Simply put, the book’s existence is a crime against quality academic literature.

I had no expectations of strong, intellectual debate, because Cotton isn’t known for backing any of his claims with evidence (it only took me one page in to find that admittance: “I used simple common sense, not scientific knowledge or classified intelligence”), so I wasn’t disappointed by his complete lack of depth and historical accuracy.

More than anything, I was impressed that such an absurd, conspiratorial text could reach a publisher’s desk and be checked off on. It’s really not a book at all—it’s a manifesto of paranoia. The kind you expect to find written in messy, hand-scrawled letters and hidden beneath the desk of a serial killer whose crimes you are trying to piece together.

Well, Cotton’s crimes are many. This book is just one more venture in his career, full of asking, I wonder how much I can get away with?

While Tom Cotton has always been one of war’s #1 fans, his favorite of all is one still yet to happen—the one he’s trying to justify in his book. His “brave truth-telling” is nothing less than imperialist propaganda feverishly trying to manufacture an enemy and send us headlong into that war.

He starts by trying to convince us that China is the manifestation of all evil and wrongdoing, the harbinger of doom, and the pioneer of global villainy:

“China is waging economic world war.”

“Communist China is the focus of evil in the modern world.”

“China is coming for our children.”

As bewildering as these statements are, what stood out to me the most is that Tom Cotton has clearly never studied China in any real capacity. I can’t forgive him for his ignorance, because it’s undoubtedly followed closely by deep, soul-crushing racism, but I can teach him a few things he never learned in military boot camp.

Tom Cotton, here are seven things you need to learn about China.

1. China’s rise has nothing to do with the US.

Tom Cotton situates everything China has done over the past century as a calculated maneuver to outwit and conquer the United States. It’s a classic case of main-characterism, in which a subject assumes everyone’s actions revolve entirely around them.

The truth is, China’s rise has nothing to do with the US. Really, it’s none of our business. China developed because the modern era called for it. China sought economic prosperity because it had 1.4 billion citizens to provide for. China became powerful because that’s a side effect of having one of the largest economies in the world.

China’s success is its own achievement. The fact that the US considers another country’s growing prosperity to be a direct threat against it says far more about the US. Instead of buying into the existential threat narratives, we need to ask why they exist.

Why is China’s economic prosperity so terrifying to the Washington elite? Well, Tom Cotton says it loud and clear:

“Most of us take American global dominance for granted, without thinking much about it; since at least World War I, that’s just the way it’s been. World trade is conducted in dollars. English is the unofficial global language of business and politics. (…) For more than a century, Americans have reaped enormous economic and security benefits from this state of affairs.”

How dare another country become prosperous despite decades of foreign occupation, intervention, and coercion meant to reaffirm global inequality and protect US dominance?

2. China is 5,000 years old.

In 1949, when the PRC was established under the Communist Party, the US proclaimed that it had “lost China.”

Let’s get this straight: a 175-year-old country was proclaiming to have “lost” a 5,000-year-old civilization state. Isn’t that absurd? China was never ours to have or to lose, or to do anything with at all.

At the time, the US government even considered preemptively striking China to ensure it never obtained nuclear weapons. Those considerations never disappeared entirely.

We really have to consider the differences between the two states with vastly opposing backgrounds, because you can’t understand China through a Western lens. The US is a relatively young nation born out of settler colonization and genocide of the native people. Our wealth was amassed through resource extraction, exploitation, and slavery. What precedent does that set? In comparison, China has undergone thousands of years of dynastic empires rising and falling. It has a strong cultural continuity and shared historical experience that informs how it conducts itself in the global theater. Its wealth was amassed internally, not through imperialist behavior or the exploitation of another. It’s an ancient civilization with deep roots, and a unique vision of the world informed by a long philosophical tradition and an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist framework.

Additionally, China was one of the world’s largest economies for over 2,000 years, accounting for around 25-30% of global GDP. It wasn’t until the colonial period of the 1800s that colonial violence and occupation by Japan and the British Empire drove China into poverty. In the 1970s, it was one of the world’s poorest nations. The fact that China was able to return to its former prosperity despite decades of foreign intervention is nothing less than a miracle.

Tom Cotton has no understanding of these complexities. He sees China through the narrow, ultra-patriotic, super-imperialist, America-is-the-center-of-the-world-and-nobody-else-matters mindset. It doesn’t work, and it comes off incredibly cliche and small-minded.

3. You have to travel to China to understand China.

Which Cotton can’t do because he’s sanctioned from visiting. I really can’t blame China at all for that. I wouldn’t want Tom Cotton in my country either.

Regardless, I know this to be true: you have to see China for yourself to develop any real understanding of it. The fact that Tom Cotton has never been to China and will never go only proves that he has absolutely no authority, and never will, over writing a book about China’s actions and intentions.

It should be a prerequisite for any individual with any degree of political power to spend time in the country they claim to know so much about. They should be required to visit cities and towns, to learn the country’s version of its history, and to talk with local people about their unique perspectives.

Tom Cotton has not, will not, and therefore, his opinion should not be accepted or respected.

4. China does NOT want his kids.

In Chapter 6, Tom Cotton says, “China is coming for our kids.” It’s a bold statement, and he doesn’t give us much follow-up to reinforce such extremism. You’d expect something a bit more villainous, like a government-backed kidnapping ring or 5G mind control. But alas, what Cotton refers to is the growing prevalence of the social media app TikTok.

TikTok, he says, is a Chinese plot to take over the minds of the American youth.

You may recall Cotton’s viral moment when he repeatedly asked Singaporean TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew if he was Chinese. The conversation went like this:

“Of what nation are you a citizen?”

“Singapore, sir.”

“Are you a citizen of any other nation?”

“No senator.”

“Have you ever applied for Chinese citizenship?”

“Senator, I served my nation in Singapore. No, I did not.”

“Do you have a Singaporean passport?

“Yes, and I served my military for two and a half years in Singapore.”

“Do you have any other passports from any other nations?”

“No senator.”

“Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party?”

“Senator, I’m Singaporean. No.”

“Have you ever been associated or affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party?”

“No, Senator. Again, I’m Singaporean!”

It goes without saying that the TikTok ban was dead in the water until pro-Palestinian content began proliferating. According to Congressman Mike Gallagher, “The bill was still dead until October 7th. And people started to see a bunch of antisemitic content on the platform, and our bill had legs again.”

In truth, the TikTok ban was never about China, but about shielding young minds from learning about Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinian people and the ongoing complicity of the United States. The ban now walks hand in hand with the new education reforms that seek to dispose of “anti-patriotic” fields of study like critical race theory and threatens open discussion about the genocide in Gaza by automatically deeming it antisemitic. Yes, we are watching radical censorship in action.

Anyway, Tom Cotton, China is not coming for your kids or anyone else’s, and making that claim without evidence is lazy and hysterical. This type of rhetoric serves one purpose only: to fuel fear and drive war.

5. China didn’t ruin our economy—we did.

It’s a real irony that those with all the power and money never take responsibility for their failings, but blame everyone else. And a lot of the time, people don’t see it. For instance, the elites who have crippled the US economy continue to point their fingers at those with no power at all—the impoverished, the starving, the homeless, the immigrants—and scream, it’s their fault! They did it! And the general populace turns on them with all the blame and rage of their wearisome existence. But who are the ones making all the decisions? Hoarding all the wealth? Throwing out tax breaks to billionaire friends and cutting the few life-saving programs that help regular folks get off the ground?

It’s the elites. The politicians. The CEOs.

We can’t blame China for developing. That’s its responsibility to its people. They didn’t steal our jobs. The thievery happened at home, on US soil, right under our noses. The corporate elite decided to take advantage of global inequality and save a few extra bucks by exporting industries abroad, where they could take advantage of cheap labor and exploit the resources of poorer nations.

