'Walk Free's Dastardly Case Against the PRC
Part 2 - Debunking the Walk Free 2023 Global Slavery Index that claims the People's Republic of China has almost 6 million slaves
This article in video form:
In the previous article we tore through the latest Walk Free Global Slavery Index that claimed that 1 in 10 north Koreans are living in conditions of modern slavery. Walk Free put the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as the number one worst offender, above Eritrea. As you may have guessed, their reasoning and sources were completely bunk, based on defector testimony from admitted liars and reports from US Government funded propaganda rags.
Spoiler alert, their reasoning and sources for the People’s Republic of China is based on the same ‘Red Scare’ and/or ’Yellow Peril’ nonsense. Sinophobia time? Sinophobia time.
I have previously covered some of the Western, CIA-funded propaganda against the PRC on this Substack, check out one of the articles here:
Once again, here’s the Walk Free report we are breaking down:
2023 Global Slavery Index - Walk Free
Walk Free’s ranking puts the People’s Republic of China at number 110, meaning 109 countries supposedly have a higher prevalence of slavery. Like the US at number 121, they don’t crack the top 100 worst offenders. But, Walk Free claims that the PRC has nearly 6 million people in slavery, over 5 times more than the US. Since the PRC has about 5 times the US’ population, they fall into a similar rank when factoring per capita.
Despite that, this report obviously paints the PRC in a worse light than the US, and uses US Government propaganda to do so, as always. The funny thing is that the US constantly fearmongers about Uyghurs in the Xinjiang province of the PRC, but according to this report, per capita, they have almost the same prevalence of modern slavery. Perhaps they should worry about their slavery problem instead of funding and spreading propaganda against the PRC?
As I’m about to prove, though, the Walk Free report is lying about the prevalence of slavery in the PRC, meaning the US is clearly worse. We have extensive evidence of prison slave labour in America, you need to look no further than the 13th Amendment of their Constitution. We have no proof of Uyghurs being kept as slaves.
Reports indicate that state imposed forced labour occurs in public and private prisons around the world, including Brazil,3 China,4 North Korea,5 Poland,6 Russia,7 Turkmenistan,8 the United States,9 Viet Nam,10 and Zimbabwe.11
Here’s a blurb about state imposed forced labour. Under footnote 9 for the United States, we have 5 sources, all teeming with actual evidence. Lawsuits from the NAACP alleging prison labour is tantamount to slavery, class action lawsuits, and International Labour Organization reports with actual data.
Footnote 4, for China, has just one link. It’s a report from Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) in the UK:
Until Nothing is Left
China's Settler Corporation and its Human Rights Violations in the Uyghur Region
A report on the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps
The first thing I like to do with these reports is to search the footnotes for a few red flags. CTRL-F ‘Zenz’ shows 13 citations from the CIA-funded christo-fascist that believes God sent him to earth to westernize China and that Jews will perish in the rapture. Adrian Zenz is a Senior China Fellow at the CIA-funded Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. More about Adrian Zenz here.
CTRL-F ‘Radio Free Asia’ and ‘RFA’ shows 5 citations from the CIA-operated news agency that only sources anonymous, non-existent people and exists to propagandize about America’s enemies in Asia. More about Radio Free Asia here.
CTRL-F ‘Australian Strategic Policy Institute’ and ‘ASPI’ shows 7 citations from the think tank funded by the Australian Department of Defence, the US Government, American mega-corporations like Facebook and Google, and defence contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. More about the ASPI here.
CTRL-F ‘Uyghur Human Rights Project’ shows 6 citations from the National Endowment for Democracy funded think tank that is connected to the World Uyghur Congress, which is also NED funded and supports the terrorist group ETIM. The NED is administered by US Congress and the founder admitted it exists to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly. They fund dozens of ‘Uyghur advocacy groups’ like the UHRP and WUC that spread lies about Xinjiang and the PRC. More about the NED here.
CTRL-F ‘Center for Strategic and International Studies’ shows 3 citations from the Washington, DC based think tank. From Wikipedia, “The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) lists major funding from defense contractors such as Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon Company and General Atomics. Significant funding has come from the governments of the United States, Japan, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates.”
CTRL-F ‘Jamestown Foundation’ shows 1 citation from the Washington DC based conservative think tank headed by various advisors to US Presidents and the former President of CIA-operated Radio Free Europe.
This report cites UK Parliament and the US Department of Treasury several times. It also cites various articles from Western media organizations like the BBC (British State Media), New York Times, The Globe and Mail, Bloomberg, The Times, etc. Most, if not all of these articles source CIA funded propaganda.
