{"id":778,"date":"2021-07-19T14:34:37","date_gmt":"2021-07-19T11:34:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/?p=778"},"modified":"2021-07-19T14:34:38","modified_gmt":"2021-07-19T11:34:38","slug":"reports-of-forced-labor-are-driving-brands-to-abandon-chinese-cotton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/reports-of-forced-labor-are-driving-brands-to-abandon-chinese-cotton\/","title":{"rendered":"REPORTS OF FORCED LABOR ARE DRIVING BRANDS TO ABANDON CHINESE COTTON"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fortune<\/a>. 18 July 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Below is an article published by Fortune<\/a>. Photo:AFP.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early last year, amid mounting reports of forced labor and human rights abuses in China\u2019s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), U.S. outdoor apparel maker Patagonia resolved to stop sourcing cotton from China. From April 2020 on, the brand\u2019s global suppliers had to vet and eliminate any links to the world\u2019s largest cotton producer. The decision wasn\u2019t easy. China accounts for roughly 20% of global cotton supply, and Xinjiang produces some of the highest-grade cotton in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had to walk away from business partners, we had to redesign styles to fit the substitute cotton, and we had to do away with styles that we could no longer make because the quality of cotton was no longer available,\u201d says Wendy Savage, director of social responsibility and traceability at Patagonia, which declined to say what products it had discontinued. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patagonia isn\u2019t alone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. retailer L.L.Bean pledged to eliminate Chinese cotton from its supply chain by the end of this year, citing \u201cextremely troubling\u201d reports about Xinjiang. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Victoria\u2019s Secret parent company L Brands has committed to eliminating Chinese cotton from its supply chains, too. L Brands told Fortune <\/em>it used tools provided by supply chain analytics firm Sourcemap to map most of its apparel supply chain in 2019 and cross-referenced its suppliers against a list of companies prohibited by U.S. sanctions related to Xinjiang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn 2020, we started conducting chain of custody audits on cotton products to ensure cotton fiber does not come from China and will continue to conduct these audits to ensure cotton fiber is from an approved country,\u201d an L Brands representative said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

California-based women\u2019s-wear maker Reformation\u2014which launched in Los Angeles in 2010 and bills itself as a sustainable fashion brand\u2014is another retailer that\u2019s stopped using cotton from China because it couldn\u2019t guarantee cotton sourced elsewhere in China hadn\u2019t been mixed with stock grown in Xinjiang. The XUAR produces over 85% of China\u2019s cotton crop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUnfortunately, it\u2019s not even as simple as just saying that you\u2019re not going to source within the XUAR. The opaque nature of supply chains in the region means it really has to be the entire country,\u201d says Kathleen Talbot, Reformation\u2019s chief sustainability officer and vice president of operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. fashion brands and retailers are facing an unprecedented supply chain crisis over Xinjiang, but few are willing to talk about it for fear of disrupting their operations in China. Beijing fervently denies allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang and tacitly threatens companies that speak against it. Fortune<\/em> asked more than two dozen apparel companies how they\u2019ve responded to reports of human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Only Patagonia and Reformation\u2014which earn little to no revenue in China\u2014made representatives available for interviews. But regulatory action has forced all apparel companies that do business in the U.S. to address the possibility that their cotton supply is corrupted by forced labor, whether they speak publicly about it or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January, U.S. Customs and Border Protection implemented a seizure order on all goods containing cotton sourced from the XUAR, citing \u201cthe Chinese government\u2019s exploitation of modern slavery.\u201d The Worker Rights Consortium, an independent labor rights organization, estimates the seizure order will disqualify $20 billion of apparel sales in the U.S. per year\u2014about 5% of the total $368 billion U.S. clothing and footwear market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To release a seized shipment, importers must prove the goods are free of Xinjiang-sourced cotton. But that seemingly straightforward requirement has exposed a hidden truth about the fashion industry: Few brands know for sure where their cotton comes from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fortune. 18 July 2021 Below is an article published by Fortune. Photo:AFP. Early last year, amid mounting reports of forced labor and human rights abuses in China\u2019s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), U.S. outdoor apparel maker Patagonia resolved to stop sourcing cotton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":779,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778\/revisions\/779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}