Session Name: Global Capitalism, Governance and its Consequences in Asia
A “Third Party” Beyond the “Sino-US GAME”? Examining news reports on Xinjiang Cotton Controversy in European Union Countries
Tuesday, July 30, 2024
16:15 – 18:00 (GMT+7)
Paper Abstract: On September 9, 2020, H&M issued a statement expressing their deep concern regarding the reported allegations of forced labor and discrimination against minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. In the statement, H&M asserted that they would no longer use Xinjiang cotton, refrain from recruiting employees from Xinjiang, and emphasized their decision to discontinue cooperation with any clothing manufacturing factories located in Xinjiang. The United States imposed sanctions on dozens of people and entities, citing their relation to the cotton produced with “forced labor” in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. This study used the approach of corpus-assisted discourse studies to investigate how news reports in European Union(EU) Countries discursively constructed Xinjiang cotton controversy. The findings indicated that the news reports in EU framed the causes, moral evaluation/consequences, and treatment of the controversy in congruence with their respective dominant metaphors by means of various linguistic patterns. This discursive construction is interpreted with regard to EU’s underlying national interests.
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