Date: March 25, 2021

Source: China News Service

Author: Li Xuefeng

BEIJING, March 23 (China News Service, CNS) -- Jinan University's Institute for Communication and Borderland Governance released Forced Labor or Pursuit of A Better Life？: An Investigation of Xinjiang Minority Workers' Employment in Guangdong, China, detailing the situation of Xinjiang minority workers in Guangdong. Chinese Mainland scholars interviewed by the CNS journalists indicated that Xinjiang ethnic-minority people were voluntarily working outside Xinjiang,  pursuing a well-off life. 

The JNU Institute compiled this 18,000-word report through focus group interviews, in-depth interviews and participatory observation in five Guangdong companies that hire ethnic minority workers from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Seventy migrant workers from Xinjiang, including members of the Uygur, Kazak, Kirgiz and Tajik minorities, were interviewed. The report also shed light on their reasons for working in Guangdong, their daily life, the significance of their work experience, and future planning. All these refuted a research report released earlier by anti-China forces in the West, including the German scholar Adrian Zenz. 

On March 22, Nankai University in Tianjin made a statement denouncing Zenz, who, under the banner of academic research, made a deliberate misinterpretation of the context of China Institute of Wealth and Economics's research achievements. Zenz's so-called conclusions are full of mistakes and far from the truth, without any credibility and academic integrity.

People in all countries and regions aspire to a better life, and so do ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, said Zhou Weiping, a researcher in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Chinese Borderland Studies. The JNU research report pointed out that Xinjiang ethnic-minority people who work in mainland enterprises have various and detailed plans for the future, with some continuing to work for a few more years, some moving to the Guangdong and some returning home to start businesses.

As the income of Uyghur labor is lower than in the southeast coastal cities, Zhou said, going outside Xinjiang to work has become an important way for workers them to broaden their horizons, increase their income, discard old mindsets and improve their living standards. The remarks and behaviors of some anti-China forces in the West have exposed their real intention to impose a negative image on the normal work and lives of all people in Xinjiang under the pretext of human rights.