Chinese cotton embargo threat to world clothing supply chain

The release of new evidence showing that hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority labourers in Xinjiang are being forced to pick Chinese cotton by hand through a coercive state-mandated labor transfer and “poverty alleviation” scheme is set to increase the pressure on fashion and clothing retailers to ban imports of all cotton and cotton products that originate in China’s remote western province. With Xinjiang producing 85% of China’s and 20% of the world’s cotton, such a ban would have drastic consequences on the world’s clothing supply chain and potentially spell ruin for many enterprises within the Vietnamese,  Bangladeshi and Cambodian ready-made garment (RMG) industries.

Earlier this month, the US banned Chinese cotton imports from the powerful Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) over concerns about the use of forced labour by Uyghur Muslim prisoners in the Chinese cotton industry and a new report from the Washington-based Centre for Global Policy (CGP) can only increase help persuade other countries to follow suit. The centre has already called on Washington to block imports of all cotton from Xinjiang with a Withhold Release Order akin to the one already imposed on XPCC. An extended ban would almost certainly catch the Huafu Fashion Company in its net – and it counts Adidas, H&M and Esprit among its clients.

Along with rising domestic and international debt and environmental opposition to China’s  continued funding of massive fossil-fuel driven infrastructure projects right across the Eurasian land mass a full-blown ban on cotton exports may also force President Xi Jinping into a rethink of a key element of his Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). For several years now, Beijing has been on a mission to shift labour-intensive industries such as textiles out of the Pearl River Delta and into the interior. The authorities had hoped to create as many as one million textile jobs in Xinjiang by 2023, although that figure probably did not include the estimated half a million Uyghur Muslim prisoners now allegedly being force to work in the province’s fields and factories.

Along with India and the US, China is one of world’s top three cotton producers. A world wide ban on any garment containing Chinese cotton therefore has the potential to cause major disruption to what will soon be a trillion-dollar industry. It will also make it considerably harder to balance BRI’a books, which are already coming under scrutiny.