Tom Cotton spends quite a lot of time talking about China’s “economic world war.” First of all, using war language to describe economic competition sets a dangerous precedent. Competition is natural within our economic systems, and shouting “war! “ when the US isn’t constantly on top is militant imperialist behavior (Sidenote: we must rid ourselves of the notion that there are limited resources and limited wealth. There’s plenty for everyone—the problem is the majority of wealth is hoarded by 1% of the global population.)

And secondly, I can’t help but wonder at the flips and tricks the human mind must do to accuse another nation of such an action, when the US has forever used sanctions, tariffs, and economic coercion as weapons to hurt and topple other nations, to corner them into loans and structural adjustments, and to strangulate, pressure, and punish. It makes Cotton’s particularly brief section on “economic imperialism” sound even more ridiculous.

6. China is more logical than Cotton will ever be.

My favorite section of Tom Cotton’s book began with the title, “Green is the new red.” I know it’s meant to be scary, but it reads more like one of those comedy-horrors that make you cringe, but you just can’t look away. I was particularly impressed with the impossible flexibility it takes to convince people a country is evil because it’s invested so much in… renewable energy!

Terrifying!

The mental gymnastics of this section might just be Cotton’s greatest feat ever.

One thing is for certain. There’s no logic to be found here. But there’s also no logic to be found in much of the US policy on climate change. If I had to put a symbol to it, I’d choose an ostrich sticking its head in the ground—if you don’t look, it’s not there!

Tom Cotton laments that as a result of heavy investment in solar panels, “China has devastated yet another American industry.” Those poor corporations. Those poor CEOs. How will they fare without their megayachts while the world burns?

It is an unfortunate side effect of capitalism that our system prioritizes wealth over protecting the planet. It’s a fortunate side effect of China’s socialist characteristics that they don’t. As Brazilian activist Chico Mendes said, “Environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening.”

7. China doesn’t want to go to war.

We can’t define China by what-ifs. What if China wants to conquer the Pacific? What if China invades Poland? What if China hacks into my coffee pot and deciphers my favorite brew? What if what if what if? It’s nonsensical. We can only define China by what it’s said and what it’s done.

If there’s one thing Tom Cotton needs to learn, it’s that China has no desire for war. Literally none. China has not been involved in any overseas conflict for fifty years. Compare that to the 251 foreign military interventions the US has conducted since just 1991. Really, just think about that. Don’t you think that if China had hegemonic ambitions, it would build a foreign military base in every country… or multiple? Or maybe over 900+ like the US? But no, China has just one in Djibouti. Tom Cotton thinks that the Djibouti base is suspicious and signals China’s malign ambitions. In reality, many nations have a military presence there to prevent piracy and smuggling in one of the world’s most crucial shipping lanes, the US included. Clearly, Tom Cotton lives in a different reality of his own paranoid design.

Additionally, Chinese officials have repeated—over and over and over—that they have no desire for war. I think we can take them at their word, considering their lack of war historically, and their foundational policy of “peaceful coexistence.” In Cotton’s entire book, he never once refers to China’s foreign policy principles that guide every decision made. Chinese officials have never talked about a world in which China “dominates” other countries. They have only ever talked about visions of a world built on mutual respect, sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, cooperation, and peaceful coexistence.

Tom Cotton needs to do some more reading on Chinese political theory, but it seems like he spends most of his learning hours thinking about war: “As a senator, I regularly review war games between China and the United States—exercises where military experts play out what would happen in a war between the two nations. I’ve never seen happy results.”

You don’t need a war game to tell you that the results of war would be unhappy. Anyone could tell you that. I’m sure if Tom Cotton thought hard enough, he could even come up with that prediction all on his own.

And war between the US and China wouldn’t just be unhappy, it would be devastating. Which is why our Congress members should be doing everything they can to prevent it, not ramping up the possibility by writing tedious, hysterical conspiracies about the evilness of other nations and the inevitability of conflict.

Tom Cotton has a lot to learn about China, a lot more to learn about being a good politician, and the absolute most to learn about being a good person. But he can start with learning about China and switching his political tools to fostering dialogue, cooperation, and understanding, rather than the war-driving dribble he regularly spews.

Unfortunately, the book was published. So if you see it at your local bookstore, do us all a favor and move it to the fantasy section, where it belongs. Or, if you’re feeling extra whimsical, you can add some Tom Cotton war criminal bookmarks to surprise the next person who picks it up. Meanwhile, we’ll be putting publisher HarperCollins on notice that it needs a much better fact-checking department.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Megan Russell.

Simply put, the book’s existence is a crime against quality academic literature.

I had no expectations of strong, intellectual debate, because Cotton isn’t known for backing any of his claims with evidence (it only took me one page in to find that admittance: “I used simple common sense, not scientific knowledge or classified intelligence”), so I wasn’t disappointed by his complete lack of depth and historical accuracy.

More than anything, I was impressed that such an absurd, conspiratorial text could reach a publisher’s desk and be checked off on. It’s really not a book at all—it’s a manifesto of paranoia. The kind you expect to find written in messy, hand-scrawled letters and hidden beneath the desk of a serial killer whose crimes you are trying to piece together.

Well, Cotton’s crimes are many. This book is just one more venture in his career, full of asking, I wonder how much I can get away with?

While Tom Cotton has always been one of war’s #1 fans, his favorite of all is one still yet to happen—the one he’s trying to justify in his book. His “brave truth-telling” is nothing less than imperialist propaganda feverishly trying to manufacture an enemy and send us headlong into that war.

He starts by trying to convince us that China is the manifestation of all evil and wrongdoing, the harbinger of doom, and the pioneer of global villainy:

“China is waging economic world war.”

“Communist China is the focus of evil in the modern world.”

“China is coming for our children.”

As bewildering as these statements are, what stood out to me the most is that Tom Cotton has clearly never studied China in any real capacity. I can’t forgive him for his ignorance, because it’s undoubtedly followed closely by deep, soul-crushing racism, but I can teach him a few things he never learned in military boot camp.

Tom Cotton, here are seven things you need to learn about China.

1. China’s rise has nothing to do with the US.

Tom Cotton situates everything China has done over the past century as a calculated maneuver to outwit and conquer the United States. It’s a classic case of main-characterism, in which a subject assumes everyone’s actions revolve entirely around them.

The truth is, China’s rise has nothing to do with the US. Really, it’s none of our business. China developed because the modern era called for it. China sought economic prosperity because it had 1.4 billion citizens to provide for. China became powerful because that’s a side effect of having one of the largest economies in the world.

China’s success is its own achievement. The fact that the US considers another country’s growing prosperity to be a direct threat against it says far more about the US. Instead of buying into the existential threat narratives, we need to ask why they exist.

Why is China’s economic prosperity so terrifying to the Washington elite? Well, Tom Cotton says it loud and clear:

“Most of us take American global dominance for granted, without thinking much about it; since at least World War I, that’s just the way it’s been. World trade is conducted in dollars. English is the unofficial global language of business and politics. (…) For more than a century, Americans have reaped enormous economic and security benefits from this state of affairs.”

How dare another country become prosperous despite decades of foreign occupation, intervention, and coercion meant to reaffirm global inequality and protect US dominance?

2. China is 5,000 years old.

In 1949, when the PRC was established under the Communist Party, the US proclaimed that it had “lost China.”

Let’s get this straight: a 175-year-old country was proclaiming to have “lost” a 5,000-year-old civilization state. Isn’t that absurd? China was never ours to have or to lose, or to do anything with at all.

At the time, the US government even considered preemptively striking China to ensure it never obtained nuclear weapons. Those considerations never disappeared entirely.

