(This article is also available in Italian: Part one, two, three, four, five)
Before we begin, a few basic facts, all easily verifiable with google:
- There are at least 25,000 mosques in XinJiang, of which 4,000+ were built in the last 10 years. (for scale, there are 2,769 in the USA)
- Uyghur populations have been growing faster than that of Han population in the 70 years since the 1949 birth of the People’s Republic, due to reasons such as ethnic minorities always having been exempted from the One-Child Policy. (In recent years birth rates have fallen all over China, including in XinJiang, as is typical of the process of economic development)
- From 1949 to 2019, average life expectancy in XinJiang increased from 30 years to 75 years.
- There are about 12 million Uyghurs living in XinJiang, 2 million adult male. If 1 million people, half of adult male population, were in concentration camps, the economy would have immediately collapsed, and there would be sorrow and mayhem in the streets. But Xin Jiang’s economy has been booming, living standards dramatically rising, and tourism industry has been exploding. More than 190 million tourists traveled to northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in 2021, an increase of 20.5 percent compared to 2020. There are also countless videos on the internet of tens and hundreds of Uyghur people happily dancing in public, in celebration of Muslim holidays or otherwise.
- XinJiang borders 4 Muslim majority countries: Kazakhastan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan, all of which are a bus ride away for residents of XinJiang. According to every available source of data, there has been no significant number of refugees from Xinjiang region which remotely mirrors the allegations of mass internment, mass torture, and genocide. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, does not list XinJiang or China as a notable origin place of asylum seekers. The World Bank does not list any of these countries as significant host countries of refugees, and neither does worlddata.info. No set of statitsics show any abnormal flux or movement in Xinjiang or surrounding countries during the period specified by the allegations.
- XinJiang was never closed to tourism or official visits. As soon as the allegations began, the government of China has invited European as well as US officials to visit, and even a personal invitation to then Director of the CIA, the loudest maker of the allegations, Mike Pompeo — but all were denied.
- All of the world’s Muslim majority countries, with the single exception of Qatar, have not remained silent on the issue, but have come forth to applaud and commend Beijing’s humane and effective efforts at de-radicalisation through education, poverty eradication, and economic integration. All of them have made official visits to XinJiang, and investigated the matter thoroughly, and none of them have confirmed any human rights violations or religious persecution against Muslims. The only accusers are NATO countries and allies of the USA.
- Wikileaks has hundreds upon hundreds of leaked documents regarding US, EU, AUS, etc. human rights violations in the Middle East, in Africa, etc., but not a single one regarding the “1 million Uyghurs in concentration camps” or the “genocide” in XinJiang.
- The official name of the province has always been, and remains, “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region”. If the intention was to suppress/erase Uyghur culture, or if a genocide was planned, the name of the province would no doubt have been changed to just XinJiang.
- US officials and diplomats since 2018 have repeated claimed that China is committing genocide, and simultaneously repeatedly claim to “seek ‘improved relations’ and ‘peaceful cooperation’ with the People’s Republic. For any country to openly express desire to better get along with another country which it accuses of genocide is very obviously and totally unacceptable under any circumstance, but this absurdity is lost to all Western media.
- US state department lawyers have concluded that there is not enough evidence for genocide.
IN BRIEF
The Mujahideen fighters and Al Qaeda were creations of the USA, fundamentalist right-wing jihadists funded by the CIA since the late 70s to 1. destroy the socialist Afghan government, 2. set a trap for the USSR which could not abide by a fundamentalist theocracy on its borders, 3. destabilise the oil rich region, and 4. ultimately, to occupy this country of crucial geo-strategic importance and block any future east Asian, Central Asian, and European integration, such as China’s epic development project, the Belt and Road Initiative.
Decades later, after the Islamo-fascist attack dogs of empire turned on their masters in 2001, which provided the first justification for the subsequent 2 decades long waves of US invasions, and the entire West Asian region destabilised, much of it destroyed, mired in chaos, poverty, and hunger, a new use for Islamist Fundamentalism was found: to destabilise another region crucial to the now well under way Belt and Road Initiative, Xin-Jiang.
The National Endowment for Democracy, a regime-change arm of the CIA, in accordance with DAESH forces in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, have been promoting Uyghur separatism and Islamic fundamentalism, training jihadists, recruiting vulnerable XinJiang citizens to their fundamentalism. Uyghur terrorists have carried out 2000+ terrorist attacks since the 1990s which has victimised Uyghur and Han alike.
