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U.S. to block cotton, tomato product imports from Xinjiang over forced labor
- seibelj 6y agoI’m going to tell you a secret that maybe you don’t understand - these tomatoes will be exported to another country and then imported to the US minus the extra costs.
- jtdev 6y agoAnother good reason to buy local produce and demand to know country of origin/manufacture before buying things... vote with your wallet.
- gpm 6y agoThat might be possible with tomatoes, that you buy in stores. Frustratingly it's basically impossible with everything bought online these days. Trying to figure out whether, say, a hdmi cord sold on Amazon came from Taiwan or China is practically impossible.
- maxwell 6y agoHence the need for the U.S. to adopt country of origin requirements for ecommerce like India. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/e-commerce-sites-must-state-country-of-origin-says-centre/article32166176.ece https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/e-commerce-sites-must...
- actuator 6y agoCertainly seems like a pro consumer move but has there been any impact of this on sales of these products. Consumers will buy something that gives them good value at a cheap price. For a lot of products it is not even the cost factor, like mechanical keyboards. Somehow the best ones are either brands from there itself like Varmilo or made there like Leopold.
- gpm 6y agoI certainly know people who buy based on location, but I don't know if it's a large enough portion of the market to matter.
- lightgreen 6y agoThat extra cost might make tomato exporting to the US unprofitable. > I’m going to tell you a secret It is not a secret, and people working in US government agencies are not stupid, they know about this scheme and a thousand others.
- tehjoker 6y agoThey also know how to ship cocaine in CIA aircraft and have US soldiers defend poppy fields to pay for illegal wars and black ops too. https://www.globalresearch.ca/drug-war-american-troops-are-protecting-afghan-opium-u-s-occupation-leads-to-all-time-high-heroin-production/5358053 https://www.globalresearch.ca/drug-war-american-troops-are-p...
- ospider 6y agoIt's just a funny way to say. You're killing the humor here.
- maest 6y agoBeing patronising is hardly humorous.
- nickff 6y agoTomatoes are definitely fungible, but they're unlikely to be trans-shipped as you describe. The strategy you described was used to 'launder' metals through Canada, and the USA caught on, then applied tariffs against Canada.
- rdtwo 6y agoThey will just get canned elsewhere relabeled and sent here. People are thinking fresh tomatoes where most likely these are used to make ketchup or tomato sauce
- jmclnx 6y agoAnother one -- How will anyone know where in China the imports are from ? I am sure our imports from Manchuria will increase. What is stopping China from hiding the source. The ban should be from all of China, singling out one region will do nothing.
- jlmorton 6y agoI'm going to tell you a secret that maybe you don't understand - unless the third party country is turning the tomatoes into pasta sauce, that would be an illegal diversion through transshipment. This is among the sort of thing the Commerce Department watches for, and they will seize the entire shipment. Now, I don't know how seriously they're going to police tomatoes, but it's certainly not as simple as making a stop over in Manila. In the case of sanctions against Iran, the monitoring includes not just tracking AIS transponders, and satellite surveillance, but actual naval groups in the Persian Gulf.
- bamboozled 6y agoPretty weak response from the US considering China actually have huge forced labor camps. How about even stronger sanctions? I guess the US is now so dependent on China that they can't?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI don't think it's about dependence. It's just hard to drum up political support given the geopolitics of the situation. Remember that it's only Western countries plus (including?) Japan who even say that there's a problem - much of Africa and the Middle East, including a huge fraction if not a majority of the world's Muslims, explicitly endorse China's actions in Xinjiang. It's not like apartheid, where the country might actually become a pariah if we can just organize against it; most of the world doesn't think China's doing anything wrong.
- ameen 6y agoNot really, most of these countries ( African, Middle East and Pakistan ) don’t speak out because their economies depend on it (Belt and Road initiative). None of them have the stability to withstand economic sanctions against them by the Chinese.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI'm skeptical. Many of those same countries regularly speak out against the US, despite the clear economic advantage of staying friendly with Washington. But even if it's true that China's just bullied a bunch of countries into being complicit, their complicity still does make a push for sanctions harder.