We really have to consider the differences between the two states with vastly opposing backgrounds, because you can’t understand China through a Western lens. The US is a relatively young nation born out of settler colonization and genocide of the native people. Our wealth was amassed through resource extraction, exploitation, and slavery. What precedent does that set? In comparison, China has undergone thousands of years of dynastic empires rising and falling. It has a strong cultural continuity and shared historical experience that informs how it conducts itself in the global theater. Its wealth was amassed internally, not through imperialist behavior or the exploitation of another. It’s an ancient civilization with deep roots, and a unique vision of the world informed by a long philosophical tradition and an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist framework.

Additionally, China was one of the world’s largest economies for over 2,000 years, accounting for around 25-30% of global GDP. It wasn’t until the colonial period of the 1800s that colonial violence and occupation by Japan and the British Empire drove China into poverty. In the 1970s, it was one of the world’s poorest nations. The fact that China was able to return to its former prosperity despite decades of foreign intervention is nothing less than a miracle.

Tom Cotton has no understanding of these complexities. He sees China through the narrow, ultra-patriotic, super-imperialist, America-is-the-center-of-the-world-and-nobody-else-matters mindset. It doesn’t work, and it comes off incredibly cliche and small-minded.

3. You have to travel to China to understand China.

Which Cotton can’t do because he’s sanctioned from visiting. I really can’t blame China at all for that. I wouldn’t want Tom Cotton in my country either.

Regardless, I know this to be true: you have to see China for yourself to develop any real understanding of it. The fact that Tom Cotton has never been to China and will never go only proves that he has absolutely no authority, and never will, over writing a book about China’s actions and intentions.

It should be a prerequisite for any individual with any degree of political power to spend time in the country they claim to know so much about. They should be required to visit cities and towns, to learn the country’s version of its history, and to talk with local people about their unique perspectives.

Tom Cotton has not, will not, and therefore, his opinion should not be accepted or respected.

4. China does NOT want his kids.

In Chapter 6, Tom Cotton says, “China is coming for our kids.” It’s a bold statement, and he doesn’t give us much follow-up to reinforce such extremism. You’d expect something a bit more villainous, like a government-backed kidnapping ring or 5G mind control. But alas, what Cotton refers to is the growing prevalence of the social media app TikTok.

TikTok, he says, is a Chinese plot to take over the minds of the American youth.

You may recall Cotton’s viral moment when he repeatedly asked Singaporean TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew if he was Chinese. The conversation went like this:

“Of what nation are you a citizen?”

“Singapore, sir.”

“Are you a citizen of any other nation?”

“No senator.”

“Have you ever applied for Chinese citizenship?”

“Senator, I served my nation in Singapore. No, I did not.”

“Do you have a Singaporean passport?

“Yes, and I served my military for two and a half years in Singapore.”

“Do you have any other passports from any other nations?”

“No senator.”

“Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party?”

“Senator, I’m Singaporean. No.”

“Have you ever been associated or affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party?”

“No, Senator. Again, I’m Singaporean!”

It goes without saying that the TikTok ban was dead in the water until pro-Palestinian content began proliferating. According to Congressman Mike Gallagher, “The bill was still dead until October 7th. And people started to see a bunch of antisemitic content on the platform, and our bill had legs again.”

In truth, the TikTok ban was never about China, but about shielding young minds from learning about Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinian people and the ongoing complicity of the United States. The ban now walks hand in hand with the new education reforms that seek to dispose of “anti-patriotic” fields of study like critical race theory and threatens open discussion about the genocide in Gaza by automatically deeming it antisemitic. Yes, we are watching radical censorship in action.

Anyway, Tom Cotton, China is not coming for your kids or anyone else’s, and making that claim without evidence is lazy and hysterical. This type of rhetoric serves one purpose only: to fuel fear and drive war.

5. China didn’t ruin our economy—we did.

It’s a real irony that those with all the power and money never take responsibility for their failings, but blame everyone else. And a lot of the time, people don’t see it. For instance, the elites who have crippled the US economy continue to point their fingers at those with no power at all—the impoverished, the starving, the homeless, the immigrants—and scream, it’s their fault! They did it! And the general populace turns on them with all the blame and rage of their wearisome existence. But who are the ones making all the decisions? Hoarding all the wealth? Throwing out tax breaks to billionaire friends and cutting the few life-saving programs that help regular folks get off the ground?

It’s the elites. The politicians. The CEOs.

We can’t blame China for developing. That’s its responsibility to its people. They didn’t steal our jobs. The thievery happened at home, on US soil, right under our noses. The corporate elite decided to take advantage of global inequality and save a few extra bucks by exporting industries abroad, where they could take advantage of cheap labor and exploit the resources of poorer nations.

Tom Cotton spends quite a lot of time talking about China’s “economic world war.” First of all, using war language to describe economic competition sets a dangerous precedent. Competition is natural within our economic systems, and shouting “war! “ when the US isn’t constantly on top is militant imperialist behavior (Sidenote: we must rid ourselves of the notion that there are limited resources and limited wealth. There’s plenty for everyone—the problem is the majority of wealth is hoarded by 1% of the global population.)

And secondly, I can’t help but wonder at the flips and tricks the human mind must do to accuse another nation of such an action, when the US has forever used sanctions, tariffs, and economic coercion as weapons to hurt and topple other nations, to corner them into loans and structural adjustments, and to strangulate, pressure, and punish. It makes Cotton’s particularly brief section on “economic imperialism” sound even more ridiculous.

6. China is more logical than Cotton will ever be.

My favorite section of Tom Cotton’s book began with the title, “Green is the new red.” I know it’s meant to be scary, but it reads more like one of those comedy-horrors that make you cringe, but you just can’t look away. I was particularly impressed with the impossible flexibility it takes to convince people a country is evil because it’s invested so much in… renewable energy!

Terrifying!

The mental gymnastics of this section might just be Cotton’s greatest feat ever.

One thing is for certain. There’s no logic to be found here. But there’s also no logic to be found in much of the US policy on climate change. If I had to put a symbol to it, I’d choose an ostrich sticking its head in the ground—if you don’t look, it’s not there!

Tom Cotton laments that as a result of heavy investment in solar panels, “China has devastated yet another American industry.” Those poor corporations. Those poor CEOs. How will they fare without their megayachts while the world burns?

It is an unfortunate side effect of capitalism that our system prioritizes wealth over protecting the planet. It’s a fortunate side effect of China’s socialist characteristics that they don’t. As Brazilian activist Chico Mendes said, “Environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening.”

7. China doesn’t want to go to war.

We can’t define China by what-ifs. What if China wants to conquer the Pacific? What if China invades Poland? What if China hacks into my coffee pot and deciphers my favorite brew? What if what if what if? It’s nonsensical. We can only define China by what it’s said and what it’s done.

If there’s one thing Tom Cotton needs to learn, it’s that China has no desire for war. Literally none. China has not been involved in any overseas conflict for fifty years. Compare that to the 251 foreign military interventions the US has conducted since just 1991. Really, just think about that. Don’t you think that if China had hegemonic ambitions, it would build a foreign military base in every country… or multiple? Or maybe over 900+ like the US? But no, China has just one in Djibouti. Tom Cotton thinks that the Djibouti base is suspicious and signals China’s malign ambitions. In reality, many nations have a military presence there to prevent piracy and smuggling in one of the world’s most crucial shipping lanes, the US included. Clearly, Tom Cotton lives in a different reality of his own paranoid design.

Additionally, Chinese officials have repeated—over and over and over—that they have no desire for war. I think we can take them at their word, considering their lack of war historically, and their foundational policy of “peaceful coexistence.” In Cotton’s entire book, he never once refers to China’s foreign policy principles that guide every decision made. Chinese officials have never talked about a world in which China “dominates” other countries. They have only ever talked about visions of a world built on mutual respect, sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, cooperation, and peaceful coexistence.

