2 days ago
That seafood on your plate? It might have been produced by forced labor.
The event was part of a vast labor-transfer program run by the Chinese state, which
The goal of the program is partially to address labor needs in Chinese industries. But another goal is to subjugate a historically restive people.
Uyghur separatists revolted throughout the 1990s and bombed police stations in 2008 and 2014. China began the labor transfers in the early 2000s as part of a broad
camps, where Uyghurs have been subjected to torture, beatings, and forced sterilization. Researchers described China's actions against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims
Many of the transferred workers are involved in processing seafood that is then exported to more than 20 countries, including the United States, Canada, and several in the European Union, according to an investigation published as episode 8 of The Outlaw Ocean Podcast's second season. The podcast is available on all major streaming platforms. For transcripts, background reporting, and bonus content, visit
These disclosures of China's use of state-sponsored forced labor in seafood production come as the trade war between the US and China has heightened tensions between the countries and directed new attention to the
This is an American law that prohibits the import of goods produced in Xinjiang and a cudgel that the Trump administration is likely to apply more aggressively as it ramps up pressure on Beijing.
'We worked yesterday. Worked last night. We are still working,' a Uyghur man says in a voice clip uploaded to Douyin in 2021 over snapshots of exhausted workers on pallets of flounder packed for export.
Douyin/The Outlaw Ocean Project
On November 19, 2024, the European Union approved its own
A review by Outlaw Ocean Project
of internal company newsletters, local news reports, trade data, and satellite imagery revealed that 10 large seafood companies in the eastern province of Shandong, China's most important fishing and seafood processing hub, have received at least a thousand Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities from forced labor-transfer programs out of Xinjiang since 2018.
Sometimes transfers are motivated by labor demands. In March 2020, for example, the Chishan Group, one of China's largest seafood catching and processing companies, published an internal newsletter describing what it called the 'huge production pressure' caused by the pandemic. That October, party officials from the local antiterrorist detachment of China's public security bureau and the country's human resources and social security bureau, which handles work transfers, met twice with executives to discuss how to find the company additional labor, according to company newsletters.
Soon after, Chishan agreed to accelerate transfers to their plants. Wang Shanqiang, the deputy general manager at Chishan, said in a corporate newsletter, 'The company looks forward to the migrant workers from Xinjiang arriving soon.' The Chishan Group did not respond to requests for comment.
Workers in 2023 at a seafood plant called Yantai Sanko Fisheries in Shandong Province, China, which relies on Uyghur and other labor from Xinjiang and exports to the U.S., Canada, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands.
Douyin/The Outlaw Ocean Project
To detect forced labor, companies tend to rely on private firms that conduct 'social audits,' in which inspectors visit factories to make sure they comply with international work standards. But social audits are typically announced in advance, which allows managers to hide minority workers during inspections. Even when workers are interviewed, they are often reluctant to be candid, for fear of retribution.
In May 2022, social auditors from SGS, a major international auditing firms, toured the Haibo seafood processing factory in Shandong and found no evidence of forced labor. But a team of investigative reporters from Outlaw Ocean Project
discovered that more than 170 people from Xinjiang worked at Haibo in 2021, and a half-dozen Uyghur workers posted regularly to social media from Haibo throughout 2022. On the same day the auditors toured, a young Uyghur worker posted pictures of herself near the plant's dormitories and loading bays.
This was not an isolated incident. During the investigation, reporters found other examples of Uyghurs who had posted pictures of themselves at factories within days of those plants being cleared by social audits. They also found that half of the Chinese exporters they had identified as being tied to Uyghur labor had passed audits by leading global inspection firms.
Two Uyghur researchers who independently reviewed hundreds social media videos archived by Outlaw Ocean Project concluded that Uyghurs working at Shandong seafood facilities were using coded content to convey critical perspectives on their experiences through humor, poetry and song. Posts alluded to strong sentiments of loss and separation, and offered direct and indirect references to coercion and involuntary transfer, as well as commentary on poor working conditions.
The bigger point, however, is that the Chishan Group or Haibo are not unique cases. What we found in our investigation tracking and documenting Xinjiang minorities who had been deployed to seafood processing plants in Shandong was that many seafood companies are tied to a wide variety of similar problems with forced labor.
The presence of Uyghur workers in these major seafood processing plants should not be viewed as incidental. It is a glaring red flag. The pervasiveness of these problems is why the global seafood industry likely will have to assess how it monitors its supply chains, especially when these supply chains route through China.
