Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova; European solar manufacturers have claimed nearly every solar panel purchased from China has its origins in the Chinese slave factories of Xinjiang.
Fears over China’s Muslim forced labor loom over EU solar power
Panels include components produced in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, where there are concerns about forced labor camps for Muslim minorities, including Uighurs.
BY AITOR HERNÁNDEZ-MORALES, KARL MATHIESEN, STUART LAU AND GIORGIO LEALI
February 10, 2021 7:23 pmNearly every solar power panel sold in the European Union has its origins in China’s oppressed Xinjiang region.
The solar industry and Brussels lawmakers argue Europe’s renewable energy push should not come at a human cost amid long-standing international concern over reports China has detained 1 million people with Muslim backgrounds in camps in Xinjiang and is putting them to work.
“Everybody knows what’s going on in China, and when facilities are based there you have to accept that there’s a high possibility that forced labor will be used,” said Milan Nitzschke, president of EU ProSun, an alliance of solar businesses seeking to promote sustainable, solar manufacturing based in the EU.
While the U.S. has already rolled out sanctions against products such as cotton and tomatoes originating from Xinjiang, the European Commission has avoided confronting China with any trade measures.
…
“Nearly every silicon-based solar module — at least 95 percent of the market — is likely to have some Xinjiang silicon in,” said Jenny Chase, head of solar analysis at BloombergNEF.
…
Read more: https://www.politico.eu/article/xinjiang-china-polysilicon-solar-energy-europe/
Link to a February 2021 BBC interview with former Uighur detainees, including someone who claims to have been a former slave discussing how she was gang raped, and another former prisoner, who was forced to strip and shackle women and girls so they couldn’t resist being abused by guards, or abused by outsiders who bribed prison officers for a chance to revel in their darkest perversions.
I believe the claims in the BBC interview. Solar panels require a lot of coal in their manufacture, to chemically strip oxygen from the silica, and Xinjiang has a lot of very cheap high quality coal, perhaps because the Xinjiang Chinese coal bosses don’t have to pay their workers.
What about Wind power? Don’t think for a moment that wind power is necessarily free from this taint. Most of the world’s Rare Earth elements, critical to high efficiency electricity generators used in wind turbines, are manufactured in an environmental disaster of a facility in Inner Mongolia. Although less well known than the camps in Xinjiang, China is also believed to operate slave labour facilities in Inner Mongolia, with relocated Uighur Muslims slaves working alongside Inner Mongolian political dissidents. I doubt free Chinese would want to handle the most health damaging steps in the process, if there are expendable slaves available. I doubt the slaves whom I suspect are handling the hideously toxic chemicals required to refine Rare Earths for wind turbines are offered much in the way of costly personal protection equipment.
We are obviously not going to convince Joe Biden to pause his renewable energy push, but surely as a matter of conscience, everyone can agree that not one solar panel or wind turbine should be sourced from suspected Chinese slave labour, not one component should come from tainted Chinese sources – which given alleged extensive distribution of slaves throughout the Chinese economy, pretty much covers all Chinese exports, from what I can see.
Every penny which goes to the alleged slave masters in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia could be paying for and helping to perpetuate this barbarity.
Correction (EW): The person who claims she was forced to strip and prepare other women for abuse was a prisoner, not a guard – more details on the BBC website.
!0% for the Big Guy…
If I survive, I am really going to enjoy watching this global communist campaign explode into a million toxic pieces under the weight of its own absurdity.
Just wishful thinking. It will fade away as some replacement for Global Warming is found…no fireworks…
Greenies tell us that solar panels are cheaper than coal per energy unit.
So why would China import coal and export solar panels?
Why would China part with even one solar panel?
Because selling slave-made products to gullible westerners is quite lucrative.
Greenies have no shame. It’s that simple.
“So why would China import coal and export solar panels?” That is a very good question!
Possibly also because it takes a great deal of coal to refine and produce steel, copper, silion carbide (in all its forms), carbon fiber, aluminum, nylon and a lot of plastics, resin, glass, cement…. You can do most of these with petroleum, but coal is much, much cheaper. China can also “employ” foreign coal producers and workers as dependents, causing great economic and political upheaval if they withdraw their “support.” And China can keep India, and other places, from obtaining coal cheaply enough to compete with Chinese industry, or to work their way out from Chinese client-state dependence.
Well spotted, Zoe. That question is the perfect rebuttal to the promoters of solar panels.
Thank you very much. But I must confess … they can’t be debunked.
They will just say: “China is sacrificing a cheaper product for a more expensive one because they are super moral and generous.”
Like I said, they are shameless and will say ANYTHING.
Finally feelin the love. Thank you
You hung in there and you deserve a little love. 🙂
I have often wondered as to why BLM make such a fuss about 200 year old statues when there are many modern examples of slavery going on in the world, of which green slavery is surely amongst the worst, especially aided and abetted by people so’ woke’ they probably never get to sleep.