Tom Cotton needs to do some more reading on Chinese political theory, but it seems like he spends most of his learning hours thinking about war: “As a senator, I regularly review war games between China and the United States—exercises where military experts play out what would happen in a war between the two nations. I’ve never seen happy results.”

You don’t need a war game to tell you that the results of war would be unhappy. Anyone could tell you that. I’m sure if Tom Cotton thought hard enough, he could even come up with that prediction all on his own.

And war between the US and China wouldn’t just be unhappy, it would be devastating. Which is why our Congress members should be doing everything they can to prevent it, not ramping up the possibility by writing tedious, hysterical conspiracies about the evilness of other nations and the inevitability of conflict.

Tom Cotton has a lot to learn about China, a lot more to learn about being a good politician, and the absolute most to learn about being a good person. But he can start with learning about China and switching his political tools to fostering dialogue, cooperation, and understanding, rather than the war-driving dribble he regularly spews.

Unfortunately, the book was published. So if you see it at your local bookstore, do us all a favor and move it to the fantasy section, where it belongs. Or, if you’re feeling extra whimsical, you can add some Tom Cotton war criminal bookmarks to surprise the next person who picks it up. Meanwhile, we’ll be putting publisher HarperCollins on notice that it needs a much better fact-checking department.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Megan Russell.

The global fashion retailer has been under intense scrutiny over its source practices amid allegations of human rights violations in the supply chain and concerns over forced labour in Xinjiang, which produces some of the world’s best cotton.

“We’re not using [cotton from Xinjiang]”, Tadashi Yanai, chief executive of Uniqlo’s parent company Fast Retailing, told BBC on Thursday, breaking his silence on the supply of fabric for his brand’s clothing.

“By mentioning which cotton we’re using ... actually, it gets too political if I say anymore, so let’s stop here,” he said, without adding further details.

Companies that buy goods from Xinjiang, including clothing and cotton, have come under pressure from Western governments over the alleged genocide of the minority Uyghurs and Hui Muslims under Xi Jinping’s leadership in the past decade.

It prompted Western countries, led by the United States, to impose tough regulations on the import of goods from Xinjiang in 2022. Several global brands, such as H&M and Nike, removed products using Xinjiang cotton from their shelves, expressing concern for the alleged use of forced labor.

Uniqlo had remained neutral “between the U.S. and China” over the Xinjiang row, although its parent company had claimed before that the retail giant did not use any materials linked to human rights violations.

China has repeatedly denied allegations of “crimes against humanity”, calling them the “lie of the century”.

A U.S. federal report published in 2022 estimated that cotton from Xinjiang accounted for roughly 87% of China’s production and 23% of the global supply in 2020 and 2021.

The Uniqlo boss’ remarks came after German automaker Volkswagen said Wednesday that it has sold its operations in Xinjiang.

Volkswagen has also been accused of allowing Uyghur slave labor at its joint-venture plant with Chinese state-owned company SAIC Motor Corp. in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital.

The company cited “economic reasons” for its pullout from Xinjiang, home to about 12 million predominantly Muslim Uyghurs, where it also has a test track in Turpan.

The carmaker announced the decision at the same time as saying it would extend its partnership with Chinese partner SAIC by a decade to 2040.

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Volkswagen’s decision was welcomed by rights groups as a “positive step, albeit long overdue”.

“Car companies should map their supply chains and disengage from any supplier sourcing material directly or indirectly from Xinjiang,” said Jim Wormington, senior researcher and advocate in the Economic Justice and Rights Division at Human Rights Watch.

The G7 Foreign Ministers’ meeting earlier issued a statement expressing concern over the situation of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and Tibetans in Tibet persecuted by the Chinese government.

The G7, or Group of Seven, comprises the major industrial nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States – in addition to the European Union.

“We remain concerned by the human rights situation in China, including in Xinjiang and Tibet,” said the statement, which urged China to abide by its international human rights commitments and legal obligations.

Edited by Kiana Duncan.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.

China’s vice premier, He Lifeng, traveled to Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, to join the festivities, which included a performance by dancers holding replicas of giant vegetables to symbolize the bounty XPCC has brought to the region through land reclamation projects. He and other CCP officials praised the corps for protecting China’s western border and promoting social stability and called for the group to take an even more expansive role in Xinjiang’s development. 

That won’t come as welcome news to XPCC’s critics who assert that gains ascribed to the corps have come at the expense of Uyghurs and other ethnic Turkic communities indigenous to Xinjiang. They allege the XPCC’s economic development has relied on land expropriation, forced labor and extrajudicial detentions that have drawn international condemnation. 

“In the last five years in particular, the XPCC has played a critical role in suppressing Uyghur life, culture and identity,” a highly critical 2022 report from researchers at Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom said. 

The conglomerate is under sanctions by the U.S. Treasury. Cotton imports from Xinjiang are banned in the United States in part because of allegations that Uyghurs detained under the mass internment campaign were forced to work in textile factories upon release. 

What is the XPCC?

The XPCC, which is referred to as Bingtuan in China, dates to the early days of the People’s Republic of China. It was founded in 1954 with decommissioned troops from the People’s Liberation Army and initially focused on security in a relatively sparsely populated border area and on agriculture and construction projects. 

In the decades since, the XPCC’s footprint has grown considerably. It now has stakes in industries including media, mining, logistics, clothing, insurance, tourism and others. In 2023, the XPCC’s output in goods and services were valued in excess of $50 billion, more than 20% of Xinjiang’s total GDP. 

XPCC is among the world’s largest producers of cotton, the importation of which has been banned in the United States. News reports have said entities tied to the corps account for about 30% of China’s cotton production.  

The U.S. and human rights groups have said the production is in part driven by forced labor. China denies the accusations and has said the work of the corps has led to a more prosperous region. News reports have noted a few relative benefits of working for the XPCC. This account in Foreign Policy magazine published on the occasion of XPCC’s 60th birthday noted that laborers for the corps are paid more than other workers. 

What is unique about the XPCC?

While the XPCC has grown into a major conglomerate, it is structured in a way similar to a military unit in that it is divided into 14 divisions that are subdivided into dozens of regiments.

Its leaders take military titles who exercise administrative control over areas in which they operate. That includes authority over its court and educational systems in Bingtuan territories. 

Nearly 3.5 million people in Xinjiang live under XPCC’s direct authority, making it a parallel government to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or XUAR. In 2021, the corps managed more than one-sixth of the region and a quarter of its arable land. 

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Why has the U.S. sanctioned the XPCC?

In July 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned XPCC for its involvement in a mass internment campaign against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in response to a supposed threat of terrorism.

The U.S. has labeled Chinese persecution of Uyghurs a genocide because it seeks to diminish native culture and traditions in the name of assimilation. More than 1 million people are thought to have been held in reeducation camps designed to promote assimilation with the dominant Chinese Han culture, which critics allege the XPCC has helped to promote in Xinjiang by facilitating migration.

Chen Quanguo, who as Communist Party secretary of the XUAR implemented that campaign, was also the first political commissar of the XPCC, which gave him authority over the growing conglomerate. 

“The XPCC has been used to detain Uyghurs in camps and prisons, to surveil Uyghurs … they have contributed massive police forces,” German researcher Adrian Zenz, who has documented the persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang, told RFA Uyghur. “And the XPCC is used to a large extent for forced labor as Uyghurs are being transferred to XPCC factories.”

The Sheffield Hallam study reported that 70% of the land in one village was transferred from Uyghur farmers. 

