, but there are communities in the neighboring countries of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. A few thousand even live in Australia. Those that live in China have gradually seen the Chinese government ramp up their attempts to “assimilate” the population to more traditional Han Chinese practices, and in 2017, it hit a boiling point when eight people were killed in a knife attack in the province in February of that year.
Surveillance networks with police checkpoints and cameras were employed in Xinjiang, but even worse, interments camps, spun by the government to be “re-education centers” after construction details were exposed by the media, were erected in the region; with most construction reportedly occurring between 2017 and 2018.
Since 2017, it has been estimated that at least 1 million Uighurs have been placed in more than 85 camps, identified through satellite imaging of Northwest China, because of government claims that the population holds extremist Islamic views and is a threat to national security.
Within these camps, most of which are converted from existing schools or other official buildings, detainees have reported being forced to sit in stress positions for hours, listen to long brainwashing lectures of Communist Party rhetoric and propaganda, face constant humiliation, beatings, torture, and sexual abuse, sleep and live in cramped prison cells with dozens of others, and even take unknown medications. Deaths have been reported but unspecified, and even more heartbreakingly, kids are taken away from their parents before they are sent to the camps and aren’t reunited with them even after they are released.
The reason for this is because many of these parents are then shuffled into “resident buildings” that are part of the government’s contentious new labor resettlement program. These indoctrination camps run parallel to the Chinese government and President Xi’s sweeping goals of ending nationwide poverty by late 2020 by increasing jobs. They supply the dozens of factory zones that have emerged across the Xinjiang region- an area that offers also generous tax breaks and subsidies to companies- with workers. One plan reported that by late 2023, Xinjiang would like to have “one million [people] working in its textile and garment industries, up from about 100,000 in 2017” (Buckley & Ramzy, 2019).
The industrial zones of Xinjiang are growing quickly, yet one cannot call the vast majority of work done there voluntary. Those that come out of camps and even those minority residents who somehow are lucky enough to not have been taken constantly are under the looming threat of being interned, so there isn’t much resistance to assigned factory work, even when pay is less than half of minimum wage.
Many of the villagers who sign work contracts not only work in factories but also find themselves bused to large cotton farms where they spend a few intense weeks in late summer picking the crop that later ends up as raw material for Chinese textile makers such as Lu Thai Textile who supplies apparel companies such as Hugo Boss and Uniqlo.
Up to at least 2019, according to an NBC News report, Lu Thai’s Textile factory in Xinjiang has been supplying cotton to Lu Thai’s global HQ in eastern China; however, in August, amid increased international outcry, the company sold its majority stake in the factory.
Nevertheless, Xinjiang cotton continues to be produced by many other Chinese textile companies. Scott Nova of the Worker Rights Consortium estimates that “about one in five garments flowing into the U.S. contains Xinjiang cotton. It would be a challenge to identify any major apparel brand or retailer whose supply chain doesn’t run through Xinjiang” (Nadi et al., 2020).
So, it’s up to consumers to demand companies take time to truly assess their supply chains and understand the consequences of their actions. Retailers like Uniqlo, who vowed “no Uniqlo product is manufactured in the Xinjiang region,” (Nadi et al., 2020) have to own up to the fact that they have supported and might continue to support forced labor practices through their suppliers if they don’t take the time and care to vet standards.
Transparency, especially in supply chain, is so important for the future of fashion. From a business standpoint, it generates trust through authenticity which sells more to consumers, but in general, it is our only line of defense to win this war of accountability within the fashion industry.
Please take a look at the brands listed in our sustainability section on the website. All of them focus not only on their environmental impact but their ethical responsibilities as well.
Katirina Delviscio
Cover Photo Courtesy of NBC News.
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