It’s far more problematic than just solar panels though. A huge proportion of the rare earths and metals needed for solar panels, batteries, servers, mobile phones etc, are mined by slave labour, often children, in mines owned by the Chinese and then have to be processed in filthy conditions by more slave labour.
However, provided it is green slavery that is producing goods the green woke need, from solar panels to mobile phones, lithium batteries for cars to laptops, all seems to be ok.
Do they fail to connect up the dots or is it Gross and disgusting hypocrisy from the hysterical climate fanatics and their followers.
I don’t think most ordinary greens realise the extent of the hypocrisy they practice, but surely the leading lights in green organisations and those campaigning in the anti slavery movement, must realise what is going on?
tonyb
Slavery is merely a pretext for BLM’s brand of hard Maoism.
Their rhetoric is insincere. It’s all about narcissicism and opportunity.
Nothing to gain? Nothing to say
China is run by very astute, numerate Party apparatchiks, most of whom have engineering or scientific qualifications (Xi JinPing has a Chemistry degree, his predecessor Hu JinTao was a Mechanical Engineer). European and American politicians are, well, politicians who are utterly clueless about Physic and Engineering, or anything requiring numbers. The Chinese are fully aware that Renewables and CAGW are a gigantic sc@m, but are only too happy to sell wind turbines and solar panels to credulous Westerners.
Personal note: I spent 5 years working and travelling in China. I can’t remember seeing one wind turbine or solar array, although most houses in rural areas had small solar water heaters on the roof for domestic hot water.
Agree. Been there, done that multiple times.
“although most houses in rural areas had small solar water heaters on the roof for domestic hot water.”
Are you talking about black water hose stretched out over the roof?
True, say what you want about the CCP, but it’s run like a meritocracy and their leaders are local technocrats who rise through the ranks, rather than politicians from the start. You can’t have 10-20 year plans with politicians, they’re only concerned with the short term.
China has built over 100 dams the last couple of decades, with a dozen more on the way, hydro is their second energy source after coal, accounting for 20% of total production.
Solar panels require a lot of coal in their manufacture, to chemically strip oxygen from the silica
Are solar panels the new Blood Diamonds?
at least diamonds don’t lose their value with time….
You can only hide the truth for so long. The question is will “they” be able to hide the truth about AGW before it’s known not to be an issue with the climate?
We know AGW is not an issue, … reading (& understanding) a few books on basic physics will show you that.
When ‘they’ can’t hide the truth any more ‘they’ will just hide from the truth like all loyal followers of any religion.
Since the goal is, not to save the environment, but to install a Marxist regime, they will just pivot to another cause. The fear of disease is proving very effective at getting people to surrender their liberty and give power to a select few. Already Pfizer is talking about requiring yearly COVID boosters, at higher prices. Which means drug companies want to keep the scare alive as long as possible, and selfish big government politicians will as well. Source: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20514141/pfe-usq_transcript_2021-03-11.pdf (page 4)
There is this ‘thing’. I often recognize it. It’s the start of some kind of campaign.
If the elites loved China … if China wasn’t being the school yard bully … we might not be hearing about the problems with China’s Uighur Muslim population.
The Democrats and Republicans both support anti China policies. The EU, US, UK, and Canada have just slapped sanctions on Chinese officials. There are good reasons to fear and loathe China’s current leadership and there seems to be wide agreement on that.
So, how do you get the population at large to support anti China policies? One way is to pound China’s civil rights record. It’s a simple issue and China really doesn’t have any good answers (other than to tell us to mind our own business). If we see increased emphasis on that in the mainstream media, we’ll know what’s happening.
China has a big powerful economy to be sure but America’s economy is still bigger. When you add in the EU, Japan, Canada, Australia, Korea, India, etc. etc. China is significantly at a disadvantage. China was really dumb to give all those countries reasons to hate it. The gloves are coming off and human rights are becoming a club.
That’s a whole lot of very sound observation, right there, commieBob. Combine that with the building stresses among the Chinese people having to adapt to the increasingly militant Xi regime and there could be revolution in the air if those countries start turning the crews.
Thanks. I’m hoping all Xi’s buddies come to their senses and turn on him.
They have their knives out, and are waiting for an opportune time. Or poison. Comrade Xi has more enemies in China and abroad now, that it is inconceivable that he will remain dictator for life. Well, it might be a shorter life, unless he comes to his senses. Especially if he causes China to lose major face, such as the world not showing up for the Olympics. However, that puts his back up against the wall and will be more dangerous than a wounded animal in the mean time. That is why the purges going on and his consolidation of direct power over much of the entire power apparatus of all signifiant branches of power in China. He is loathed by many of the CCP but then they too terrified to say anything. Just ask Jack Ma, although even he was disappeared for a spell.
