The CBC has done investigative journalism to trace global tomato paste supply chains back to Xinjiang, which is....the world's largest exporter of tomato paste.

But, Zenz then asserts that tomato production uses slave labour, so supporting buying from Xinjiang is bad actually.

Another nugget, that when CBC went undercover to try to buy tomatoes and ask about forced labour the suppliers seemed to have no idea what they're talking about.

Also, the official China statement on Uighur tomato harvesting is to create economic opportunity for the residents - so even on its face it is better than the temporary migrant labour that Canada imports to harvest its food, and at worst it's equal.

This is all coming on the recent news that China is dismantling a number of the reeducation centres in Xinjiang. How could China do this?

    • apparitionist [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      it was okay for Nestle to use slave labor

      woke western chauvinist socialists: "it's evil to blame me for supporting slave labor so I can buy cheap treats, but these HAN CHINESE are fascist!"

    • SacredExcrement [any, comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Is this like the time a year ago or whatever that the supreme kkkourt said that it was okay for Nestle to use slave labor?

      EDIT: it was like 4 months ago AND THE RULING WAS 8-1

      Sweaty, you don't understand; they had to rule that way because it was about using slave labor internationally, not in the US

  • Downanotherday [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    The funnest part of this shit is if you go through all the "slave labour", "Human trafficking", "Uyghurs for sale", etc articles that actually include a Chinese source you will be lead to this Chinese government program.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20191212034310/http:/www.mohrss.gov.cn/SYrlzyhshbzb/jiuye/gzdt/201903/t20190321_312709.html

    https://archive.ph/Arq8K

    As @JoesFrackinJack points out ... literally on the side of poverty in China's war on poverty.

    • SolidaritySplodarity [they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      They don't even get into that, really. It's just a song and dance based on Adrian Zenz, one of the anonymous eyewitnesses they never corroborate (ones that transit through NED-funded propaganda orgs to get to the US/Europe and have often changed stories), some ignorant AFL-CIO labor imperialist hot takes, and an absurd "undercover" gotcha interview.

      It would be much better if it were about exploitation in the industry at large and then by country. Instead, it's a piece intended to make you support boycotts and sanctions of Xinjiang exports.

  • dallasw
    ·
    1 year ago

    deleted by creator

  • SolidaritySplodarity [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Read this a few days ago. You could teach a few days' of a class on propaganda/media criticism with it. It's got:

    • Citing a known liar and charlatan as the main source.

    • Citing organizations / think tanks with nice-sounding names that are just CIA cut-outs) adjacent to them.

    • Listing one anonymous supposed eyewitness with no attempts to corroborate their story or provide material evidence.

    • Making the leap from, "this maybe happened once" (eyewitness story) to "a full-scale boycott of the entire industry is necessary: why would you every buy tomatoes produced by Uyghurs!?"

    • A gotcha interview pretending to be undercover where they found nothing at all except a lack of certifications (which ones? They never say) and pretend that there's a big gotcha in the company saying they don't employ Uyghurs but then eventually learning that some of the farming (not what their company does) was done by Uyghurs.

    • The implication that employing Uyghurs is inherently bad.

    If anything, the real story here is that companies in Xinjiang are responding to these propaganda efforts / economic pressure by taking on anti-Uyghur discriminatory hiring practices. This is never explored by the CBC despite being the likely motivation of the propaganda effort: to undermine China's plan to address radicalization by, in part, focusing on poverty reduction and economic integration.