In response, the Communist Party of China has been dealing with the serious problem through education and poverty alleviation, the exact opposite of how the USA has responded to terrorism — dropping bombs on Middle Eastern countries, and conducting torture in places like Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay.
But Western imperialism and the global media mechanism they control makes evidence-free false claims against China, and fabricate baseless lies to manufacture consent for war, exactly like the “Afghan perpetration of 9/11”, the “Iraqi WMDs”, the “Syrian gas attacks”, and the “Libyan mass rapes”.
The countries which condemn China’s policies in XinJiang are a global minority, and all are part of NATO. While all of the world’s Muslim-majority countries applaud China’s response.
FICTIONS
In the past 2 decades, Western powers have mass murdered 27 million Muslims under the flag of “Freedom”, “Democracy”, and the “War on Terror”. The NATO alliance has reduced Muslim cities to rubble, created millions of Muslim refugees, and shaped the social circumstances for the ill treatment of Muslims to spread, and long standing islamophobia and racist discrimination in Europe and USA multiplied and intensified.
For these reasons the narrative of Muslims being oppressed in China is very easy to believe.
Easy to believe, that is, until we consider the source of this story: Radio Free Asia, propaganda arm of the CIA, spreading the claims of Adrian Zenz, who has never been to XinJiang, whose study was funded by an organisation with US intelligence connections. Adrian Zenz is a senior fellow in China studies at the notorious Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, an organization that is notoriously unscrupulous in their outlandishly slanderous claims against socialist countries, and which also blames China for the spread of Covid19. He is a German far-right fundamentalist “born-again” Christian, who feels “led by God” in his crusade against China, as part of his “life long mission to destroy communism”. Zenz declares homosexuality a sickness, and believes Jews that refuse to convert to Christianity will be “wiped out” and put into a “fiery furnace”.
The emotional narrative fits perfectly with the sense of injury and outrage against injustice so prevalent today (most of it of course entirely justified). By mixing the totally fraudulent with the legitimate, the war-mongers are experts at positioning their well-crafted lies to best tug at the heart-strings of good people.
10 of the 55 officially recognised ethnic minority groups in China are Muslim, the largest being the Hui people. There are thousands of mosques all over the country, and Islam is thriving. But Uyghurs are the only ones being allegedly “oppressed”?
There is exactly zero evidence for 1 million Uyghurs in “concentration camps”, nor of any “cultural erasure”, “human rights violations”, “torture”, and even less the unbelievably brazen allegations of “genocide”. There are 10 million Uyghurs in Xin Jiang. 1 million detained would mean almost half the adult male population. Hardly plausible.
The UN never made this announcement. It was the “opinion” of 1 US representative, based on the admitted “guesses” of a “humanitarian watch group” called ”Chinese Human Rights Defenders” based in Washington, working from the research of Adrian Zenz. The number “1 million” was extrapolated from the percentage of people attending the vocational schools in a single village in one part of XinJiang. But unlike if a similar accusation would be made of England or Germany, in which case evidence would of course be demanded, it is publicised by all major news networks without question. That is the double standard that US global hegemony and “full spectrum dominance” affords: all of Western media will publish slander against its ideological enemies and anyone disobedient to their total domination.
Here is a piece detailing this false claim from the publication of award winning independent journalist Max Blumenthal:
FACTS
What does exist, what China has never hidden, are vocational schools and education and career training centers for common criminals as well as individuals infected with extremist fundamentalism with known connection to Turkic separatism and ISIS/DAESH. There is exactly zero evidence for the she-said he-said tales of detainees “forced to drink alcohol and eat pork” under “harsh conditions”. Unlike the routine human rights violations and torture which has been taking place in Guantanamo Bay and numerous US military sites around the world, for which very much evidence exists. In fact, the Communist Party’s peaceful, humane, effective and sustainable solution to violent fundamentalist extremism, the three pronged approach of education, inclusion, and poverty alleviation, has been applauded by foreign Muslim leaders as a shining example for the entire world to learn from and follow.
Uyghurs, just like the other 9 Muslim ethnic groups in China, are entirely free to conduct their religion, with active state protection of their culture, and strong Affirmative Action measures which drastically benefits minorities. The vast majority of Uyghurs are perfectly happy to be part of China, especially with recent drastic rises in standard of living, employment, and wages. It is only a tiny percentage of extremists in Xin Jiang with ties to Daesh, funded by the CIA like the Mujahideen, and indoctrinated by Wahhabi Jihadism, who are agitating for independence and the establishment of “East Turkistan”.