Xinnie the Pooh has been busy purging his opponents on charges of “corruption”. As everyone knows, corruption is part of the CCP’s DNA. and provides an incentive for apparatchiks and, paradoxically, a weapon to destroy them when the time comes. It is literally impossible to be in the CCP hierarchy without accepting and offering bribes
For those on WUWT who are interested in what’s really going on in China I can recommend the YouTubers China Uncensored, Laowhy86, and SerpentZA.
Another good direct source for what is going on in China is the Epoch Times. I would highly recommend folks read this article detailing the internal threats that Xi is facing, mostly from within China. Xi is ripe for ‘cancellation’. You might have to sign up for a free account with an email address, but the ET has some good unbiased reporting, especially on China, (and USA politics) since they are Chinese folk that protest the organ harvesting from prisoners such as the Falun Gong movement, who are are also providing a lot of slave labor when they aren’t having their organs harvested. China is a mass prisoner/slave state. Even above and beyond the actual prisons and internment camps.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion-six-hidden-threats-xi-jinping-has-to-guard-against_3725889.html
Maybe a worldwide refusal to attend the upcoming Chicom Olympic games to protest all the innocent people Xi has murdered around the world would cause Xi to lose enough face for Chinese citizens to demand his removal.
The world cannot go to the Chicom Olympic games. To do so would be to normalize mass murder, and let the perpetrators off the hook feeling like they can probably do that again and get away with it.
No, we can’t have that. The Guilty must be punished for their crimes.
I agree, but sadly should and is are often vastly different. I simply don’t see that happening.
One thing about it, Xi’s underlings could all blame Xi for all the problems and missteps, if they managed to oust him.
Xi made us do it!
Along with the demographic problems caused by their one child policy. How many old people can one worker support?
It’s China 4-2-1. Four grandparents, two parents, one worker.
Right now the retirement age is 60 for males. That was set back when most people didn’t live that long. Now, city dwellers live past 80. link Watch for the retirement age to start going up.
Well … you could fortuitously “discover” a virus that mainly targets the very old and turns them into ancestors. Those are very low maintenance.
They still have a sizeable reservoir of hundreds of millions of villagers who would want to come to the big city, they’ve only let some of them migrate, lest they overwhelm their big cities which already are growing like crazy.
China’s population will drop by 400 million people at the end of this century, it’s kind of a “soft landing” for a country that is fairly overcrowded. The one child policy was super drastic, but without that their country would have been unmanageable with large scale famines and social unrest. India would have benefited from that.
It’s a small group of leaders pushing this, they are making an omelette.
Until Trump came along both parties walked hand in hand in outsourcing jobs. See what they did to Trump when he pushed back on China?
ROTFL The Democrats suffered from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Anything he did was automatically evil. I find it riotously funny when Biden quietly continues with the same policies for which Trump was so harshly criticized. With regard to China, Trump was a giant red pill for both parties.
>>The Democrats and Republicans both support anti China policies. << i don’t thin this is the case. the politicians mouth platitudes about china while lining their pockets with Chinese cash. The Self styled elites love china the same way they love illegal immigrants – as cheap labor.
Actions speak louder than words. evidence
“China was really dumb to give all those countries reasons to hate it.”
I think so, too.
And the Chicoms won’t help their image by invading a non-threatening Taiwan for no good reason.
I don’t see much upside for the Chicoms if they invade Taiwan. I see a lot of downside if they do.
There’s only a downside if anyone stands up to them. I think they’re counting on that not happening. Who’s going to?
‘… Solar panels require a lot of coal in their manufacture …’.
Solar panels certainly can’t produce solar panels and that fact exposes the sheer absurdity of it all.
Thank you for the perfect logical disproof of the utility of solar energy.
“free Chinese” do not exist in mainland China, nor, sadly, in Hong Kong. See Taiwan.
The Chinese people I know, all middle class, do not complain of repression. People my age will remember truly horrible times. It is so much better now.
A generation is coming up that may well resent being repressed. Piled on top of the problem of China’s ageing population that could spell real trouble.
My favorite communist joke is something like: They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work. It didn’t take a revolution to collapse the Soviet Union and it won’t take a revolution to collapse the system in China.
id like to see Oprah interview xi’s Harvard educated daughter ( 30 something ) . I even read that she’s back in Cambridge doing graduate work , but I don’t think so . I’ve read she’s a bit of a fashionista .
Ever see the movie, “Crazy, Rich Asians”? It’s a movie about Chinese elites in Shanghai and how they live. No politics to speak of.
It’s a pretty good movie, actually. I suppose the Beking elites live a similar lifestyle, although politics probably gets a high priority. Or maybe they are just as frivilous as the Shanghai elites.
