Opinion | How the media coordinated to kill Volkswagen in Xinjiang
By Tom Fowdy
The presence of a Volkswagen manufacturing site in China's Xinjiang autonomous region has been for many years the bane of China hawks, who have long aspired to try and get it to withdraw as part of a strategy of undermining Germany's trade and investment ties with Beijing. Although repeated surveys and studies had found there was no evidence of so-called "forced labour" in the plant.
However, all of a sudden, starting last week, the mainstream media, using their usual spokesperson, anti-Communist fundamentalist, Adrian Zenz (who works for the US government-funded IPAC), coordinated a massive campaign along with US authorities which effectively tarnished the German automobile manufacturer and made its departure from the western region of China an effective certainty.
Adrian Zenz is not a credible scholar, but an individual whose work gains mainstream credence when there is a specific agenda, particularly from the US, to push and manufacture consent for a policy goal in regards to China's Xinjiang autonomous region pertaining to sanctions or blacklistings. To this end, Zenz's work usually relies on insinuations and ideologically driven assumptions which portray state poverty affiliation work programs as forced labour efforts, which is part of his pedigree of being an extreme Anti-Communist. These views are never taken into consideration when his work is being reported.
In doing so, successive US administrations have deliberately cultivated Zenz's work, first coordinating it through the State Department under the Trump administration and giving it extensive coverage, in order not only to damage China's image but to manufacture consent for a number of strategically motivated and protectionist policies, which included: 1) Banning Chinese cotton to serve US agriculture interests 2) Banning Chinese solar panels to serve the US's aspirations to gain in the renewable energy industry 3) Eventually banning all products from Xinjiang under a "guilty as assumed" basis and 4) To coincide with the rest, to effectively utilise exaggerated allegations of forced labour in order to push supply chain shifts again to undermine China.
In calling it all a coordinated grander scheme, there is no exaggeration here. Thus, Zenz's media profile goes and comes as the policy agenda sees fit. Thus, beginning several weeks ago, Zenz's work has been rolled out again in order to push a coordinated campaign to discredit Volkswagen and its operations in Xinjiang. How did this happen? First, his report is published and then spread by the Anti-China organisation IPAC, second it is then given maximalist mainstream media coverage that reports the allegations without scepticism or scrutiny, third, the US government then coordinated on their side by immediately seizing a score of Volkswagen shipments saying it had parts made by "Uyghur forced labour", fifth the subsequent outrage has seen domestic political coverage in Germany and investment funds withdraw from it.
It is worth mentioning that the current German government, which is now more hawkish and Anti-China than the preceding and maverick Merkel premiership, has also been pushing to facilitate business shifts away from China against the will of German Industry lobby groups, so almost certainly had a role in doing this too. The main point however is that you can see how this "controversy" is coordinated across the media in a theatrical-like fashion in order to generate a narrative which forces through the inevitable conclusion. Volkswagen was suddenly targeted from multiple directions. There was a clear, overarching political effort behind it all.
What has happened here is that there was a concerted campaign to politically undermine Volkswagen's investments in Xinjiang by smearing them with "forced labour" allegations and delivering them a "game's up" verdict. This has occurred despite there having been a thorough auditing in years previous before which showed no such "forced labour" was being used, and when the foreign policy agenda did not suit it, Adrian Zenz's studies and allegations were also ignored. The overarching strategic goal however, is to get Germany out of China, and Berlin as it happens, has economically gutted itself on behalf of US national interests by effectively destroying its own industrial base and energy security. Thus, it is no surprise the country is now in recession.
But if there is one thing that must be noted, that the Xinjiang card has never really been about human rights but an opportunistic, exaggerated and political campaign which comes and goes as a weapon to attack China on the issue of supply chains, justify decoupling and even product bans which are in fact motivated by protectionism.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
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