The celebrants who gathered for the 70th anniversary offered another take. Ma Xingrui, party secretary for the XUAR, credited the XPCC for playing a central role in ensuring a harmonious Xinjiang.

“We must adhere to the idea of one chessboard and one family between the corps and the locals from beginning to end,” he said.

Alim Seytoff from RFA Uyghur contributed reporting. Edited by Jim Snyder and Boer Deng.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gülchéhre for RFA Uyghur.

China has launched an investigation into PVH Corp., the U.S. parent company of fashion brands Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, for suspected discriminatory measures by refusing to purchase cotton and other products from its northwestern region of Xinjiang, home to 12 million Uyghurs.

Analysts said the measure appears to be a retaliatory response by Beijing against companies complying with U.S. laws that ban the import of materials and products from Xinjiang suspected of using Uyghur forced labor.

“China is attempting to retaliate against U.S. sanctions on Xinjiang region by imposing its own sanctions on companies that follow U.S. sanctions,” said Anders Corr, principal of the New York-based political risk firm Corr Analytics. “It’s a very bad idea.”

“Beijing is trying to tell Calvin Klein not to follow U.S. law but to follow Chinese law,” he said.

China’s Ministry of Commerce said Tuesday that PVH Corp. must provide documentation and evidence within 30 days to show it did not engage in discriminatory practices over the past three years.

“The U.S. PVH Group is suspected of violating normal market trading principles and unreasonably boycotting Xinjiang cotton and other products without factual basis, seriously damaging the legitimate rights and interests of relevant Chinese companies and endangering China’s sovereignty, security and development interests,” the ministry said in a statement.

Earlier this month, China adopted a resolution condemning a series of U.S. sanctions against the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and providing support for affected companies.

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In response to the measure, Alison Rappaport, PVH’s vice president of external communications, said the company maintains strict compliance with relevant laws and regulations in the countries and regions where it operates. 

“We are in communication with the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and will respond in accordance with the relevant regulations,” she said, without further comment.

Genocide

In 2021, the U.S. government declared that China’s repression of Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang, including mass detentions, the sterilization of women, forced labor and cultural and religious erasure, amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity. Legislatures in several Western countries passed similar declarations.

To punish China and get it to change its policies, the United States and other countries have banned the import of products from Xinjiang produced by Uyghur labor. About 90% of China’s cotton is produced in Xinjiang, most of which is exported.

Since June 2022, the U.S. government has blacklisted companies in China that make products linked to forced labor in Xinjiang under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, or UFLPA. 

The law also authorizes sanctions on foreign individuals and entities found responsible for human rights abuses in the northwestern region. 

More than 80 companies are now on the entity list. 

This May, the U.S. Homeland Security Department added 26 Chinese textile companies to the entity list under the act, restricting them from entering the U.S. market. 

Consequences

Henryk Szadziewski, research director at the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said China is using the measure to lash back over criticism of its policies in Xinjiang.

“This is very much a message to multinational corporations that they should not comply with sanctions and other kinds of bans placed on entities operating in Xinjiang,” he said. “It definitely is a countermeasure to what is being done outside of China.”

Nevertheless, multinational companies that adhere to U.S. sanctions and exclude forced labor products from their supply chains could face repercussions in China, Szadziewski said.

“If you do want to operate in China, you really have to operate by their rules and not by the rules of elsewhere,” he said.

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcom Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Uyghar for RFA Uyghur.

The spotlight

If you’ve read any climate-related news in the past several years, you’re probably familiar with the scourge of microplastics. These tiny bits of plastic end up clogging oceans. They show up at alarming rates in bottled water, food, clouds — and in the human body. A study published just last month in the journal Toxicological Sciences tested 62 placentas, and found microplastics, in varying concentrations, in every single one. While their long-term impacts on human health are still largely unknown, another study published earlier this month linked microplastics in arteries with increased risk of heart attacks and stroke.

A lot of attention has focused on phasing out single-use plastics, which create visible plastic pollution and release microplastics when they break down. But there’s growing recognition that plastics, and microplastics, are hidden in a staggering number of products we depend on — including, notably, our clothing.

The bits of plastic shed from synthetic textiles have their own term: microfibers. Scraps of polyester, nylon, elastane, and other synthetic fabrics slough off of our clothes in the course of wearing, storing, and washing them. Laundry alone may account for about a third of the microplastics released into the ocean each year — and some innovations and regulations have emerged to reduce the transfer of microplastics from our washing machines to our water systems. But another set of innovators are imagining something bigger: what our clothes could be made of instead.

The problem, of course, is that plastics are so darn functional. Synthetic fibers are typically cheaper to produce than organic materials, and they also offer performance benefits, like stretchiness and weatherproofing.

“The age of plastic began because it mimicked other things, and the functionality was so good that it became its own thing,” fashion designer Uyen Tran told Grist, when we interviewed her for our 2023 Grist 50 list. In 2020, Tran founded a company called TômTex to create bio-based materials that can replace synthetic fabrics as well as leather and suede. She believes that a wave of new materials is ready to outcompete plastic-based textiles. “I think biomaterial is on the edge of becoming its own thing as well. Just give us a few more years, and you will see.”

In this newsletter, we’re rounding up a handful of the materials — from apple waste to artificial spider silk — that are already on the market, offering a glimpse of a plastic-free future for our textiles.

Shrimp shells: TômTex’s bio fabrics are made out of the waste from mushrooms and shrimp shells. The company sources the latter partially from the shrimp industry in Tran’s native Vietnam, which creates hundreds of tons of shell waste annually. And, Tran noted in her Grist 50 profile, she eventually hopes to build a network of regional production facilities all over the world, sourcing materials from waste streams in different regions. The company debuted its fully biodegradable shell-based fabric at New York Fashion Week in 2022, in a collaboration with designer Peter Do. Its mushroom-based fabric was seen on runways in both London and Paris Fashion Weeks in 2023. Read more

Apple mush: Another example of a company harnessing waste streams as raw materials for textiles is Allégorie, a New York-based accessory company making bags and wallets out of apple pomace — the mush left behind from juicing — as well as cactus, mangos, and pineapple leaves. Co-founder Heather Jiang told Marie Claire that some of the products even retain a pleasant, fruity scent.

Allégorie’s fruit-based products are meant to offer a better vegan leather, as the majority of faux leather products currently on the market are made of plastics like polyurethane and vinyl. The company also sees reducing food waste as part of its mission. Read more

Old cotton: A perhaps less surprising waste stream is used clothing itself. Early last year, a Swedish company called Renewcell opened the world’s first commercial-scale textile-recycling facility, the BBC reports. The company shreds old cotton clothing (with up to 5 percent non-cotton content), like shirts and jeans, and then chemically processes them to separate the fibers, which results in a simple organic compound called cellulose. This can then be spun into new viscose fabric.

The big sell here is reducing textile waste; more than 100 billion clothing items are produced each year, and only 1 percent end up getting cycled into new garments. But the company is using that existing stock instead of plastic to make new clothes — and clothes that in turn won’t create more microplastics. The mill has contracts with a number of suppliers, including Swedish fashion giant H&M. Read more

Enhanced cotton: A company called Natural Fiber Welding is working on enhancing natural materials like cotton to confer some of the same benefits that synthetic fabrics offer. Wired reports on how the process, known as (you guessed it!) “fiber welding,” uses liquid salts to partially break down the fibers and then fuse them together, creating longer and stronger threads that can mimic some of the coveted characteristics of synthetics, like strength and durability, especially relevant for athletic and outdoor apparel. The company announced a partnership with Patagonia in 2021. Read more

Lab-grown spider silk: A Japanese company called Spiber is pioneering what it calls “brewed protein” fibers — a way to produce desirable natural substances in a lab. As The Japan Times reports, it began in 2007 with efforts to engineer spider silk, which has long been admired for its strength, durability, and lightness. (Hence the name, which combines “spider” and “fiber.”) The company’s first product, made from a silk protein synthesized by bacteria enhanced with a snippet of spider DNA, was used in 2015 by The North Face, in a prototype coat called the Moon Parka.

