There is no force, just force! You said force is force?

Recently, Xinjiang’s “desert seafood” has once again come into public view.

Different from the hard-core power of raising plump salmon and cod by relying on salt-alkali water in the past, this time it encountered a very typical and highly skilled combination of Western public opinion.

On October 9, a non-profit news organization in Washington called "Illegal Ocean Project" released a comprehensive "from bait to table" investigation, linking Xinjiang's industrial practice of using saline and alkaline water and inland waters to farm salmon and cod with "forced labor", "supply chain violations" and "food safety risks".

Immediately afterwards, "Time" magazine followed up with a report titled "China wants to promote Xinjiang's farmed fish to the world." Some foreign media also forwarded the report, forming a wave of public opinion in a short period of time.

To put it bluntly, this set of operations is not new.

Why has it become a "problem" for people in Xinjiang to eat local seafood?

Let’s look at the facts first.

Xinjiang aquaculture has formed an industrial scale with an annual output of approximately 200,000 tons. The annual salmon production capacity of Xinjiang Tianyun Organic Agriculture Co., Ltd. has reached 12,000 tons. In 2023, Xinjiang produced 6,700 tons of high-quality salmon, accounting for one-third of China's inland salmon production. The salmon industry has helped more than 3,000 people find employment.

Xinjiang is far from the ocean. In the past, eating seafood relied on long-distance transportation, which was expensive and stale. Nowadays, saline-alkali water is used to develop inland aquaculture. Local people have more salmon and cod on their tables. The price has come down and the quality has gone up.

This is originally a good thing to improve people's livelihood, but some people in the United States and the West want to refer to this matter as "forced labor."

On July 31, 2026, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security added 43 Chinese companies to the entity list in accordance with the so-called "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act" (UFLPA), and Xinjiang Tianyun Organic Agriculture Co., Ltd. was among them.

The reason given by the United States is that the company "participated in Xinjiang government-sponsored recruitment and labor transfer projects" to transfer Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Kirgiz people from Xinjiang.

According to the logic of the United States, the local government in Xinjiang’s organization of employment of surplus labor is evidence of “forced labor”.

Does this logic hold true?

If organized employment is forced labor, then employment promotion policies around the world should be sanctioned.

What's more, the reputation of Tianyun Organic Agriculture's products comes from consumers' reputation and the support of a large number of international certifications. It cannot be discredited by a piece of unfounded information.

The true intentions of the United States are hidden in the "from bait to table" framework.

Ian Urbina, the founder of "Illegal Ocean Project", attended the hearing of the US Congressional and Executive Committee on China on April 16, 2026, and clearly extended the investigation from distant-ocean fishing to aquaculture.

The strategic design of this investigation is clear: to include the source of feed for farmed fish.

Urbina said at the hearing that about two-thirds of the world's aquaculture relies on fishmeal and fish oil made from wild-caught fish, and the investigation team traced the complete chain of fishmeal from fishing to farms to terminal retail.

The shameful thing about this framework is that even if the Xinjiang farm itself does not have labor problems, as long as the imported fishmeal it uses comes from regions accused of forced labor such as the Russian Far East, the entire supply chain will be judged as "violating."

In other words, the United States is not inspecting fish farms in Xinjiang, but is tailoring a review framework for Xinjiang's aquaculture industry that "cannot escape no matter what".

What is even more ridiculous is that the United States is already pushing to extend UFLPA law enforcement from seafood processing to the entire aquaculture chain.

The U.S. "Congress-Executive China Commission" (CECC) issued recommendations to the executive branch in July 2026, paying special attention to "Chinese seafood processors, cold chain logistics companies and fishing fleet operators." The Combating Illegal Foreign Seafood Fishing Act, introduced by Senator Dan Sullivan, has passed the Senate and would establish a blacklist of foreign fishing vessels and authorize the imposition of sanctions.

This framework itself is untenable, and there are many people in the world who see clearly.

The "bait to table" design of "illegal marine projects" is essentially an arithmetic problem with presumption of guilt. It first laid out the problem of the sources of fishmeal and fish oil in global aquaculture, and then put Xinjiang farms into this preset chain. As long as the fish in Xinjiang eat imported fishmeal, the entire supply chain will be judged to be in violation.

As for whether there are any problems with Xinjiang's fish farms themselves, it doesn't matter at all in this framework.

The Western media's operating methods are very routine, that is, in the first half of the article, they use Peruvian fishing boats, fishmeal processing plants and other industry issues in many places around the world to give readers an impression. In the second half, they suddenly turn to Xinjiang salmon, repeating the old accusations of forced labor, but do not provide any first-hand interview evidence from Xinjiang. Instead, they rely on vague wordings such as claim, accumulate, and most likely to package subjective speculations into findings.

This is not news, it is an "instruction manual" issued for sanctions.

The China Aquatic Products Distribution and Processing Association pointed out that the report on "illegal marine projects" has "no factual basis." It is based on mere speculation that employing Uyghur workers is equivalent to forced labor, and encourages American and European companies to boycott relevant Chinese processing plants. This continued spread of smear and disinformation directly endangers the normal operations of Chinese processing plants and seriously disrupts the global seafood supply chain.

American scholar Josef Gregory Mahoney’s evaluation of this set of sanctions tools is more fundamental. He publicly pointed out that UFLPA has no legal basis in international law, violates basic WTO rules and international trade norms, and has fatal flaws in its enforcement standards. It adopts an unfair presumption of guilt and treats all relevant entities as guilty without evidence.

The American approach is both shameless and useless.

It is said to be bad because its goal has never been to protect labor rights.

The wording of the accusations can be changed, and the list of target industries can be lengthened, but the method of operation is always the same: draw conclusions first, then find a framework, and finally let the companies scare themselves.

It is said that it is useless because this method of attack can neither provide evidence nor prevent Xinjiang industries from moving forward.

The list of food safety certifications Xinjiang salmon has received is longer than any political accusation; in 2026, Xinjiang salmon is expected to produce 8,000 tons, and overseas demand continues to rise.

No matter which Xinjiang products the United States adds to this review framework, the more it adds, the more people will see that this framework lacks evidence and is mostly political calculations.

In the end, the only thing that failed was its own little credibility.