Beards and Burqas have never been part of Uyghur traditional dress, and entirely come from foreign extremist elements from the Middle East. Banning these forms in the context of curing violent extremism that has killed many hundreds in the past decades is entirely justified, because it is Islamic fundamentalism, backed by CIA as part of destabilisation campaigns to create conflict which is the real threat to Uyghur culture.
“Veils and burqas are not the traditional garb of Uighur women and long beards are not the traditional style for young Uighur men. They are however de rigueur for those who have been indoctrinated by the likes of IS and Al-qaeda.”
–– Professor Dennis Etler
In Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, both of which have experienced religious extremism as a result of spread of Wahhabism, their Muslim extremists have gone to fight alongside IS against the Syrian government, they have repressed extremism by cutting off beards, closed down shops selling burqa, and ban Arabic sounding names.
Those are the countries, like China, which have suffered instability and insurgency caused and fanned and Wahhabism. They have every right and even duty to ensure law and order and protect the life and property of citizens to crack down on religions extremism. Not to do so would be a dereliction of duty owed to the public at large.
– Gerry Brown for Counterpunch
But what about the many “first person testimonials” from Uyghur “escapees” about their “horrific experiences”?
Here we must reminded of the tears soaked first person testimony before the UN, of Iraqi soldiers taking Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and smashing them to the ground. The anonymous young woman who made these claims later turned out to be the daughter of the US ambassador, and her story, used to justify the 2nd invasion of Iraq, turned out to be pure fabrication.
Anecdotal evidence, “he said; she said”, is not evidence, and it is both very easy and cost efficient to get people to cry on camera and tell tall tales.
Only with a rigorous understanding of the global class interests at the root of geopolitics can we see the world clearly.
Most of the nations standing behind these baseless accusations are the NATO states, and all are friends of the US empire:
CNN grudgingly reports this, tries their hardest to spin the story against China, but clearly fails:
“In a joint statement to the High Commissioner of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, the nations criticized Beijing for what they described as “disturbing reports of large-scale arbitrary detentions” and “widespread surveillance and restrictions.”
A day later, 37 other countries jumped to Beijing’s defense, with their own letter praising China’s human rights record, and dismissing the reported detention of up to two million Muslims in western China’s Xinjiang region. Nearly half of the signatories were Muslim-majority nations, including Pakistan, Qatar, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, according to the Chinese government.
“Faced with the grave challenge of terrorism and extremism, China has undertaken a series of counter-terrorism and deradicalization measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centers,” the letter said, according to Reuters, which saw a copy of the letter. The letter went on to say that there had been no terrorist attacks in the past three years in the region, and that the people there were happy, fulfilled and secure.”
“…Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest Muslim mass organization, and the world’s Muslim governments have not condemned China’s actions: they know that the US stirs up trouble in every Muslim country. The West is engaged in full-scale irregular war to destabilize China. The US created the Uyghur problem in Xinjiang by sponsoring terrorists there–the same tactics it used in Cuba, Venezuela, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya.”
Global Times: Fifty ambassadors throw weight behind China on Xinjiang
“Iran, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Djibouti and Palestine are among the countries that newly joined to support China’s policies in Xinjiang.
Some other countries also expressed support in their separate letters and press releases. Many of them have seen the real situation in Xinjiang on recent visits.
In the joint letter, the ambassadors gave credit to China’s counter-terrorism and de-radicalization efforts.
They commend China for its economic and social progress, effective counter-terrorism and de-radicalization measures, and strong guarantee of human rights; appreciate the opportunities provided by China for diplomatic envoys, officials of international organizations, and media professionals to visit Xinjiang. They point to the contrast in the views on Xinjiang between those who have visited it and the one portrayed in Western media, and urge the countries to stop using uncorroborated information to make unfounded accusations against China.
The members of the SCO are predominantly Muslim or have sizable Muslim populations. They know and understand the challenges China faces in combatting terrorism and separatism. As a consequence they fully support her efforts to root out the false ideology that underlies it.”
The “Chinese persecution of Muslims in XinJiang” narrative is one in a long series of imperialist fabrications against states disobedient to the global hegemonic order. Exactly the same as the Western accusation of the “Tibetan genocide” in the early 1950s, a narrative which Western human rights groups and prestigious Western institutions at the time, 1950s, all endorsed, and later completely exposed as pure fabrication (though very much falsehoods about the CPC liberation of Tibet is still wildly popular in the colonial countries). It is a lie like all the previous lies designed to demonise these countries, to provide justification for economic and military violence, toward the hopeful toppling of their governments and bending them to the will of the US empire.
