LettersXinjian cotton: Western allegations of forced labour need more solid proof

In your article “Stuck in the middle and wilting under the pressure“ (April 12), depicting the predicament that the Better Cotton Initiative found itself in amid the Xinjiang controversy, Bennett Freeman, US undersecretary for labour and human rights in the Clinton administration, was quoted as saying that international brands now have to choose between making money in China and doing the right thing.

That is the real point of disagreement. No one in China is saying that we should buy products made from forced labour, but they disagree that there’s enough evidence of the existence of forced labour. Without settling the epistemic issue, the moral issue cannot get off the ground. But many Western commentators proceed directly to discussing the moral issue, conducting their inquiry through loaded questions in the style of the classic “have you stopped beating your wife?”.

So far, the best evidence provided for the existence of forced labour, according to the article, is that there’s no way to disprove forced labour. But the lack of disproof is not proof. It only works as proof under the presumption of guilt, a presumption which no one in China, or any fair-minded people in the modern world, would have for such a serious allegation. Many people in China cannot help but think many Westerners are in the habit of making epistemic quantum leaps when they need facts to fit their agenda, like in the fiasco over weapons of mass destruction.