Photo:Xinhua
Fashion retailer H&M's announcement that it was prohibiting any type of "forced labor" in its supply chain in China's Xinjiang, an issue falsely created and fanned by Western anti-China forces, has enraged Chinese citizens, with many calling for the brand to be boycotted. Chinese citizens also noted that H&M had mentioned the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) in its announcement, saying that the NGO has suspended licenses in Xinjiang, which means H&M will not acquire cotton from the region. What's the relationship between H&M and BCI? Why has the organization suspended licenses in China's Xinjiang? The Global Times has conducted an investigation into these questions.
Suspending cooperationOn March 12, 2020, Zhang Biao, chief manager of a company named Zhongwang in Yuli county of the Bayingolin Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang, received an email from the BCI.
It said that given the "current complicated international environment," the BCI has decided to suspend the distribution of licenses or certificates from 2020 to 2021 in China's Xinjiang region. The organization will update its standards during the suspension period to better deal with the environment.
This email confused Zhang, as his company has been one of those with which BCI had cooperated in Xinjiang for years, and the reasons for suspending the licenses for "updating the standards" sounded disingenuous. Zhang's company joined BCI's program in 2015.
"A yarn company in Jiangsu Province is the supplier for IKEA. According to IKEA's standard, only materials that meet BCI's standards can be used. We are helping the Jiangsu company to plant, collect and produce cotton under the BCI standards," he said.
The sudden suspension of cooperation by BCI caught many Xinjiang companies off guard and resulted in losses. A company named Haoxing, which runs cotton-buying businesses in Xinjiang, has been cooperating with BCI for a long time.
In response to the Global Times' questions in January on further explaining the reasons and what was meant by "complicated international environment," BCI's Shanghai office did not give a clear answer and said the email was penned by the headquarters office in English, while the Shanghai branch translated it into Chinese and sent it to companies in Xinjiang.
As an international NGO, which was registered in Geneva, Switzerland, with its head offices in Geneva and London, BCI's licenses have special significance for Chinese companies. According to an introduction from its website, BCI is the largest cotton sustainability program in the world.
At the end of 2019, BCI had more than 1,840 members, spanning the entire global cotton supply chain from farmer organizations to retailers and brands. In 2019, BCI Retailer and Brand Members sourced more than 1.5 million metric tons of Better Cotton, including brands such as H&M, Adidas, and Nike.
"Through the second-party and third-party reviews conducted under the standard procedure on better cotton in the past eight years, there has been no violation of the prohibition of forced labor in all cooperation programs in the Xinjiang region," the BCI's Shanghai office told the Global Times in January.