China on Tuesday said that there was “no forced labor” in Xinjiang after a report by the BBC implied that nearly half a million members of ethnic minorities were forced to harvest cotton in the far western region.
Speaking at a news conference in Beijing, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin said the claims were being made by “certain people with ulterior motives.”
“Helping people of all ethnic groups achieve stable employment is completely different from forced labor,” Wang added.
Hundreds of thousands of members of the Uighur and Kazakh Muslim minorities in Xinjiang have been detained in camps where they are forced to denounce Islam and profess loyalty to the party.
Earlier this year, monitoring groups and eyewitnesses said Uighurs had been summoned from abroad and across China and sent into detention and indoctrination centers.
The roughly 10 million Uighurs make up a tiny proportion of China’s almost 1.4 billion people and there has never been an insurgency that could challenge the central government’s overwhelming might.
Also during the news conference Wang defended its research partnership in developing a COVID-19 vaccine with Brazilian authorities after the South American country’s health authority said China’s human trial programs weren’t transparent enough.
The spokesperson also accused the United Kingdom of “interfering in Hong Kong’s affairs under the guise of so-called democracy and freedom and undermining the rule of law in Hong Kong” after British politicians criticized Chinese policy there.