Before we continue to deconstruct in detail some major examples of these elaborate lies, here is a great overview of XinJiang and Uyghur culture, providing a realistic and balanced picture and crucial context: violent separatists are an extreme minority:
World Affairs: XinJiang and Uyghurs — What You’re Not Being Told
HIDDEN REALITY OF JIHADIST TERROR IN XINJIANG
Since 2000, there have been more than 200 violent terrorist incidents in Xinjiang and beyond, as part of a long term destabilisation campaign conducted by the US against China.
New Eastern Outlook: China’s Uyghur Problem — The Unmentioned Part
“Since 2013…Uyghur soldiers have gone from combat alongside Al Qaeda in Syria and returned to China’s Xinjiang where they have carried out various terrorist acts. This is the tip of a nasty NATO-linked project to plant the seeds of terror and unrest in China. Xinjiang is a lynchpin of China’s Belt Road Initiative, the crossroads of strategic oil and gas pipelines from Kazakhstan, Russia and a prime target of CIA intrigue since decades.
The West and especially Washington is engaged in full-scale irregular war against the stability of China.”
New Eastern Outlook: China’s Xinjiang Problem — Made in USA
“with US-backed NGOs using Uyghur’s as proxies in what is basically a terror campaign by with the ultimate goal of seizing Chinese territory, it is not Beijing that poses the greatest threat to the culture and traditions of the Uyghur people, but rather the NGOs “protecting Uyghur rights” while hiding a proxy war serving foreign interests behind them.”
21 Century Wire: The Truth Behind China’s ‘Uyghur Problem’
“What is known is the fact that NATO intelligence agencies, including that of Turkey and of the US, along with Saudi Arabia, have been involved in recruiting and deploying thousands of Chinese Uyghur Muslims to join Al Qaeda and other terror groups in Syria in recent years.”
New Eastern Outlook: US Fueling Terrorism in China
“The US National Endowment for Democracy’s own website admits to meddling all across China and does so so extensively that it felt the necessity to break down its targeting of China into several regions including mainland, Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang/East Turkistan.
NED — by recognizing the term “East Turkistan” — is implicitly admitting that it supports separatism in western China, even as the US decries separatists and alleged annexations in places like Donbass, Ukraine and Russian Crimea.
Monthly Review: The entanglement between Islamic Fundamentalism and Imperialism
“How Wahhabism was promoted and supported by western imperialists to serve the western interests. A must read for understanding how the Muslim world has been divided and ruled.”
“It is very clear from the historical record that without British help neither Wahhabism nor the House of Saud would be in existence today. Wahhabism is a British-inspired fundamentalist movement in Islam. Through its defense of the House of Saud, the US also supports Wahhabism directly and indirectly regardless of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Wahhabism is violent, right wing, ultra-conservative, rigid, extremist, reactionary, sexist, and intolerant…”
The West gave full support to the Wahhabis in the 1980s. They were employed, financed and armed, after the Soviet Union was dragged into Afghanistan and into a bitter war that lasted from 1979 to 1989. As a result of this war, the Soviet Union collapsed, exhausted both economically and psychologically.
The Mujahedeen, who were fighting the Soviets as well as the left-leaning government in Kabul, were encouraged and financed by the West and its allies. They came from all corners of the Muslim world, to fight a ‘Holy War’ against Communist infidels.
According to the US Department of State archives:
“Contingents of so-called Afghan Arabs and foreign fighters who wished to wage jihad against the atheist communists. Notable among them was a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden, whose Arab group eventually evolved into al-Qaeda.”
Muslim radical groups created and injected into various Muslim countries by the West included al-Qaeda, but also, more recently, ISIS (also known as ISIL). ISIS is an extremist army that was born in the ‘refugee camps’ on the Syrian/Turkish and Syrian/Jordanian borders, and which was financed by NATO and the West to fight the Syrian (secular) government of Bashar al-Assad.
Such radical implants have been serving several purposes. The West uses them as proxies in the wars it is fighting against its enemies — the countries that are still standing in the way to the Empire’s complete domination of the world. Then, somewhere down the road, after these extremist armies ‘get totally out of control’ (and they always will), they could serve as scarecrows and as justification for the ‘The War On Terror’, or, like after ISIS took Mosul, as an excuse for the re-engagement of Western troops in Iraq.