The report is partially funded by the Freedom Fund, which itself is funded by the Governments of the US, UK, and Norway. There are 3 authors of this report. The most prominent seems to be David Tobin, as this report cites other works by him multiple times. He has spoken at events from the (NED funded) UHRP, he has worked with the (WUC connected) Uyghur Tribunal on a report about Xinjiang documents released by (CIA funded anti-Semite who can’t read or speak Mandarin yet translates Chinese documents) Adrian Zenz, and a quick browse through his Twitter shows he constantly retweets NED funded Uyghur organizations like the Campaign For Uyghurs, which was started by Rushan Abbas, a US government contractor who worked with the 22 Uyghurs that the US tortured in Guantanamo Bay and who also was a reporter for (CIA operated) Radio Free Asia. Whew.
See what I mean? It’s CIA propaganda, through and through. Let’s see what other nonsense this Walk Free report says about the PRC:
[State imposed forced labour] also occurs in … reeducation camps in China,13
Footnote 13 cites the aforementioned, defence-contractor-and-western-government-funded Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Now we get a two page spread for the Uyghurs on pages 54 and 55. This should be good.
Since the 2018 Global Slavery Index, there has been a growing body of evidence of state-imposed forced labour of Uyghurs and other Turkic and Muslim majority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Uyghur region) of China.77
Growing body of ‘evidence’. Why do you think that is? Because the CIA decided to ramp up its propaganda campaign against the PRC since sinophobic sentiment in the West was already elevated due to COVID? Footnote 77 has several citations, including the aforementioned defence contractor funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute, CSIS again, a few different reports from the Sheffield Hallam University featuring the same authors again (which all source the same CIA nonsense), a Washington Post article that sources the ASPI, a BBC article that sources Adrian Zenz, a New York Times article about a US Government ban on Xinjiang products that also sources Adrian Zenz, and the latest 2022 UN report about Xinjiang. The same report that could not even say for certain that China was committing human rights violations, they only said they ‘may have’.
Abuse of compulsory prison labour and forced labour for economic development forms part of a wider, decades long campaign to exercise control of Uyghurs.78
Footnote 78 has several more citations, including two New York Times articles. The first sources Rebiya Kadeer, who runs the NED funded, terrorist-group-ETIM-supporting World Uyghur Congress. The second is funnily enough about one of ETIM’s terror attacks in Tiananmen Square (uh oh watch your ‘social credit’ score). This is clear justification for the PRC’s deradicalization efforts for the small portion of ETIM-influenced Uyghurs in Xinjiang, but of course Walk Free and the NYT spin it as unfair persecution by the Communist Party of China.
This footnote also has two Human Rights Watch reports. These are fun, since sinophobic Western liberals like to claim orgs like HRW and Amnesty International are unbiased.
The first one starts out by saying this:
The scope of this research was severely limited because Human Rights Watch researchers are unable to safely carry out research in Xinjiang.
Hmm I wonder why. Footnote [1] and [2] in this article both cite an Adrian Zenz article from the Jamestown Foundation. Footnotes [9] and [10] cite Radio Free Asia. Right, that’s why. I stopped reading this report after that. On to the next.
The second HRW report is about Chinese officials visiting people’s homes in Xinjiang to see how they live. They obviously find a way to spin this as repression, when it seems more likely that the PRC is ensuring that conditions for Uyghur families are good. The initiative is called “Visit the People, Benefit the People, and Get Together the Hearts of the People”. It is what they say it is, no reason to believe otherwise.
They typically stay with Muslim families, though sometimes cadres are dispatched to stay with Han families.
The article admits that the ‘cadres’ stay with Han Chinese families as well as Uyghur families, seemingly disproving that this is an Uyghur surveillance initiative. HRW has a section in this report titled ‘Background on Chinese Repression in Xinjiang’. To prove the repression, they cite their own various HRW reports. This is one way that they obfuscate their sources, through layers of nonsense that most people won’t sift through. I am not most people. I sifted through all of them.
China: Passports Arbitrarily Recalled in Xinjiang
Links to a report. CTRL-F ‘Radio Free Asia’, 3 results. ‘Uyghur Human Rights Project’, 2 results.Egypt: Don’t Deport Uyghurs to China
Cites Radio Free Asia directly. The RFA article cites anonymous sources.China: Free Xinjiang ‘Political Education’ Detainees
Cites Radio Free Asia directly twice, as well as that Jamestown Foundation article from Adrian Zenz.China: Big Data Fuels Crackdown in Minority Region
Cites Jamestown Foundation twice. One of the Jamestown articles is authored by Kevin McCauley, who “has spent the majority of his 30 plus year career in the U.S. Government as the Senior Intelligence Officer with the U.S. Army National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC), VA.”China: Minority Region Collects DNA from Millions
Cites all of the above and below HRW reports to obfuscate sources.China: Voice Biometric Collection Threatens Privacy
Doesn’t directly cite any suspicious sources, but makes a mountain out of a molehill, as always.
