Big questions remain over city’s new buses

Efforts to find out if 98 new Chinesemade buses destined for Wellington were manufactured using forced Uyghur labour have been stymied by a lack of information, with NZ Bus telling the Greater Wellington Regional Council simply that the factories were ‘‘spotlessly clean’’.

The council has been looking into allegations that CRRC – the Chinese company making the buses or parts – had been using workers from the Uyghur minority, who have been forced into labour as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to repress the ethnic group in the western region of Xinjiang.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute named CRRC as one of 82 foreign and Chinese companies ‘‘potentially directly or indirectly benefiting from the use of Uyghur workers’’.

Barry Hinkley, chief executive of NZ Bus, which runs transport services for the council and had ordered 68 complete buses, wrote that he had visited two CRRC factories in China in 2019. One of them was ‘‘in Zhuzhou in the province of Changsha’’, he said. Changsha is the capital city of Hunan province.

‘‘Everywhere was spotlessly clean which is always a good sign of a committed, motivated workforce,’’ he said.

‘‘We were also allowed to walk around the product line and randomly speak to staff, unsupervised.’’

Hinkley did not directly address the issue of whether the labour was forced, nor whether the workers were Uyghur or Han, the majority ethnicity in China.

The first batch of 25 buses for Wellington have been built and are sitting at a port in China, due to arrive here early next month.

Tranzurban was ‘‘deeply concerned by the recent media reports that allege one of our suppliers is a customer of a company that has used forced labour’’, wrote Keven Snelgrove, director of transport and logistics. The company has ordered 31 bus chassis from CRRC.

‘‘This is something we find abhorrent,’’ he said. ‘‘Like yourself, we want to ensure we can work together to improve our understanding of, and have confidence in, the supply chain.’’

Snelgrove visited a CRRC factory in China ‘‘prior to 2017’’ and ‘‘at no time during these visits, did we feel uncomfortable in the way people were being treated’’.

Human rights’ advocates will find their answers wanting, given that China has gone to great lengths to present its well-document repression of Uyghur Muslims as ‘‘vocational training’’.

The Uyghur plight led to the New Zealand Government in May declaring unanimously that ‘‘severe human rights abuses’’ had occurred in China, while countries including the United States and Australia said they believed genocide was happening there.

Green Party foreign affairs and human rights spokeswoman Golriz Ghahraman said slave labour would have been used in making the buses or their parts.

Mei Yang, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Wellington, denied any suggestion of forced labour or slave labour, saying there was ‘‘only voluntary employment and free choice in the labour market’’.

‘‘Workers of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang choose professions of their own free will, sign labour contracts with employers voluntarily following the principle of equality, and receive payment for their work,’’ Mei wrote in an email.

‘‘Certain Western politicians and anti-China forces spread lies to suppress certain companies and industries in China under the pretext of human rights, as part of their sinister conspiracy of containing China’s development by disrupting Xinjiang.’’

Council climate committee chairman Thomas Nash said: ‘‘You would have to say there is a cloud hanging over the buses, and we should do everything we can to clear up the situation.’’

‘‘Workers of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang choose profession of their own free will . . .’’

Mei Yang

Chinese Embassy spokesman