SHANGHAI—In an offer promoted heavily on banner ads across the internet, Chinese e-commerce platform Temu began selling Uyghur Muslims for $1.49 each this week. “The special price available during this lightning deal will lower the barrier to Uyghur ownership for consumers everywhere,” a Temu spokesperson told reporters, confirming that more than 100,000 of the subjugated ethnic and religious minorities from the Xinjiang region had been sold so far on the discount marketplace. “You won’t find prices on forced laborers this low anywhere else. When we tell our customers to ‘shop like a billionaire,’ we mean it.” Approximately 90% of Temu users reached for comment complained that the Uyghur laborers they had purchased arrived in such damaged condition that they no longer worked.
It's a slow process that takes years and is like pulling teeth. The hard part is that people need to want to be deprogrammed, they can't be forced into it, or they'll just double down. And China is a convenient villain for them to hate and to compare to their own crumbling western governments. These people's entire existence hinges on an idea of "as bad as things are getting, at least we aren't like authoritarian China." They are the good guys, in the good guy country, fighting the bad guys in the bad guy country. It's simple, it's comfortable. And it's hell trying to drag someone out of that.