How cotton is really made in Xinjiang

Charlie Liu
7 min readMar 26, 2021

This is not a political piece. It’s not my intention to discuss ideology and political philosophy. Nor is it my purpose to argue for either government’s view. The motivation of this article is only to provide an authentic cultural and societal perspective of the story.

As a former global macro investor, one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned was not to just rely on the numbers on the Bloomberg terminal from your New York office or the conclusions from research papers you read from London. The most important part is always the evidences from the local trips you take to Shanghai, Bogota, or Lagos and the meetings you have with people on the ground.

In the past 2–3 years since the China-US trade war started, there have been many mainstream media, think-tank, and publications talking about the Xinjiang issue. Some comments were made by the opinion leaders that I have always respected and even known on a personal level. However, whatever evidence they cited, I have always taken it with a grain of salt. It’s not that I don’t trust their integrity, but I always recall the satellite images the US government presented to the House and Senate about the alleged mass-destruction weapons in Iraq — they all looked very legit and convincing, but it turned out to be rather embarrassing (for the Americans) and tragedic (for the Iraqi civilians).

Throughout 2012–2020, the China office of the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) had conducted many on-the-ground investigations and 3rd party research in Xinjiang with regards to the labor condition but found no evidence of coerced or forced labor. So it was a surprise to the China office that BCI’s Swiss headquarter recently issued the statement of suspending certificates to Xinjiang cotton based on human rights issues.

To provide a background of the cotton industry in Xinjiang, as I heard from a friend who is a seasoned Chief Financial Officer who has lived in Xinjiang for many years, cotton harvesting used to be a quite tedious and heavy manual job just like tea picking in Hangzhou, where the best Longjing Tea is made, or the vineyard and cellar work in Napa, home of the best premium US wine.

When there was a shortage of local labor, low-income labor from other densely populated provinces would flood in, just like Mexican workers…

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Charlie Liu

Co-Founder & COO @ Sora Union | ex-Strike, Adyen & Templeton Global Macro | Storyteller @wearemeho | Sommelier/Winemaker