- ameen 6y agoThere's a clear distinction between the U.S. Government and the CCP. There's valid opposition and differing opinions _within_ Washington. The same cannot be said of CCP. Infamous whistleblowers of the U.S. Government/Washington regularly get airtime. When was the last time you heard of a Snowden/Manning from the CCP?
- mempko 6y agoUS also has forced labor camps. Well, we call them "correctional facilities".
- Alupis 6y agoTo compare a prison in the US to "labor camps" in China is intellectually dishonest.
- vkou 6y agoIt's intellectually dishonest to not compare the two. The prison labor industry in the US is the largest, per-capita, in the world. Which makes sense, since the US imprisons more people then any other country in the world - both by capita, and by raw numbers. There are more prisoners working for free (or nearly free) in the US today then there are prisoners in the entirety of China. As long as the 13th amendment leaves a loophole big enough to drive a prison bus through, what you're looking at is modern-day slavery.
- darkerside 6y agoIt's a very incomplete comparison. What have the Uighurs done to merit their imprisonment?
- vkou 6y agoDo you really want to shift this conversation to whether or not forced labor is justifiable if the people subjected to it are deserving of their imprisonment? I didn't realize that basic humanity like 'don't enslave people' is contingent on what those people have, or have not done.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI mean, imprisonment itself is a pretty severe restriction. If you're proposing that even deserving criminals should be treated as well as you and I, I don't have a tremendously convincing refutation, other than to note that it implies much more radical changes than simply ending prison labor.
- tehjoker 6y agotbh, I'm not sure if I believe the allegations. Most of the most serious assertions have come from people connected to the CIA and the various Radio Free * newsources that come from the state department. Very few of these stories are independently verified and the numbers claimed are comical. Of 11M people, they claim 3M are in camps. A friend of mine's sister just visited XJ and said it was fine. You can't hide 3M people out of 11M. Given the anti-China stance of the ruling class right now, I am extremely skeptical of various scurrilous claims being bandied about. The US routinely lies about official enemies and has for decades (nay centuries), so their record should speak for itself. A recent example is the Iraq War and WMD. Another famous example is the Gulf of Tonkin incident. For example, the US news reported that the UN had condemned the practices in XJ, but in fact it was one US person on one commission that didn't represent the UN as a whole. The US media has to do more than mere assertion. In any case, the current fascist US regime has little credibility on human rights issues given their open support for police murders and various policies of ripping children away from travelers and imprisoning them. I'd like to say show me the evidence, but unfortunately when I try to read chinese government documents or political discourse I am befuddled by my inability to read chinese. :-/ Note how many US reporters on these stories cannot either.
- actuator 6y agoAssuming your comment is in good faith, one reason a lot of this is coming from intelligence related sources is, media access is extremely restricted in Xinjiang and Tibet. Intelligence agencies have a better chance at getting in, because of their covert ops mandate and training. Also, wire feeds and media publications like AP, Guardian etc have their independent reporting on it as well like.[1] Facts might be getting exaggerated but it is not helped by reluctance of CCP to come clean on issues like Covid-19 origins, beligerence towards anyone who says/does something they dislike and comical claims like nine dash line which they are forcing on others like a bully. These at least are open for everyone to see. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/04/muslim-minority-teacher-50-tells-of-forced-sterilisation-in-xinjiang-china https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/04/muslim-minorit...
- lightgreen 6y ago
- excalibur 6y agoThe US condemns the use of forced labor to produce cotton.
- kthxbye123 6y agoSo much so that we fought a titanic war with hundreds of thousands if not millions of casualties to end it!
- Zhenya 6y agoWhat's your point? Slavery was abolished a long time ago in the US. Any pressure to stop enslavement or forced labor of humans should be celebrated.
- branweb 6y agoDon't forget forced sterilization: https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c The attitude of someone who reacts to this with "what about the antebellum south!" is beyond my understanding.
- Aperocky 6y agoSo China had a one child policy that only applied to Han Chinese, which is the dominant ethnic group of the country. Now they relaxed the requirement to 2 and applied it to everyone. Of course it's now immediately a genocide. The previous one, despite harsher limits and usage of the same methods, is evidently not.
- branweb 6y agoFrom the linked article: "The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands" Maybe the article is mistaken? It seems like quite a bit more than just applying a one-child policy.