But the company encountered a challenge in trying to create a product that wouldn’t shrink when wet, as spiderwebs do. Today, taking lessons from its initial engineering process, Spiber produces a brewed protein material that does not replicate any specific natural substance. The novel material is now being used by sportswear company Goldwin (the distributor for The North Face in Japan), which hopes to have 10 percent of its new products use brewed protein by 2030. Read more

— Claire Elise Thompson

More exposure

• Read: more about microfibers, and some of the technological and regulatory solutions that could stop them escaping from laundry machines into waterways (Grist)
• Read: an article about “instant fashion” and its heavy dependence on polyester (Harvard Business Review)
• Read: about a mountain of clothing waste that was burned in Chile’s Atacama Desert in 2022 — essentially an oil fire (Grist)
• Read: more about the growth of biomaterials, in clothing and other industries (Dezeen)

A parting shot

Another increasingly common bio-based textile is lyocell. The semi-synthetic fiber, also sometimes known by the brand name Tencel, is famous for its softness and its relative sustainability. It’s made by chemically dissolving wood pulp (usually fast-growing eucalyptus), pushing the mixture through a shower-head-like device called a spinneret, and then spinning the fibers into a yarn. In this photo from The Fashion Awards 2023 in London, Nicole Scherzinger (of Pussycat Dolls fame) wears a custom Tencel gown by Patrick McDowell, a luxury designer who only uses sustainable and recycled fabrics.

IMAGE CREDITS

Vision: Grist

Parting shot: Samir Hussein / Getty Images

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Apple waste, spider silk, enhanced cotton: How bio-based textiles could replace plastic in our clothing on Mar 13, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Claire Elise Thompson.

In a sweeping victory for family farmers and dozens of endangered plants and animals, a federal court today revoked approval of the notoriously volatile, weed-killing pesticide dicamba.

The drift-prone pesticide has damaged millions of acres of crops and wild plants every year since the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) first approved it in 2017 for spraying on cotton and soybean crops genetically engineered by Monsanto (now Bayer) to survive what would otherwise be a deadly dose. Today’s ruling by the U.S. District Court of Arizona in Tucson overturns the EPA’s 2020 reapproval of the pesticide, which included additional application restrictions that have nonetheless failed to prevent the ongoing drift damage.

“This is a vital victory for farmers and the environment,” said George Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety’s (CFS) legal director and counsel in the case. “Time and time again, the evidence has shown that dicamba cannot be used without causing massive and unprecedented harm to farms as well as endangering plants and pollinators. The Court today resoundingly re-affirmed what we have always maintained: the EPA’s and Monsanto’s claims of dicamba’s safety were irresponsible and unlawful.”

Since dicamba was approved for “over-the-top” spraying its use has increased twentyfold. The EPA estimates 65 million acres (two-thirds of soybeans and three-fourths of cotton) are dicamba-resistant, with roughly half that acreage sprayed with dicamba, an area nearly the size of Alabama. Much of the unsprayed crops are planted “defensively” by farmers to avoid dicamba drift damage.

In today’s decision, the court cancelled dicamba’s over-the-top use, holding that EPA violated FIFRA’s public input requirement prior to the approval. This violation is “very serious,” according to the court, especially because the Ninth Circuit previously held EPA failed to consider serious risks of over-the-top dicamba in issuing the prior registration. The court outlined the massive damage to stakeholders that were deprived of their opportunity to comment, such as growers that do not use over-the-top dicamba and suffered significant financial losses and states that repeatedly reported landscape-level damage yet, in the same 2020 decision, lost the ability to impose restrictions greater than those imposed by the federal government without formal legislative and/or rulemaking processes. As a result, the court found “the EPA is unlikely to issue the same registrations” again after taking these stakeholders’ concerns into account.

The court also criticized the EPA’s assessment of the 2020 registrations’ widespread harms. Monsanto and the EPA claimed this “over-the-top” new use of dicamba would not cause harm due to its new restrictions on use. But the court found the EPA’s “circular approach to assessing risk, hinging on its high confidence that control measures will all but eliminate offsite movement, [led] to its corresponding failure to assess costs from offsite movement.” And instead, just as independent researchers had warned, the restrictions failed, and dicamba continued to vaporize and drift.

“I hope the court’s emphatic rejection of the EPA’s reckless approval of dicamba will spur the agency to finally stop ignoring the far-reaching harm caused by this dangerous pesticide,” said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Endangered butterflies and bee populations are going to keep tanking if the EPA keeps twisting itself into a pretzel to approve this product just to appease the pesticide industry.”

“We are grateful that the court held the EPA and Monsanto accountable for the massive damage from dicamba to farmers, farmworkers and the environment, and halted its use,” said Lisa Griffith of the National Family Farm Coalition. “The pesticide system that Monsanto sells should not be sprayed as it cannot be sprayed safely.”

“Every summer since the approval of dicamba, our farm has suffered significant damage to a wide range of vegetable crops,” said Rob Faux, a farmer and communications manager at Pesticide Action Network. “Today’s decision provides much needed and overdue protection for farmers and the environment.”

Background

This is the second time a federal court has found that the EPA unlawfully approved dicamba. An earlier case resulted in a court of appeals overturning the agency’s prior approval of the pesticide. The EPA reapproved the same uses of the pesticide in 2020, leading to the current lawsuit.

Today’s ruling outlaws dicamba products sprayed over emerged soybeans and cotton crops that are genetically engineered to withstand the spray. Since 2017 the pesticide has caused drift damage to millions of acres of non-genetically engineered soybeans as well as to orchards, gardens, trees and other plants on a scale unprecedented in the history of U.S. agriculture.

Dozens of imperiled species, including pollinators like monarch butterflies and rusty patched bumblebees, are also threatened by the pesticide.

The EPA admitted in a 2021 report that its application restrictions to limit dicamba’s harm had failed and the pesticide was continuing to cause massive drift damage to crops.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that up to 15 million acres of soybeans have been damaged by dicamba drift. Beekeepers in multiple states have reported sharp drops in honey production due to dicamba drift suppressing the flowering plants their bees need for sustenance.

The plaintiffs are National Family Farm Coalition, Pesticide Action Network, Center for Food Safety and the Center for Biological Diversity. They are represented by legal counsel from the Center for Food Safety and the Center for Biological Diversity.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Several children’s advocacy groups expressed concern today with parts of a new bill intended to protect kids and teens from online harms. The bill, “The Protecting Kids on Social Media Act,” was introduced this morning by U.S. Sens. Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Tom Cotton (R-AR).

The groups, including Common Sense Media, Fairplay, and The Center for Digital Democracy, play a leading role on legislation in Congress to ensure that tech companies, and social media platforms in particular, are held accountable for the serious and sometimes deadly harms related to the design and operation of these platforms. They said the new bill is well-intentioned in the face of a youth mental health crisis and has some features that should be adopted, but that other aspects of the bill take the wrong approach to a serious problem.

The groups said they support the bill’s ban on algorithmic recommendation systems to minors, which would prevent platforms from using personal data of minors to amplify harmful content to them. However, they said they object to the fact that the bill places too many new burdens on parents and creates unrealistic bans and institutes potentially harmful parental control over minors’ access to social media. By requiring parental consent before a teen can use a social media platform, vulnerable minors, including LGBTQ+ kids and kids who live in unsupportive households, may be cut off from access to needed resources and community. At the same time, kids and teens could pressure their parents or guardians to provide consent. Once young users make it onto the platform, they will still be exposed to addictive or unsafe design features beyond algorithmic recommendation systems, such as endless scroll and autoplay. The bill’s age verification measures also introduce troubling implications for the privacy of all users, given the requirement for covered companies to verify the age of both adult and minor users. Despite its importance, there is currently no consensus on how to implement age verification measures without compromising users’ privacy.

