'Forced labor' just pretext for US pressure play: China Daily editorial

The United States, unsurprisingly, has again used alleged human rights abuses as the pretext for an economic blow against China, adding five Chinese entities that make polysilicon, a raw material for solar products, to its Entities List.

The US Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security has made Hoshine Silicon Industry Company, Xinjiang Daqo New Energy, Xinjiang East Hope Nonferrous Metals, Xinjiang GCL New Energy Material Technology and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps subject to economic sanctions, on the grounds they are using forced labor.

It is an allegation that doesn't hold water. There are more than enough local people who want to work in these big companies, so there is no reason for them to use forced labor.

The use of forced labor is also prohibited by law in China. The four companies are big ones that strictly follow the labor law by signing labor contracts with their employees and providing them with all the benefits and welfare they are entitled to according to the law.

Angry as the Xinjiang government and its people are about the sanctions, they should know that the US needs no reason to wield the baton of sanctions against other countries to smear them and try and undermine their economies. What the US needs is nothing but a pretext. Forced labor is the pretext it is using this time.

This may be because the US regards itself as an authority on the issue of forced labor, as it is a country that not only had a long history of using slave labor, but also uses those trafficked into the US as cheap labor today.

The US is addicted to making an issue of human rights abuses when it wants to put pressure on a country whose development it is trying to sabotage.

China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region where more than 40 ethnic groups live together, with the Uygur having the largest population, is in the spotlight because the US believes it can be made use of in its campaign to contain China.

Because of the terrorist attacks launched against local people of all ethnic groups by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, China is making great efforts to fight against terrorism, extremism and separatism in the region. The US is deliberately perverting this crackdown on terrorism by portraying it as a "crackdown on ethnic groups", in an attempt to smear China and as an excuse to hinder its progress in an economic sector in which it is a leader.

With "forced labor" being a constant, convenient subterfuge of the US economy, US politicians do not need to tax their imagination trying to come up with something to badmouth China.

But although it is an allegation that comes readily to their lips, it is revealing of the US and has nothing to do with the truth in Xinjiang.