- 6y ago
- everdumb 6y agoChina might be committing light genocide but please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar, regardless of whether or not you have an issue with ethnic cleansing. Freedom for Hong Kong is an inflammatory idea on Hackernews, we are trying something different here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- lofties 6y ago"light genocide"?
- everdumb 6y agoPlease don't do this here. There's nothing new to say about Chinese concentration camps and political repression, so the discussions are tedious and therefore off topic. Also, the question of whether the Chinese government can be criticized here has been decided on HN for many years and is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. Edit: note the person who replied to me gets to the crux of how the Chinese government is treated with child gloves on this website.
- phist_mcgee 6y agoWell how about you don't write your comment in an insanely insensitive and inflammatory way? Your language implies that there can be rational debate about genocide? That is not de-escalating language at all.
- everdumb 6y agoYou are perpetuating a nationalistic flamewar in this thread. We don't rock the boat when it comes to China or the CCP on HN, even for genocide. Please stop, and please don't do it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nitrobeast 6y agoWhat’s the difference between forced labor in China, vs prisoner firefighter in California?
- phist_mcgee 6y agoOne involves imprisonment with no chance of release with potential torture, the other is allowed free after their jail term. I don't understand your comparison?
- berdario 6y agoExactly, in the US you are left at the mercy of cruel jailors who will torture you https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/08/wait-do-people-actually-know-just-how-evil-this-man-is https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/08/wait-do-people-actual... You'll be forced to work and live in prisons overrun by the pandemic https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/coronavirus-sweeping-through-massive-us-prison-population https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/coronavirus-sweepi... Even if you're released, you'll be jailed right away if the battery of your electronic monitor will ran out https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-ankle-monitors-are-another-kind-of-jail/ https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-ankle-monitors-are-anoth... Tt'll be though rebuilding your life, since employment opportunities are denied to ex-inmates, and thanks to probation fees, you'll be saddled with debts hard to pull away from. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2019/04/09/probation_income https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2019/04/09/probation_incom... Ultimately, if you fail to repay those fees, you'll be jailed again. The system works wonderfully... for the for-profit prisons https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/capitalizing-on-mass-incarceration-u-s-growth-in-private-prisons/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/capitalizing-... The US is a modern day dystopia, and I don't think that anyone seriously thinks that China's prison system is as bad as the US'
- phist_mcgee 6y agoI do think it's worse. You certainly do not get a lawyer, and you sure as shit do not get the right to a fair trial in china.
- dirtyid 6y ago>“We have reasonable but not conclusive evidence that there is a risk of forced labor in supply chains related to cotton textiles and tomatoes coming out of Xinjiang,” Smith said in an interview. “We will continue to work our investigations to fill in those gaps.” ... >In March, U.S. lawmakers proposed legislation that would effectively assume that all goods produced in Xinjiang are made with forced labor and would require certification that they are not. These sanctions are an of extension XPCC / bingtuan sanctions from a few weeks ago. The organizations run XJ agriculture. Ultimately they're kind whatever, XJ tomatoes are <1B export and will be redirected for internal consumption. 40-50B of cotton will be washed through SEA producers. In terms of human rights, the reality is the ag workers particularly Uyghurs are going to suffer more after XPCC sanctions - primarily because region can't import superior US agricultural equipment. So they'll just end up working the people harder. Obviously US equipment producers will also lose out. Decouple is expensive, SMIC lose 4B, PSI loses 100B. The question is whether these moves are smart and within stated interests. Regardless, hope the bar for more significant escalation, particular military ones, is based on more conclusive findings, but you never know with election politics.
- yc12340 6y ago> the reality is the ag workers particularly Uyghurs are going to suffer more after XPCC sanctions - primarily because region can't import superior US agricultural equipment Could you tell more about "superior agricultural equipment"? I have only heard about tractors with DRM, but I assume, that you meant something else.
- dirtyid 6y agoFrom what I read, John Deere harvesters have lower error rates and better efficiency than domestic machines which makes significant difference in cotton production. On DRM note, wonder if they're going to be forced to disable existing machines in the region. That would be interesting. I think half of the cotton production occurs in other provinces, so there's a loophole for more parts and supplies if hacktivists can overcome geo locks or other restrictions. Maybe John Deere will be incentivized to sell DRM free systems.