The groups said that they strongly support other legislation that establish important guardrails on platforms and other tech companies to make the internet a healthier and safer place for kids and families, for example the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), COPPA 2.0, bi-partisan legislation that was approved last year by the Senate Commerce Committee and expected to be reintroduced again this year.

“We appreciate Senators Schatz and Cotton's effort to protect kids and teens online and we look forward to working with them as we have with many Senators and House members over the past several years. But this is a life or death issue for families and we have to be very careful about how to protect kids online. The truth is, some approaches to the problem of online harms to kids risk further harming kids and families,” said James P. Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media. “Congress should place the onus on companies to make the internet safer for kids and teens and avoid placing the government in the middle of the parent-child relationship. Congress has many good policy options already under consideration and should act on them now to make the internet healthier and safer for kids.”

“We are grateful to Senators Schatz, Cotton, Britt and Murphy for their efforts to improve the online environment for young people but are deeply concerned their bill is not not the right approach,” said Josh Golin, Executive Director of Fairplay. “ Young people deserve secure online spaces where they can safely and autonomously socialize, connect with peers, learn, and explore. But the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act does not get us any closer to a safer internet for kids and teens. Instead, if this legislation passes, parents will face the same exact conundrum they face today: Do they allow their kids to use social media and be exposed to serious online harms, or do they isolate their children from their peers? We need legislative solutions that put the burden on companies to make their platforms safer, less exploitative, and less addictive, instead of putting even more on parents’ plates.”

"It’s critical that social media platforms are held accountable for the harmful impacts their practices have on children and teens. However, this bill’s approach is misguided. It places too much of a burden on parents, instead of focusing on platforms’ business practices that have produced the unprecedented public health crisis that harms our children’s physical and mental well-being. Kids and teens should not be locked out of our digital worlds, but be allowed online where they can be safe and develop in age-appropriate ways. One of the unintended consequences of this bill will likely be a two-tiered online system, where poor and otherwise disadvantaged parents and their children will be excluded from digital worlds. What we need are policies that hold social media companies truly accountable, so all young people can thrive,” said Katharina Kopp, Ph.D., Deputy Director of the Center for Digital Democracy.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

"I call bullsh*t."

That's how Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, responded Thursday to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issuing limited restrictions for the use of over-the-top dicamba herbicides in four states.

Noting that it has been over a year since the Biden administration released a report "detailing just how incredibly devastating the 2020 dicamba approval has been," Donley said, "And now we're supposed to believe that four states not being able to use dicamba for two weeks in June accomplishes something?"

Under the EPA's rules for the 2023 season, farmers in Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa can't apply the herbicides Engenia, Tavium, and XtendiMax after June 12 or the V4 growth stage for soybeans and first square for cotton—whichever comes first. The previous end date for those states was June 20, which is the new cutoff for South Dakota, where farmers previously had until June 30.

Some experts warn that the timing of the EPA's move is "troubling" given the proximity to soybean planting. University of Illinois weed scientist Aaron Hager toldFarmProgress that "it's going to be a challenge. I'm afraid for soybean farmers who have already made their seed and herbicide purchases for the 2023 growing season."

Meanwhile, longtime critics of the herbicide like Donley and George Kimbrell, legal director at the Center for Food Safety, called out the EPA for continuously failing to go far enough to limit harm from dicamba, given concerns about drift damage.

"This marks the fifth time in seven years EPA has made changes to dicamba's registration," Kimbrell said in a statement. "Yet faced with a mountain of data that its past measures have utterly failed to protect farmers, the environment, and endangered species, EPA once again failed to make meaningful changes."

"What EPA revised only affects four of 34 states, offers nothing to admitted continued risks to endangered species, and makes a label that already was impossible to follow in real-world farming even more impossible to follow," Kimbrell added.

"If allowed to stand, EPA's capitulation to pesticide companies will condemn many thousands of farmers to another year of devastating dicamba clouds injuring their crops, endangering their livelihoods, and tearing apart their rural communities," he warned, vowing to continue doing "everything we can to stop this harm."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Ahead of the omnibus spending bill set to be released late Monday night, one of the staunchest defenders of press freedom and whistleblower rights in the Senate — Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa — told The Intercept he doesn’t think that the PRESS Act will be included in the year-end legislation. “I don’t think so,” Grassley said. The legislation, also known as the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act, seeks to protect journalists from government efforts to compel them to disclose the identities of their sources.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., a rabid opponent of the legislation and the protections it seeks to advance, argued on the Senate floor that the Pentagon Papers represented an example of criminal behavior by the media intended to influence public opinion against the war in Vietnam, and stood in as a reason to block the PRESS Act.

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Daniel Boguslaw.

This is a developing story… Please check back for possible updates...

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton on Wednesday blocked the passage of a House-approved bipartisan bill that's been heralded by advocates as "the most important free press legislation in modern times."

The Senate had in recent days faced mounting pressure from journalists, press freedom groups, and others to follow the House's lead and approve the Protect Reporters From Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act, spearheaded by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).

After Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Tuesday revealed in the Chicago Sun-Times that he supported fast-tracking the PRESS Act (S. 2457/H.R. 4330), Wyden took to the floor early Wednesday to try to pass the bill by unanimous consent and send it to President Joe Biden's desk.

Cotton (R-Ark.) objected, claiming that "the PRESS Act would immunize journalists and leakers alike from scrutiny and consequences for their actions."

"This bill would prohibit the government from compelling any individual who calls himself a 'journalist,'" Cotton continued, indicating scare quotes with his hands, "from disclosing the source or substance of such damaging leaks."

Wyden pushed back against Cotton's claims, pointing to the exceptions in the law that were adequate enough to satisfy all Republicans in the House, which advanced the bill by a voice vote in September.

As Durbin detailed Tuesday:

[In] considering the PRESS Act—and the shield from subpoenas and other compulsory legal process it provides—you have to think through the tough questions, such as: Who qualifies as a journalist? What information should be shielded from law enforcement? Should law enforcement be prevented from seeking evidence from a white supremacist or other domestic violent extremist with information about a planned act of domestic terror just because he or she occasionally posts to a blog?

It's questions like these that I've wrestled with for over a decade as bills similar to the PRESS Act have been debated.

That's why I am glad that today's PRESS Act—like recent Justice Department regulations issued by Attorney General Merrick Garland—accounts for these scenarios. It makes exceptions for information necessary to prevent or identify the perpetrator of an act of terrorism or to prevent a threat of imminent violence, significant bodily harm or death. And it doesn't apply to foreign agents, terrorists, or journalists suspected of committing crimes.

Considering the inclusion of those exceptions, Daniel Schuman, policy director at Demand Progress, said of Cotton, "His reasoning is... specious."

Demand Progress was among the media outlets along with civil liberties, government accountability, and press freedom organizations that on Monday had urged Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to include the PRESS Act in the omnibus spending bill.

Highlighting that the PRESS Act would codify the Justice Department's recently announced reforms so they couldn't be repealed by a future administration, they wrote to Schumer that "it is crucial that you act before this Congress adjourns so that journalists do not need to wait another decade or more for the protections they need to do their jobs effectively."

Ahead of Cotton's obstruction on Wednesday, Freedom of the Press Foundation—which has been backing the bill and signed the letter to Schumer—published a piece by Seth Stern, the group's director of advocacy, explaining why all Republicans should support the legislation.

