China, World’s no. 1 apparel exporter, is again hogging the limelight for its unethical practices. Recently, western media organisation traced American Sportswear factories in Chinese internment camps. People are forcefully working there, some without being paid anything! Few others are paid an amount which is barely above minimum wage for the poorer parts of Xinjiang.
“Barbed wire and hundreds of cameras ring a massive compound of more than 30 dormitories, schools, warehouses and workshops in China’s far west. Dozens of armed officers and a growling Doberman stand guard outside. Behind locked gates, men and women are sewing sportswear that can end up on U.S. college campuses and sports teams. This is one of a growing number of internment camps in the Xinjiang region, where by some estimates 1 million Muslims are detained, forced to give up their language and their religion and subject to political indoctrination.” – A report by The Associated Press (AP).
However, China claims that the camps, which they call training centres, offer free vocational training for Uighurs, Kazakhs and others, mostly Muslims, as part of a plan to bring minorities into “a modern civilized” world and eliminate poverty in Xinjiang. They say that people in the centres have signed agreements to receive vocational training.
AP further claims that it has tracked recent, ongoing shipments from one such factory inside an internment camp to Badger Sportswear, a leading supplier in Statesville, North Carolina. The shipments show how difficult it is to stop products made with forced labour from getting into the global supply chain, even though such imports are illegal in the U.S.
As per the report, at least 10 times this year shipping containers filled with thousands of men’s, women’s and youth polyester knitted T-shirts and pants were sent to Badger Sportswear, a 47-year-old athletic gear seller. The company mostly manufactures in Nicaragua and the U.S., and there is no way to tell where the products from Xinjiang specifically end up. But experts say supply chains are considered tainted by forced labour and modern slavery if even one item was produced by someone forced to work.
This is not the first time that China has been exposed with such sad practice. Earlier pollution related issues regarding the denim production was also highlighted. It resulted into consolidation of denim production in China.
Bharat Tex Special Report 2026 
