"Slave labor" is a phrase used in English to express morally unacceptable working conditions where the workers have little to no power, as if they were slaves. It's commonly understood that those workers are not slaves in the legal sense.
It's atrocity propaganda exaggerate by useful idiots, even if out of genuine ignorance. The perpetuator of the original allegation, Zenz, used the label of "coerced labor", which goes through the euphemism treadmill to become forced labor by state department and now slave labor by the even less informed, because that's how propaganda snowballs.
Labour transfer programs in XJ, like elsewhere in PRC are employment programs. Yes there's pressure by recruiters to fill roster. Or it could be part of parole / work release programs. And there may be exploitation, but that's statistically inevitable for a social program that employs 10s of millions from every region of PRC over decades. Also consider these programs are typically well compensated compared to west due to economic disparity of developed and underdeveloped regions in PRC. And they're contracts with limited duration measured in months.
Analogue example is work program that recruits from rural town /rust belt with zero prospects and average income of 20k and paying them 45k to do manufacturing in a more well developed state for a year. Or apply that to work/release for an inmate incarcerated on low level drug charges. Some of these placements are exploitative because capitalism. In aggregate the programs alleviate poverty and promote development. That's the tier of exploitation being misconstrued as slave labour with the XJ propaganda push.
You are calling people idiots. Please be respectful. This is not in the spirit and guidelines of hacker news.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century
>In political jargon, a useful idiot is a derogatory term for a person perceived as propagandizing for a cause without fully comprehending the cause's goals, and who is cynically used by the cause's leaders.
Wikipedia mentioning a thing and citing the same propaganda does not make it so. Forced labor in laogai sure. Claiming XJ is a parallel laogai program when it's part of Rural Labour Transfer Program is misinformation. It's a paid work program with contracted terms. It's far removed from Laogai slave labour on the spectrum of slave-voluntary work. It's also one of the interventions that aligns with poverty / development strategies around the world versus actual cultural genocide / security state shenanigans going on. But it gets disproportionately maligned regardless.
E: over comment limit, it's not splitting hairs, it's accepted jargon/term. But apologies if it offends, the same way calling/insinuating POVs from PRC perspectives are wumao. Which you have been doing throughout this entire thread. As for sources, I've dropped the relevant subject matter for those interested to research on their own. The fact people can comfortably allege XJ is slave labour based on western sources and have no passing familiarity with context of transfer programs in PRC for poverty alleviation reflects how staggering gap in understanding is.
I'm still puzzled how/why some of these comments on here are down-voted; e.g. the comment pointing to wikipedia articles and asking for better discourse.
You still have not specified your sources of facts. So it does not seem to be worthwhile to engage in a genuine constructive conversation on your points.
We've seen this kind of thing many times before. Rule with an iron fist; if caught, deflect, lie, blame it on low-level leadership, corruption, or just statistics.
This is why the entire PoW/force labour accusation is entirely stupid.
Undereducated/underqualified Uyghurs with poor mandarin skills are frankly shit workers that's a massive hassle to exploit for economic efficiencies. There's a reason XPCC had a hard time developing XJ. On top of onerous security, movement, reeducation and other requirements, the amount of money poured into these labour transfer programs for Uyghur worker opportunities are much better spent on Han/other integrated minorities. It doesn't pass the most basic of smell test except by useful idiots who don't know the economics behind labour transfer programs, that again, affects 10s of millions from every province (45M across country in just 2000s). There are 100s of millions poor rural Chinese idle workers with prerequisite language skills that could fill theses roles easier and cheaper. XJ labour transfer is an expensive privilege - these programs are publicized by CCP loudly as wank for poverty alleviation, which is what they are considering the amount of subsidies required to rationalize giving XJ these programs in the first place. It takes extreme ignorance and brainwashing to misconstrue it as PoW slave camps for capitalism. Which is what you'll find on wikipedia citing propaganda sources that some people post like it's impartial while claiming anyone who disagrees is a wumao.
It varies a lot place to place and era to era what exactly is a slave and what isn't. Servants? Serfs? Even in a single era and a single place, as soon as one of the laws changes, things are not the same. Like in China, after the Unification, Chin Han called his administers what Westerners call "servants" or "slaves". I think this is a Western thing. Really, a better translation would be they were his "perkins," a Chilean word that basically means "someone who does what someone else says." But it doesn't have a definition, don't think in terms of definitions, think in terms of the relationship between words. That's the thing, the West is big on titles, I suppose the East is to a degree, but it's really meaningless. I wonder what they call Emperor Augustus in Chinese, what else it means. Ultimately, it's not what your title is, it's what you can do. Same with slaves, the word is just a word, the question is what will you have to do.
[1] The desert island version of a text is what you remember without being able to search for it online, or review your notes, nothing. Like if it were you and I, dear reader, on a desert island, the Bible is what we remember, that's it.
This is not what is meant by slave in this context. It is not a feeling. Modern slavery is a fact [0]. Xinjiang concentration camps count as modern slavery. Of course, China is not the only country concerned. But it does not mean that we should not point it out in China.
There are some comments that this should be described as something else - perhaps forced labor. Uyghurs in Xinjiang are deprived not only of their labor rights but also every other right from reproductive to cultural and everything in between.
Slaves essentially have no rights. Uyghurs essentially have no rights. So no, forced labor is not the right term.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century
Traditionally if it's a prison the term is prison labor.
In a concentration camp you'd have forced labor. That is probably the language that would be used by groups actually working in this space.
Modern slavery is a fact [0]. China is not the only country concerned. But it does not mean that it does not apply to China or that we are forbidden from using the term when describing Xinjiang.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century
There are also what are called "wage slaves" who can quit in theory but can't afford to.
Literally owning a person or having the right to kill them are kind of an extreme form of slavery. I think situations could be considered slavery even in situations where those don't apply.
There are some situations that are like slavery but they're kind of corner cases that society handles differently. Soldiers generally aren't allowed to quit in the middle of a war. H1B visa workers in the U.S. have more severe repercussions if they quit a job than ordinary workers; they can be kicked out of the country. I don't know what the legal status of forced labor in the U.S. prison system is, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of those situations are effectively slavery. The people who employ undocumented workers can use the threat of reporting the workers to the authorities as leverage to get them to do what they say and not complain.
Don't ever forget that the part of the US constitution banning slavery has an explicit carve-out for this.
So there is, in fact, involuntary forced labor in the United States. It does also cause issues, as prison conscripted labor can undercut any semblance of normal rates for menial/unskilled labor.
That being said, the previous posters advising this does not negate the enormity of Chinese misconduct, or one's calling it out with similar domestic issues is not an effective or valid form of rhetorical dismissal. The drunk, as it were, is still right to call you out to hand over your keys after a few too many drinks.
"So essentially something that's considered perfectly normal in American prisons. Bit of a double standards, don't you think?" by trasz
in response to
"They are rounded up, regardless of their crimes. 1M+ people have been put in a camp where they are raped, beaten, medically experimented on, re-educated and indoctrinated to praise the CCP, shipped to factories around the country to work without pay, if they escape their families are punished. While Uyghur men are in these camps, Han Chinese men move in with the families left behind and treat the women and children as slaves. They literally buy them. It’s disgusting. It’s evil. See this: https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/ohob7b/uyghur_wom..."
by: ei8htyfi5e
Essentially: try to distinguish between information about facts - which is largely true - and the narration being built around it.
Not an english speaker, so is Is "slave" correctly used here or is more like a "metaphor"?, In my mind a slave is someone you own, you can sell or kill. Someone you keep in prison is called different and people kept in prison for political reasons have also different label, religions/race imprisonment might also have a different label.