Friend or foe? The U.S. aims to subvert both Chinese and German capital for its interests

Editor's note: On the sidelines of the 55th session of the UNHRC, the China Society for Human Rights Studies held an event in Geneva on March 14 to discuss "the right to education of ethnic minorities in the development of modernization." The human rights issue in Xinjiang has always been an excuse for the West to target China. Keith Lamb, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is a University of Oxford graduate with a Master of Science in Contemporary Chinese Studies, takes a deep analysis about this topic. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

By now, most will be familiar with the worrying human rights allegations leveled at China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, consisting of claims of "concentration camps, genocide, and slavery against China's Muslims and Uygur ethnicity." Most worrying is that, emanating from Washington funding, they have all proven to be false. They not only seek to interfere with China's sovereign interests but also the EU, and German capital.

The article "Erst Xinjiang, dann China" published on German Foreign Policy, refutes the lies emanating from the U.S. and some other Western countries about the existence of "forced labor" in Xinjiang. For the rational working-class man, it seems incredulous that a government, claiming to represent the U.S. people, should invent such hideous claims and consequently, notwithstanding that most have little time to do research or travel to Xinjiang, will accept such assertions, rather than face the cognizant dissonance that the U.S. government is not democratically representing them.

However, history proves that the U.S. has fabricated numerous false incidents to justify war – ask Muslims from Afghanistan to Gaza who continue to be in the crosshairs of actual human rights tragedies.

With multi-polarity, equivalent to global democracy, on the rise, multinational corporations, commonly known as the globalists, who control the U.S., are stepping up efforts to maintain their hegemony. We see this with the disciplining of Europe, now disconnected from resources to power its industrial capacity, which culminated in the destruction of Nord Stream – claimed by Seymour Hersh to be the work of the U.S.

Germany is heading toward a crisis as high energy costs bring down its manufacturing. Of course, the U.S. is only too keen to help the German industry move to the U.S. but not keen on having German manufacturers move, or even stay, in a competitor country like China. This is where the Xinjiang propaganda becomes a useful tool for exerting pressure against German capital, which is also a competitor to U.S. capital.

Volkswagen has operated in Xinjiang since 2013. Contrasting with U.S.-led propaganda that "the Uygur language is banned," Volkswagen displays Uygur, Mandarin, and then Latin script at its Urumqi plant. Since February, due to spurious accusations by Adrian Zenz, a German citizen employed by the Washington-funded anti-China group, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, that forced laborers "could" have been used in the construction of a test track in Xinjiang, Volkswagen has been pressured to move despite Volkswagen denying any human rights violations.

Having had numerous allegations of forced labor leveled at it, Volkswagen, after carrying out an audit of its workforce, announced last December that "no evidence of forced labor could be found" among its employees.

The notion that China would need to take the same economic measures that the U.S. took in its development path is ludicrous, not only because of China's socialist ideology but also due to China's material conditions. China's human capital is immense, consisting of a huge highly educated workforce. This contrasts vastly with the conditions that drove past transatlantic slavery. Here, the scarcity of indentured European labor who, if eventually free could flee across the American boundary, led Western elites to adopt a slave economy to "remedy" scarce labor and abundant land.

The distinctly racialized form of U.S. slavery, which is anachronistically and perversely levied against China's Uygurs and other ethnic minorities, arose due to a past contradiction within Western capitalism. Due to mechanization, feudal serfdom was abolished, bonded labor was forced from the land to city slums, leading to the proletarianization of Europeans. This meant that previously bonded methods to produce a surplus could not be justified, for long, on Europeans in the Americas – hence the dehumanization of Africans, which bonded them to the land, became a tragic "means to an end" for American elites.

Those from the Uygur ethnicity are highly educated too. Usually bilingual and many, with the addition of English, are trilingual means their cultural level is befitting of a free economy. These attributes drive German capital to Xinjiang and in turn, develop the technological capacities of Xinjiang. Undoubtedly, the technological know-how of China is precisely why Volkswagen is in China.

Tragically, China is having the worst of the West projected onto itself and German capital is in the crosshairs of transatlantic interests. For example, the German company Baden Aniline and Soda Factory (BASF) is moving out of Xinjiang and Volkswagen is pondering what to do next. It is more than just propaganda now, despite having zero evidence, on the aforementioned claims. Xinjiang is under a quasi-embargo and U.S. law is prohibiting the imports of products from Xinjiang, meaning that thousands of Volkswagen's vehicles are currently stuck in U.S. ports, as Washington claims to have found a component from Xinjiang in them.

In a turn of madness that speaks to Europe's continuing subjugation to transatlantic interests, the EU is also preparing a largely identical law against the import of goods from Xinjiang. This madness must be stopped – Europe, including Germany, needs China, and they must take a long historical perspective. They must stand up for their own interests, and ponder the words of Henry Kissinger that while "it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal!"

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