0x815
https://feddit.org/u/sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz, thanks for this. I added an archived version now.
No, you cannot walk around freely. This exactly is the point. There is no full supply chain transparency. Company executives and auditors say that, human rights experts, even some politicians who visited the country. Audits are just based on interviews, and these are useless, as even if workers would be aware of human rights violations, they cannot say that in an interview. This is said by those who have been there and conducted the audits. Read the sources.
At the start of this years, the Chinese government itself has -once again- openly rejected critical calls for human-rights reforms at the U.N. meeting, just to name another example, including a call for an end to persecutions of Uyghurs. It also rejected all recommendations calling on the government to end reprisals against individuals engaging with the international human rights system, even a message of disdain on the ten-year anniversary of the death of Cao Shunli in detention, a former Chinese human rights defender taken into custody on her way to Geneva for China’s 2014 UPR (Universal Periodical Review).
Prior to the U.N. meeting this year, China had even lobbied non-Western countries to praise its record by asking them to make “constructive recommendations”, which were essentially bland questions, make vague recommendations, and use their platform to praise the Chinese government’s rights record. And China has been blocking any domestic civil society groups from participating in the preparation of the state report or from making contributions to the review by the U.N. for decades, very much as it does with supply chain audits.
And, again, these additional examples are a VERY TINY sample of what is evident.
What a rubbish. Even Turkey, a country whose government is not exactly a role model for democracy itself, has long called out China’s treatment of its Muslim ethnic Uighur minority “a great cause of shame for humanity”. Volkswagen closed its Xinjiang-plant it ran with joint venture partner SAIC as “no full supply chain transparency exists”.
Markus Löning, Germany’s former commissioner for human rights who oversaw an audit on forced labour for Volkswagen last year (this the one report that is often cited in this ignorant communities where wumaos and ziganwus have given up their own personal developments just for parroting propaganda that is out of touch with world) conceded that the basis for the audit had been a review of documentation rather than interviews with workers, which he said could be “dangerous.” He also said that “even if they [workers] would be aware of something, they cannot say that in an interview.” And when asked about potential links between SAIC-Volkswagen and an aluminum producer in Xinjiang, Volkswagen responded: “We have no transparency about the supplier relationships of the non-controlled shareholding SAIC-Volkswagen.”
In addition, there are numerous Uyguhr people who survived the so-called ‘re-education camps’ who spoke out. A 10 seconds search has found this and that.
This is a VERY TINY sample of what’s wrong with Chinese supply chains and the country’s stance against human rights, and it’s no limited to cars but spans practically all industry sectors. There is ample evidence.
This [the EU losing a historically ardent supporter of European integration] would significantly impact the EU, especially with the rise of far-right movements within Europe, if China opts to work with individual member states rather than EU institutions […]
Working with individual countries rather than blocs is something China has been doing for a long time, in Europe and the EU as well as elsewhere. There are no signs that Beijing is willing to change that. For example, China’s 'Belt and Road Initiative" (BRI) is entirely based on agreements with single countries, there is not one BRI contract with any kind of bloc (let me know if I’m mistaken). The BRI is explicitly a series of single-country agreements.
In Europe you can actually see this in Hungary and Serbia where China invests heavily and has apparently strong ties with the autocratic leadership there, while at the same time there appears to be no Chinese interest of even negotiating at the EU bloc’s level. And it has never been. Last year, for example, the Chinese ambassador to France even said independent states that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union lacked ‘actual status in international law’ - this includes the Baltic states, all EU members.
Also, from a Chinese perspective, the rise of the far-right in Europe is probably something Beijing welcomed and allegedly promoted, as, for example, we may see in Germany with the recent arrests and prosecutions of right-wing AfD politicians over their alleged ties with China and Russia.
So I agree that a China-EU trade war is unlikely in 2024 (and, unlike what the article says, also in 2025 imo), but for very different reasons. I don’t consider China as a supporter of European integration considering what the government has been doing for a very long time.
Maybe this helps: https://x.com/bellingcat/status/1810952736264855916
Or just go to Bellingscat’s Twitter, there’s more about it: https://twitter.com/bellingcat