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Experts: China's 'Coercive' Labor Policy Pushing Uighurs Out of Traditional
Livelihoods

Asim Kashgarian

   While more details are emerging about the alleged coercive labor of
   Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang region, some China observers
   say Beijing's efforts are strategically calculated to change the
   traditional livelihood of rural residents by pushing them off the land
   into state-controlled wage-earner jobs.

   China last Thursday published Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang,
   detailing its "poverty alleviation efforts" that human rights groups
   have branded as forced labor.

   The white paper said that every year, from 2014 to 2019, government-run
   "vocational training" projects provided training sessions to an average
   of 1.29 million urban and rural workers, of which 451,400 were in
   southern Xinjiang where more than 80% of the local population are
   Uighurs. It claimed that of the 103,300 farmers and herders from
   southern Xinjiang's Hotan prefecture, 98,300 of them found work thanks
   to the training program.

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