It’s a common trend with these HRW reports. They ‘reveal’ some new technology in China that every other major country in the world uses, but says it’s bad when China does it because the West has been lying about China doing a genocide or whatever.
“The Chinese government has been collecting the voice patterns of tens of thousands of people with little transparency about the program or laws regulating who can be targeted or how that information is going to be used,” said Sophie Richardson, China director. “Authorities can easily misuse that data in a country with a long history of unchecked surveillance and retaliation against critics.”
Then later in the article:
Other governments have used automated speech recognition programs, including the United States for monitoring prison calls and Australia for verifying callers accessing social services; the Spanish police have more than 3,500 voice samples from people convicted of crimes.
But it’s only bad when China does it, right?
Alright, back to the Walk Free report:
State-imposed forced labour reportedly occurs alongside political indoctrination, religious oppression, mass surveillance, forced separation of families, forced sterilisation, sexual violence, and arbitrary detention in so called “re-education camps” within the Uyghur region.79
Footnote 79 cites the defence contractor funded ASPI twice. It cites 4 more HRW reports. I’m not gonna go over all of them again, but one of them is a long report that is often cited by Western media, so we’ll cover it quickly:
“Break Their Lineage, Break Their Roots”
China’s Crimes against Humanity Targeting Uyghurs and Other Turkic Muslims
Footnote [2] cites the NED funded Uyghur Human Rights Project. [3], [4], and [5] cite the ASPI. [6] cites Adrian Zenz. That’s enough. Let’s move on.
Footnote 79 from the Walk Free report also cites the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) twice. The articles are about the China Cables, which are documents released by an anonymous ‘hacker’, that were verified as legitimate by none other than Adrian Zenz himself. Both ICIJ articles directly cite Zenz, who once again, can’t even speak or write Mandarin yet verifies these Chinese documents as legitimate.
Walk Free then sources a very fancy interactive New Yorker article in footnote 79. It makes the claim of over a million Uyghurs detained and links to a ChinaFile article that says that number comes from Adrian Zenz, Radio Free Asia, and the ASPI. It sources an AP article about IUDs (‘forced sterilization’) that features Zenz’ false data. It sources the ASPI twice about satellite data. You can’t see torture from space, ASPI. Finally, it sources a Buzzfeed News article that cites Adrian Zenz, ASPI, CSIS, and the US State Department.
Back in footnote 79, we’ve got a Newlines Institute report. CTRL-F ‘Zenz’. 41 results. ‘Radio Free Asia’, 22 results. Wowza. They actually cite Zenz and RFA more than that because of all the ‘ibid’ (in the same place) footnotes. ASPI also shows up at least 3 times. Uyghur Human Rights Project at least 6 times.
This is a big footnote, number 79. It has an AP article in it that cites Zenz directly. It has a BBC article that… cites Zenz directly. It has a Guardian article featuring an Uyghur woman who works with various NED funded organizations to shill her book. It has a UN report from 2022 that cites Adrian Zenz and the ASPI multiple times. And finally, it has an Amnesty International (AI) report. We’ll do a quick breakdown like we did with those HRW articles to show how biased AI is:
“LIKE WE WERE ENEMIES IN A WAR”
CHINA’S MASS INTERNMENT, TORTURE AND PERSECUTION OF MUSLIMS IN XINJIANG
The evidence Amnesty International has gathered provides a factual basis for the conclusion that the Chinese government has committed at least the following crimes against humanity: imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; torture; and persecution.
Factual basis? We’ll see. CTRL-F ‘Zenz’, 8 results. ‘ASPI’, 16 results. ‘Radio Free Asia’, 16 results. ‘Uyghur Human Rights Project’, 9 results. Hey Amnesty International? Nothing that comes from these CIA funded sources is ‘fact based’. Clowns.
We’re finally done with footnote 79. We’re gonna blast through the rest of the footnotes on this Uyghur section of the Walk Free report, since they don’t have as many sources as 78 and 79.
Footnote 80 cites the NED funded UHRP, then 2 unsourced articles that state that the Dutch Parliament and US Government say that China is committing genocide (of course they would).
Footnote 81 cites two UN Reports that prove that the PRC is enriching the Xinjiang region yet Walk Free baselessly claims they are lying. “Under the guise of poverty alleviation and vocational training,81”. It’s not a ‘guise’, the Communist Party of China is alleviating poverty and training Uyghurs to enter the job market, as they claim.
Footnote 82 cites a BBC article that sources Adrian Zenz, CSIS, and the ASPI. It cites a Guardian article that sources a coalition of various NED funded ‘Uyghur advocacy’ organizations like the World Uyghur Congress and the Campaign for Uyghurs, it also sources the NED funded Uyghur Human Rights Project directly. Finally, it cites another report from the Sheffield Hallam University, which sources Adrian Zenz 16 times, ASPI 3 times, and Radio Free Asia 4 times.
