• China has launched an investigation against the PVH group, owner of the fashion brands Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.
• PVH had already suspended cotton imports from Xinjiang in 2020.
• This Chinese region is home to the Uyghur minority, victims of cultural genocide at the hands of the Beijing government.

Globalisation is full of paradoxes. Recently, China launched an investigation against the PVH group, owner of the well-known brands Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, accused of boycotting cotton produced in the Xinjiang region, where the Muslim Uyghur minority is concentrated and subjected to exploitation by the Beijing government. The paradox is precisely this: on the one hand, the Chinese government is accused of discriminating against the Uyghurs and forcing them into compulsory labour; on the other, that same government is suing the brands that take boycott action in order to uphold human rights.

The Uyghur question

The Uyghurs are a Muslim minority of Turkic ethnicity, and make up almost half the population of the Chinese region of Xinjiang. In modern times, the first East Turkestan Republic declared its independence from the Republic of China in 1933, before being brought back under the Kuomintang, the party that ruled China until Mao Tse-tung's communist revolution. In 1944, the second East Turkestan Republic was proclaimed — a short-lived socialist people's republic backed by the Soviet Union and made up of the Turkic peoples inhabiting the area. This too was reoccupied, this time by the People's Liberation Army — the communist army — in 1949. From the 1960s onwards, in opposition to Uyghur independence movements, China began settling Han Chinese groups in the region, suppressing Uyghur culture and violating the human rights of the Muslim population.

In 2009, there were violent clashes between Chinese authorities and Uyghur independence activists, the reverberations of which were felt even in Italy: at the time, senator Emma Bonino publicly condemned Beijing's repression. But reports by analysts and NGOs identify 2017 as the year from which the Chinese government intensified its repression of this minority, with hundreds of thousands of people locked up in re-education camps, subjected to physical and psychological violence and forced into compulsory labour.

For years, China has been accused by human rights organisations and various journalistic bodies of systematically carrying out a "cultural genocide" or "ethnocide" against the Uyghurs. These discriminatory practices involve forced labour and the transfer of the population to what are effectively internment camps, where those imprisoned without trial are subjected to physical and psychological torture and sexual violence. The Uyghurs, far from their homes, live in segregated dormitories, are made to attend ideological training courses and language classes (Mandarin Chinese, of course) organised outside working hours, are subject to constant surveillance and are not permitted to practise their own religion.

Forced migrations, family separation (whereby adult males are separated from their families and children), mass surveillance, land expropriation and cultural assimilation (indoctrination) with the aim of eliminating an entire culture: these are the practices denounced by numerous observers. After undergoing brainwashing sessions — which the Chinese government describes as "vocational training programmes", on the grounds that workers must receive "thorough ideological training" — the Uyghurs are forcibly transferred to mines, illegal farms and factories, where they end up producing consumer goods that flood the Western market. Estimates put the number of people imprisoned at between 900,000 and 1.8 million.

Forced Uyghur labour in Western products

Low production costs and exploitation: this is the fate to which the Xinjiang region is subjected. Several reports by academics and NGOs have raised the alarming ethical question within the technology, clothing and automotive industries at a global level, yet they have so far prompted few responses: the involvement of well-known brands — including Apple, Samsung, Huawei and Sony in the technology sector, Nike, Hugo Boss, Zara and Max Mara in clothing, and Volkswagen and BMW in the automotive sector — shows how far the forced labour practices inflicted on the Uyghurs now touch every object of daily use. Yet Western consumers struggle to learn the story hidden behind these goods.

Through the document "Tailoring responsability: tracing apparel supply chain from the Uyghur region to Europe" published at the end of 2023, Sheffield Hallam University in Great Britain highlighted how Xinjiang is implicated in labour exploitation within the clothing supply chain. The Uyghur region produces approximately 23 per cent of the world's cotton supply and 10 per cent of PVC, a material better known in the construction world but also used for garments and protective accessories. The report, written by Yalkun Uluyol, a researcher of Uyghur origin based in Turkey, in collaboration with two organisations committed to defending Uyghur rights (Uyghur rights monitor and Uyghur center for democracy and human rights), is based on open sources (shipping data, corporate financial reports, articles) and direct testimonies from people who have worked in textile factories, and focuses on four Chinese suppliers — including Zhejiang Sunrise, Beijing Guanghua textile group, Anhui Huamao and Xinjiang Zhongtai Group — that have commercial relationships with major European fashion brands. These suppliers are accused of sourcing from factories in Xinjiang that exploit Uyghur forced labour. In particular, Zhejiang Sunrise counts among its clients, through two of its subsidiaries (Smart Shirts and May YSS), Hugo Boss in Germany, Ralph Lauren and Burberry in Italy, and Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein (both PVH brands) in the Netherlands. Two brands that have decided to boycott cotton originating from Xinjiang.

PVH is not alone

In reality, the decision taken by PVH — which says it is in constant contact with the Chinese authorities — is not recent but dates back to 2020, when "it was taken in line with the group's sustainability and corporate social responsibility policies," the company says. But according to China's Ministry of Commerce, the boycott of Xinjiang cotton is not justified by concrete evidence and causes economic harm to China. Adding PVH to an unreliable entities list is a tool of economic retaliation that Beijing uses to respond to sanctions and bans imposed by the West, such as those adopted by the United States to counter the import of products derived from forced labour.

It is no coincidence, in fact, that this Chinese initiative comes at a time of growing trade tensions between China and the United States. In recent years, the Biden administration adopted a series of measures aimed at limiting the importation of goods linked to Xinjiang, including the Uyghur forced labor prevention act, a law that prohibits products suspected of having been made using forced labour from entering the United States.

PVH is not the first company to face retaliation from China over similar decisions: in 2021, the same fate befell the Swedish brand H&M, which was excluded from major Chinese e-commerce platforms for months before being reinstated.