Noting how "conservative journalists are often targets of government surveillance" but also that "most harassment of journalists isn't political," Stern argued that this "strong anti-surveillance" bill "recognizes national security concerns" and would protect all reporters—regardless of politics—while helping independent and alternative media thrive.

Stern said in an email to Common Dreams that "the PRESS Act can still be included in a year-end omnibus package and passed this year."

"Sen. Cotton's hostility to press freedoms demonstrates exactly why these protections are needed," he added. "We hope everyone will contact their elected officials ASAP and urge them to move the PRESS Act forward."

In a series of tweets Wednesday, Freedom of the Press Foundation executive director Trevor Timm pointed to the end-of-the-year spending bill and the fact that a Boston Globe reporter was forced to testify in federal court this week despite First Amendment concerns.

"If the Senate passes the PRESS Act this week," he said, "this type of press freedom violation would become a thing of the past."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

A Kazakh former internment camp inmate is suing the United Kingdom’s trade secretary for allowing imports of cotton he believes were obtained through forced labor in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region.

Erbakit Otarbay was arrested in Xinjiang in 2017 for watching illegal videos on Islam and installing the WhatsApp instant messaging service on his cell phone, amid a crackdown there by the Chinese government on Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities. 

The next year, Otarbay was detained in an internment camp, where he was tortured and forced to work in an apparel factory, he said.

“There was an auto repair shop, a bakery, a sweet shop and a barber shop,” he told Radio Free Asia. “I told them I was not good at baking, and that I liked sewing.”

Otarbay joined a group of mostly women at the garment factory, who included not only Uyghurs, but also other ethnic minorities such as Kazakhs, Uzbeks and Kyrgyz. He produced cloth loops for belt buckles.

After he was released in 2019, Otarbay wanted to call attention to the suffering of detainees and those being forced to work, he said.

“If you ever get out, go as far as you can to every country and call for our release and tell them what the Chinese government is doing to us,” he said.

As many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslims are believe to be held in network of internment camps that China has set up to prevent purported “religious extremism” and “terrorism.” Inmates have been subjected to torture, rape, forced sterilizations of female detainees and forced labor.

Beijing has insisted that the camps were vocational training facilities and that they are now closed. 

The United States and nine Western parliaments have declared that the repression of predominantly Muslim groups in Xinjiang amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity.

Call for import restrictions

In a pre-action letter to Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch, Otarbay called on the U.K. government to address an “ongoing failure” to impose any restrictions on cotton imports from Xinjiang, the U.K’s Sky News reported on Oct. 9.

China is a major cotton producer, with most of it coming from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights issued a report at the end of August saying that China’s repression of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang province “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”

But China has vowed to fight any U.N. action on human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang cited in the OHCHR report. 

In December 2021, an independent tribunal in London found that China committed genocide against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, based on testimony from dozens of witnesses, including formerly jailed Uyghurs and legal and academic experts on China’s actions in the region. 

Otarbay also testified at the tribunal about his detention, saying that authorities confined him to a metal tiger chair, used to immobilize suspects during interrogations, for hours.

Otarbay emigrated from China’s Xinjiang to Kazakhstan with his family in 2014, but returned three years later. He was arrested and sent to a “re-education camp.” After a year, he was taken to another detention center where he was forced to work without pay in a clothes factory inside the facility, until he was released in May 2019.

“What I tell the U.K. government is ban all the goods from Xinjiang,” Otarbay told RFA. “They have to take measures. They should globally expose the genocide that China is committing.”

“They have to inspect all the imported goods from China, where they were manufactured, who made them and so on, and they should take actions to stop the forced labor,” he said. 

Though the U.K. government has measures in place to ensure that its companies are not complicit in alleged forced labor practices in Xinjiang or involved in the region’s supply chain, but critics say enforcement is lax.

“It is very disappointing that the British government have not taken a lead in this issue,” said Otarbay’s attorney, Paul Conrathe. But he said he is hopeful that the court will recognize that the government’s actions are “unlawful.”

14 days to respond

The trade secretary now has 14 days to respond, he said. Their next steps will depend on the reply.

Rahima Mahmut, U.K. director of the World Uyghur Congress, or the WUC, said the British government has not gone far enough to stop goods made with Uyghur forced labor from entering the U.K.

“Even though the U.K. government openly and loudly criticized China’s horrific treatment of the Uyghurs, so far it has not taken any meaningful actions in terms of ending Uyghur forced labor,” she told RFA. “It has not stopped the flow of products [made with forced labor] into [the UK].”

Otarbay is “the best plaintiff to pursue this case” against the U.K. trade secretary, and WUC is working closely with him, she added. 

To address concerns about Uyghur forced labor, the United States enacted the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in 2021, which assumes goods made in Xinjiang are produced with forced labor and thus banned under the U.S. 1930 Tariff Act. The law requires U.S. companies that import products from the region to prove that they have not been manufactured at any stage with Uyghur forced labor.

The European Union has proposed a total ban on all goods produced using forced labor at any stage of production, harvest or extraction, including clothing, cotton and commodities, irrespective of where they have been made.  

“It is very commendable that the American government has taken a lead in effectively banning imports that derive from Xinjiang, and also that the European Commission is looking at doing something similar,” Conrathe said. “This is a very important case dealing with one of the most appalling situations in terms of human rights abuses in the world today.”

Translated by Mamatjan Juma and Alim Seytoff. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

The story was updated to say that the U.S. and some Western parliaments have determined that the abuses constitute genocide and crimes against humanity.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Adile Ablet for RFA Uyghur.

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) came into force on June 21, after being signed into law by U.S. President Joe Biden last December.

The move has reportedly led fashion chains such as Japan’s United Arrows to stop selling clothes made from Xinjiang cotton.

According to the Business and Human Rights Resource Center (BHRRC) countries such as Vietnam and Bangladesh, the world’s second and third largest garment exporters, still depend heavily on imports of Chinese fabric and yarn, particularly high-end materials.

“As a result, campaign groups and some Western politicians have accused manufacturers of “cotton laundering” in places such as Vietnam and Bangladesh, for serving as intermediaries in cotton garment production,” the center said.

Last month the Bangladesh Garment Buying House Association asked its members to be careful where they sourced their raw materials to avoid falling foul of the new U.S. regulations.

Last year Bangladesh’s garment exports to the U.S. earned it $7.18 billion. Vietnam’s garment exports to America brought in more than double that, at $15.4 billion, according to the U.S. Office of Textiles and Apparel.

The BHRRC said that one Chinese garment manufacturer who owns a factory in Vietnam said proving the origin of fabrics and threads involved a lengthy due-diligence process.

“It is hard to distinguish the cotton products entering Vietnam from different sources because they may have been mixed together while being transported at sea. Suppliers may do this so they can deceptively label Xinjiang cotton as coming from elsewhere, to circumvent the US law,” the manufacturer told the center.

RFA spoke with the director of an apparel firm in Vietnam’s northern Nam Dinh province.

“My company is producing apparel products for a China-based company which uses materials from its country and exports to the U.S.,” he said.

“Due to the UFLPA it has ordered less from us. It seems that our Chinese partner cannot sell its products so it has stopped ordering [so much] from us.”

The Vietnam Cotton and Spinning Association referred RFA to comments given by Vice President Do Pham Ngoc Tu to China’s Global Times. He told the newspaper that Vietnamese garment manufacturers will have to ‘wean themselves off’ raw materials produced in Xinjiang if they want to continue exporting to the U.S.

One fifth of the world’s cotton comes from Xinjiang, making it hard for manufacturers to find adequate supplies from countries that do not use forced labor.

Ignoring the ban would mean falling foul of the world’s biggest garment importer. The U.S. ships all but 5% of its apparel from overseas.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.