Hair exports to the US from China's Xinjiang region surged during a period when China allegedly detained up to 2 million ethnic Uyghurs in internment camps. CNN investigates the murky supply chains for all this hair.
Satellite imagery provided by Planet Labs and Google Earth Pro shows the rapid expansion of the Lop County Hair Product Industrial Park over the past few months. This image shows an internment camp -- or what the Chinese government calls the 'vocational training center' -- that was built in tandem with factories in the industrial park.
In September, the US Department of Homeland Security also identified Lop County No. 4 Vocational Skills Education and Training Center as a possible source of forced labor and has banned any products made with labor from the camp from entering the US. Li walks through to the factory floor, adding that thousands of “surplus rural laborers” have been “absorbed” to work at the factory. The video shows long rows of uniformed ethnic minority workers, along with Han Chinese managers.
“The production lines around me are making every effort to complete a batch of overseas orders,” the reporter says. “They are increasing the speed of working, and they are more motivated to get rid of poverty.” But to many Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, the term “poverty alleviation” has a more sinister meaning.
“We couldn’t do anything without permission,” he says. “We would iron, fold and accurately put into boxes all 250 gloves. If we didn’t, they would punish us.” He says he was told his salary would be 600 yuan per month, but after two months’ work, he had received nothing. They eventually gave him 300 yuan , and he returned to Kazakhstan.
Yusan’s wife said her stepdaughter “cried so hard” when talking about the forced labor, saying she "lived through hell" and that she would have considered suicide if it was permissible. ASPI’s ‘Uyghurs for Sale’ report even identified advertisements in online forums offering to arrange large numbers of Xinjiang workers. CNN has verified that several of the adverts are still online, including one with phrases like “absolutely obedient,” “can endure hardships” and “won’t cause trouble.”
“In 2019, Hotan prefecture alone provided vocational training for 103,300 farmers and herders, of whom 98,300 found work,” it added. Laura Murphy, a professor of human rights and contemporary slavery at Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom, who is currently based in New Orleans, says she doesn’t “have a lot of patience” for the Chinese government’s idea of poverty alleviation.
Data from Import Genius shows that no hair shipments have arrived direct from Xinjiang to the US by sea since the US seizure at the end of June. But the opaque nature of the hair supply chain means that products can pass through multiple places on their way into the US market, a route which can conceal their origin.
Hair products are exempt from UN sanctions on North Korea introduced in 2017, and the country has ramped up production since then, with $22.4 million of hair exports to China in 2018,shows. Chinese export data from 2017-2019, obtained by CNN, also shows regular shipments of incomplete hair products going to North Korea, most of it driven across the border.
A Chinese state media reporter introduces the Lop County Hair Product Industrial Park, where lace closures and lace front wigs are being made by what she calls “surplus rural laborers.”Lace closures and lace front wigs take an experienced worker a day or two to make, as they need to hand-knot individual strands of human hair into a piece of lace.
“There are no regulations in the US, there's no regulatory authority,” Krishan Jhalani from Indique Hair says.
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