- dehrmann 6y agoDoes the US import that many tomato products from China? Most produce will be domestic, Mexican, or Chilean in the off season. Is there significantly tomato processing there? Same with cotton. If this impacts clothes, that could be significant, but I don't think of China as a big textiles player, and the US still produces a lot of cotton, it just doesn't weave it or make clothes from it.
- est 6y agosubmitter @abc-xyz had a strong China topic focus.
- throw4goodcause 6y agoAfter the lesson of WMD fake news many years ago that lead to disastrous war thousands of life lost, today there are still so many people behave based on the information that they know from indirect sources. I'm a little surprised that this is hacker news which means majority of audience are rational so they can differentiate belief and fact. (In this situation fact is unreachable just like what Iraq did: if you give the investigator access it just give the lair more credit and make lie more deceitful. CPP may or may not know that.) This strange phenomenon that large population can be cheated again and again puzzled me for long time until recently after HK demonstration and BLM. People (I'm not referring rioters) act based on fake information, create fake/untrue information by distorted narrative. My hypothesis is there's some evolutionary reason behind it: Human intelligence were evolved and perfected from thousands years of fight. It's part of metabolism of society. People need cause as a spiritual stimulus to fight. Evil is a human invention to launch attack to other humans called enemy to justify their aggression. There are a couple of guys who seem to be against this irrational trend but they are also victim of exact the same human cognition flaw. One guy is Bret Weinstein,an evolutionary biologist. He is a smart smart rational professor who had fought against a movement seems to have high moral ground but distort the truth in reality. But when he mentioned "organ harvest"in China as if it's a fact(Most Chinese people know where the story comes from) , I suddenly found he himself became another version of his former enemy who fight for "Good" cause as if he a decent human being, without question the facts. He is doing exactly what he was against. Good cause as a spiritual demand is a drug that lead sane people into delusion. It's so attractive that people need it so much , they create their own reality, reinforce beliefs within peers, occasionally resulted in war with other group who don't have the same illusion.
- russli1993 6y ago"We have reasonable but not conclusive evidence that there is a risk of forced labor in supply chains related to cotton textiles and tomatoes coming out of Xinjiang,” Smith said in an interview. “We will continue to work our investigations to fill in those gaps.” Xinjiang produces 20% of the world's cotton. The reality is, most farmers in Xinjiang are independent entities. They are the little guys. They grow cotton or any other produces on their land, and sell the produces to distributors. Many of these farmers are minority ethnicity, Uighur included, but there are others as well. These people lived in villages and in the country side for generations. Farming and the "primary" sector of the economy is how they make a living for generations. They are the low to middle income bracket of the society. They depend on agriculture to raise families, provide food on the table, raise children, and take care of the elderly in the family. A blanket ban of all cotton produced in this region will devastate the life of these people. Think about it from the perspective of these people. They grew cotton on their farm, and one day they are told "The U.S. stops buying your product because they want to protect you from forced labor", and because of that, you will be out of work. The farmer sits there and think "Wait, I am farming because I need money to feed my families". This ban sounds like its standing with the Uighur people, but in reality, it hurts them the most. Rights to live, rights to livelihood, rights to income and bringing food to the table is also human rights. Target companies or organizations that actually committed forced labor and present concrete evidence. Maybe require a document of the name of the farmer, require disclosure and certifications of the practices of the producers. There are many ways this could be done to both protect legitimate producers, farmers, and rule out the bad actors. Or at least act like you are trying. A blanket ban blew the covers off of the PR statement this is about protecting human rights and stand with the people. Instead, the actual intent is to suppress the Chinese economy, and prevent the people living there from getting richer and achieve a better quality of life. Its sad that there are people in the world who don't really care about other people's quality of life. They can enjoy themselves a good paying job, nice cloths, good cars etc. While for other people, farming, doing hard, manual and labor intensive work on the farm is all they can ever dream of. And what little they have now will be "taken" away from them.
- orf 6y agoOh no, those poor farmers! Someone think of the farmers! Maybe they should start asking about the well documented forced labour camps for minorities that exist on their doorstep.