Footnote 83 cites a CSIS report and an ASPI report.
Footnote 84 cites the US Department of State and the same ASPI report from the last footnote. Oh, and by the way, that ASPI report cites Adrian Zenz and CSIS, of course.
Footnote 85 is yet another Sheffield Hallam University report that cites Adrian Zenz, Radio Free Asia, and the ASPI.
Footnote 86 cites a New York Times article that sources Adrian Zenz directly, a Bitter Winter report that sources Zenz directly, and a WaPo article that none of my paywall busting services can seem to crack. Luckily I found an archive. Here it is. It sources the ASPI.
Footnote 87 is, once again, another Sheffield Hallam University report that cites Zenz 8 times, ASPI 4 times, and Radio Free Asia once.
Footnote 88 is an Investors For Human Rights article that sources the same SHU report from the previous footnote.
Footnote 89 cites a CSIS report, an ASPI report, the same Bitter Winter report from footnote 86, a UN report from 2022 that cites Zenz 3 times, and two more SHU reports that we have already shown cite CIA nonsense.
Footnote 90 cites an ASPI report.
Footnote 91 cites a Wall Street Journal article that sources Zenz directly, the same ASPI report from several of these footnotes, the same CSIS report from several of these footnotes, and the WaPo article from footnote 86.
Footnote 92 cites the same ASPI report and the same CSIS report.
Footnote 93 cites a Reuters article that sources Zenz, Jamestown Foundation, and the ASPI, and it also cites the same UN report from footnote 89 that sources Zenz.
Footnote 94 cites a Xinjiang Victims Database profile that sources Radio Free Asia and CSIS.
Footnote 95 cites a US Department of State report and a SHU report we’ve already gone over.
Footnote 96 cites the same BBC article from footnote 82 that sources Adrian Zenz, CSIS, and the ASPI.
Footnote 97 cites a report from the NED funded UHRP. This report cites Radio Free Asia 8 times.
Footnote 98 cites a South China Morning Post article that sources ‘Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights’. I’ve never heard of them, they don’t have a website, but they tweet out Radio Free Asia articles, of course.
Footnote 99 sources a Call to Action from the coalition of NED funded orgs from footnote 82.
Footnote 100 cites the NED funded UHRP again, and also a handy list of all the different sanctions the US and other western countries have levied against China/Xinjiang, to take work away from innocent Uyghur Muslims. Nice work.
Finally, that’s the end of that two page spread about the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. That was 24 footnotes full of CIA propaganda. Not a single shred of tangible evidence, either. Just hearsay funded or released from the PRC’s biggest geopolitical rival.
I don’t understand why no one in the West checks these biases or speaks out against them. The US constantly lies about their enemies to fuel the war machine and stuff the pockets of defence contractors. They did it with Iraq twice.
The Nayirah testimony was used a reason to bomb the hell out of Iraq in the early 90s, and it was proven false. ‘Nayirah’ was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. They just made it all up. Funnily enough, just like with the Uyghur propaganda, it was corroborated at first by Amnesty International.
And who can forget the ‘Iraq has WMD’ lie used to invade Iraq after 9/11? It was all a lie, which was proven when no WMD were found after the US more or less destroyed the country and caused at least a million unnecessary deaths. In response to ~3000 innocent civilians being killed when the WTC buildings fell on 9/11, the US committed a terror attack twice as bad, fueled by the WMD lie. The ‘Shock and Awe’ campaign in Baghdad killed over 6000 Iraqi civilians.
The US is doing it again, and no one in the West seems to care. We’ll look back on this sinophobic propaganda 20 or so years from now with the same disgust we currently have for the US’ fearmongering about Iraq. Me and the other rational leftists rejecting this nonsense will say “I told you so”.
Take it away, ChatGPT:
In the journey through Walk Free's controversial report, we have unpacked its claims about modern slavery in both the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the People's Republic of China. What emerges from a detailed examination of the footnotes and the origins of the evidence provided is an unsettling connection - an overwhelming number of the sources can be traced back to the United States government or entities receiving its funding. This profound entanglement of the report with U.S. interests raises serious questions about its objectivity and impartiality. It suggests that, beneath the veneer of human rights advocacy, the report may serve as a tool of geopolitical maneuvering. In our quest for truth, we must critically engage with such reports, scrutinizing not just the claims they make, but also the foundations upon which these claims are built. In the realm of international human rights discourse, clarity and transparency are essential - for only then can we hope to advocate effectively for the voiceless and oppressed.
Now subscribe, or I’ll examine the footnotes about you: