"In today’s world, authoritarian politics and predatory commerce cooperate to exploit 'cultural differences.'"

"Nowhere is this point clearer than in the symbiosis in recent decades between Western corporations and the Communist elite in China. The West offers capital and much-needed technology, while China’s rulers supply a vast, captive, hard-working, low-paid and unprotected labor force. Western politicians, as if trying to justify the unholy collusion, for years argued that rising living standards in China would produce a middle class who would demand freedom and democracy. It is clear by now that that has not happened. The Chinese elite, now far wealthier than before and as in control as ever, can laugh up its sleeve at the Westerners and their visions of inevitable democracy. Instead the West’s own hard-won democracy has become vulnerable. But does the West know it? ... Westerners may think of Xinjiang as a distant and mysterious place, but... Volkswagen, Siemens, Unilever and Nestlé have factories there.... What is it about this remote place... that makes it so attractive? Might a 'culturally different' nonwhite labor force play a role? People in no need of control because a harsh Communist government is already doing that work? In Xinjiang, as elsewhere in China, bosses from East and West have exchanged benefits, formed common interests and have even come to share some values. The chief executive of Volkswagen, which leads China in car sales, was recently asked for the company’s comment on the concentration camps in Xinjiang. He answered that VW knew nothing of such things...."

From "Capitalism and ‘Culturecide'/The idea of ‘cultural differences’ has been used as a justification for some of humanity’s worst crimes," by the artist Ai Weiwei in the NYT.