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A new regulation took effect in China’s Uyghur region on July 1, 2026: The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Regulations on Promoting Cotton Quality (新疆维吾尔自治区棉花质量促进条例). While the new law makes the cotton supply chain traceable, it does not address longstanding evidence and reports of forced cotton-picking labor. The coercive land and labor transfer system that underpins the automated cotton and agricultural industry may cause irreparable harm to Uyghurs and other Indigenous peoples, as UN human rights experts warned.
The Chinese government describes the regulation with familiar language: “high-quality development,” improved cotton quality, protection of producers’ interests, and stable supply chains. But the regulation’s actual reach extends far beyond technical standards for cotton fiber. It creates a legal framework for supervising the entire production chain — from the farmer and plot of land to the processing plant, warehouse, and final point of sale.
The law covers planting, harvesting, purchasing, processing, sales and storage. It requires producers and businesses to maintain traceability records identifying the grower, the land plot, the cotton variety, and the quantity and date of purchase and processing. These records must be retained for at least five years. Every bale must carry barcode information corresponding to its type, grade, quantity, and processing history.
The regulation also gives authorities extensive supervisory power. Cotton businesses are subject to inspections, credit evaluations and a possible “exit mechanism.” Their evaluation results can affect policy support and access to finance.
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The policy explicitly described the low rate of land transfer in southern Uyghur areas — then below 15 percent of arable land — as a problem [...] This arrangement leaves farmers with a formal connection to land while shifting practical control over cultivation, machinery, inputs, processing, and marketing toward cooperatives and companies. The same policy calls for Communist Party organizations to be established inside the agricultural entities that receive and manage transferred land.
The official language describes this as “reform.” In practice, it restructures rural life by moving Uyghur farmers away from independent cultivation and into organizations that are subject to corporate management and Party supervision.
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Traceability without accountability
China’s cotton industry has rapidly expanded its mechanization process. A 2025 report from Xinhua claimed that the region’s cotton planting, cultivation and harvesting system had reached a 97 percent comprehensive mechanization rate. But this is not evidence of farmers’ economic freedom. It shows the scale at which a highly centralized, standardized production system has been constructed.
Mechanization reduces the need for labor on farms while land-transfer policies channel management rights to cooperatives and companies. Fanghuiju teams simultaneously promote labor transfer, political conformity, and village-level control. As pointed out by a UN report released in January 2026, human rights experts criticized China’s “poverty alleviation through labor transfer” program, saying it coerced Uyghurs, Tibetans, and other Indigenous peoples into jobs in the Uyghur region and elsewhere.
The new cotton-quality regulation completes this structure by making the cotton supply chain traceable, inspectable, and governable through data.
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This matters internationally. Cotton is one of the sectors specifically prioritized under the United States’ Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which presumes that goods made wholly or partly in the Uyghur region are prohibited from import unless importers can meet a high evidentiary standard.
China’s new barcode and traceability system should not be confused with accountability. A barcode may reveal where a bale came from, but it cannot establish whether the farmer who produced it had meaningful freedom to keep their land, reject a transfer, choose their work, or resist the political system governing their village.
For Uyghur farmers, the central question is not the quality grade of a bale of cotton. It is who controls the land, who directs labor, who owns the data, and whether Uyghurs can retain any meaningful economic independence in a system that now tracks every stage of the harvest.
