US firm’s decision to stop cooperation with Chinese apparel maker ‘pathetic’: FM

It is pathetic for US Badger Sportswear to stop cooperation with Chinese enterprises based on wrong information, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday in response to the US firm’s announcement to stop buying products from a company in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

In principle, China would not make comments on commercial activities but “if this company has stopped trade exchanges with China based on some wrong information, I think it is pathetic,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said at a press briefing on Thursday.

US Badger Sportswear, which supplies college bookstores with T-shirts and other team apparel, said in a statement posted on its website that it will no longer do business with Taida, a Xinjiang apparel company based in Hotan.

The Associated Press reported one month ago that Taida “started forcing some” trainees from Xinjiang’s education centers to work for the company.

Lu said that China has abolished the system of educating people in prison through labor. Xinjiang’s current policies of offering vocational education and training to trainees are different from forcing them to work.

During a visit to Xinjiang in late October, the Global Times found that in a satellite factory located in a village of Shorebagh town, the employees all voluntarily chose to work there and get paid.

According to an introduction from the factory, Taida cooperates with a handicrafts factory in Hotan to run the satellite factory. A total of 100 workers work there and 30 of them are registered as impoverished.

Workers in the factory could earn 1,500 yuan ($221) to 2,000 yuan a month. “The factory plays an important role in alleviating poverty, solve the unemployment problem and enhance local income,” read the introduction.