I liked the main characters in the movie. Actually, I liked most of the characters in the movie. It was a fun movie. It was a Chinese Disney movie, is the best way to describe it.
Make that Singapore, not Shanghai.
Xi’s approval rate in China is around 94%, according to a long-running, recently published study from the Harvard Kennedy School. I’ve yet to meet a mainlander who doesn’t like him. The Chinese are a very nationalistic bunch, and they have a huge chip on their shoulders from their century of humiliation (shades of post-Versailles Treaty 1930s Germany). Xi’s position within the CCP and his country is quite safe.
Another misunderstanding among conservative American circles is the type of government China has been running, you can make an argument that it’s less socialist than ours, because the size of the public sector in China at around 32% IIRC is significantly smaller than the US (which is over 40% and climbing fast under Biden-Yellen) or Canada’s (around 50%). The CCP has morphed into something that is looking closer to Lee Kuan Yew’s government, arguably the best modern government ever. Lee was kind of a mentor to Xi and his gang.
Their government is quite authoritarian, but so was Songapore’s, where you could be jailed for chewing gum. Most of the Asian dragons (Singapore, Taiwan, S Korea) had pretty authoritarian regimes early on that ended up relaxing gradually as their people got wealthier.
Other photos of the “votech” centers show guard towers, cameras, and high wires on top of the main high fence.
That new technology needs to be protected from US spies!
Gosh, China being immoral and unethical … not playing by the rules, what a shock.
I just ran into this issue: While signing up for an Open Source program I was told I shouldn’t use MOSI (Master out, Slave in) and MISO (Master in Slave out) in SPI terminology as it is ‘offensive’. When I asked if they had spoken with their local politician about ending real, ongoing, world wide slavery I was meet with silence. I continued by asking if he had ever thought about why Boko Haram was still abducing children after 20 years and why had they not spoke out about it.I’m not a member of that organization needless to say, woke I am not.
There is simply no way for the EU to “source” its solar panels and wind turbines from Europe. China has a near total stranglehold on either the primary or processed raw materials used in their manufacture. Unless the EU starts mining and refining rare earth’s and silicon within its borders. Yeah, that’ll happen.
Now don’t get me started on the disaster that is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and cobalt for making EV’s.
Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) states that slavery is in violation of of the Declaration. Bit of a sick joke that China is on the Human Rights Council. As for China, it has several areas of flagrant breaches of Human Rights.
Clearly the UN is a waste of space if it has flagrant breachers of UN rules on the Human Rights Council. With such gross hippocrisy within the entire UN organisation, why do we give them money and sacrifice our economies to them? The UN is devoid of any credibility.
What is more insane is that solar panels are still subsidized where the labour part of the cost is near zero. If solar still can not compete where slave labour is used, it is clearly a poor economic decision to go solar.
TRUMP! got the US off of the Human Rights committee. OBiden put us back on it, almost immediately. No surprise there.
Along with Chinese slave labour I see the mafia are getting in on the scam.
From a report by Europol:
“…there are increasing reports of Italian OCGs (organised crime) engaging in the so called ‘Alternative or Green Energy’ market, for example investments in wind energy farms. Such projects offer attractive opportunities to benefit from generous MS and EU grant and tax subsidies, but apart from effectively exploiting eco-friendly incentives for their financial gain, they also create possibilities to launder proceeds of crime via legal business structures. “
It’s a Marxist country. Everyone is a slave
As mentioned by others, solar panels from this region use coal as the primary energy source in their manufacture. Of the three major influences in a solar panel GHG footprint, the greatest is the source of electrical generation used in its manufacture. If nuclear or hydro power was used for this, a solar panel would have 1 to 10g CO2-eq/kWh GHG footprint. If coal was the primary source of power, the GHG footprint would be of over 300g CO2-eq/kWh. In this instance a solar panel installed in Manitoba/Ontario (Canada) would have GHG pay-back period of over 170years, far beyond its life span.
Democrat Party is all in on this, they have always loved slavery.
Just don’t call it a private prison or the Dems will go ballistic. Any other words are fine though. Checking the official word list.
I remember being told just a couple weeks ago that we had to be sensitive to “cultural differences” and weren’t supposed to be complaining about what China was doing…
Talking about energy technology
The problem we have in canada is a liberal party that has been working with the Chinese government for decades, whether they are in or out of power here.
The connections are endless.
They are pretending to get tough but it’s the equivalent of laying face down in the mud and lifting one finger.
The intention is to use the “Great Reset” BS as an excuse to borrow hundreds of billions $$ more to buy useless green energy crap from China with billions sticking to liberal and Chinese fingers in both directions.
We will only prevent this by getting rid of the liberals but there are just too many Canadians too stupid to live who will never figure this out until they see a substantial drop in their standard of living, by which time it’s too late.
Sad for us
Wow just WOW.