Stories about the radical Muslim groups have constantly been paraded on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, or shown on television monitors, reminding readers ‘how dangerous the world really is’, ‘how important Western engagement in it is’, and consequently, how important surveillance is, how indispensable security measures are, as well as tremendous ‘defense’ budgets and wars against countless rogue states.
From a peaceful and creative civilization, that used to lean towards socialism, the Muslim nations and Islam itself, found itself to be suddenly derailed, tricked, outmaneuvered, infiltrated by foreign religious and ideological implants, and transformed by the Western ideologues and propagandists into one ‘tremendous threat’; into the pinnacle and symbol of terrorism and intolerance.”
21st Century Wire: 3,500 Uighurs given Turkish passports, and fighting alongside Jibhat Al Nusra in Syria.
Combating Terrorism Center: The Seventh Stage of Terrorism in China .
Here is a good article on Wikipedia on the true status of Muslims in today’s China: Islam in China
“Information about the status of Muslims in today’s China. As can be seen Muslims in China have great latitude in the practice of their religion. The problem is not Islam or the freedom to practice it, but as elsewhere the perversion of Islam by forces with ulterior non-religious motives.
In Xinjiang this is the promotion of separatism among the Uighur minority. Separatist Uighurs, who are a minority within a minority, use Salafi jihadism as a cover for their attempt to dismember China and set up a US sponsored East Turkistan. Jihadist-Salafism is a transnational religious-political ideology based on a belief in “physical” jihadism and the Salafi movement of returning to what adherents believe to be true Sunni Islam. Salafism is used as a cover for Uighur separatism and as a tool to recruit young Uighurs to terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and IS.
It has been reported in the Western media that there is a settlement of upwards of 16,000 Uighurs in the Idlib Governorate of Syria, that last stronghold of the Syrian “opposition.” These overseas Uighurs and their supporters in Xinjiang represent a clear and present danger to all Chinese people regardless of their ethnic identity or religious affiliation. In many countries Salafist oriented madrasas serve as proving grounds and recruiting centers for terrorism. It would be suicidal to allow such institutions to operate freely in Xinjiang, although traditional Muslim madrasas are allowed elsewhere.”
– Dr. Dennis Etler
CHINA’S RESPONSE: EDUCATION
This piece from National Public Radio, a premiere US progressive platform, was written after their reporters visited XinJiang and conducted many interviews. It uses language to try very hard to spin the story against China, but none the less clearly illustrates that the so called “concentration camps” are nothing more than schools. The students are common criminals as well as those with known connections to fundamentalist extremism, and they go home on the weekends.
TIME Magazine: China Takes Diplomats to Tour ‘Re-Education Camps’ as Pressure Builds Over Mass Detention of Uighurs
“Calls have grown in the West to pressure President Xi Jinping’s government to stop the alleged human-rights abuses against the Uighurs. U.S. politicians have proposed freezing the travel and assets of top Chinese officials including Xinjiang Communist Party chief Chen Quanguo. But it has so far escaped serious criticism from officials in the Islamic world, leading U.S. Secretary Mike Pompeo to blast Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for not speaking out.”
Irish Times: China defends Xinjiang camps as it takes reporters on tour
In recent days, a similar visit was arranged for diplomats from 12 non-western countries, including Russia, Indonesia, India, Thailand and Kazakhstan, according to Xinjiang officials and foreign diplomats.
Senior officials, including Shohrat Zakir, Xinjiang’s governor and the region’s most senior Uighur, dismissed what they called “slanderous lies” about the facilities.
Speaking in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, Shohrat Zakir said the centres had been “extremely effective” in reducing extremism by teaching residents about the law and helping them learn Mandarin.
“As time goes by, the people in the education training mechanism will be fewer and fewer,” he said.
Shohrat Zakir said he could not say exactly how many people were in the facilities.
“One million people, this number is rather frightening. One million people in the education mechanism — that’s not realistic. That’s purely a rumour,” he said, stressing they were temporary educational facilities.
The International News: Egyptian media delegates provide a detailed insight of the situation in Xinjiang
“I found that the training centers are completely unlike the reports of some Western media, which said they mistreated learners,” said Kamal Gaballa, who visited several training centers in places such as Hotan and Kashgar. Trainees study language and law, and learn how to treat others kindly. This great measure is an effective means to get rid of extremism. I will explain all of what I see here truthfully to the Egyptian people.”
World Bank Statement on Review of Project in Xinjiang, China
Very recently the likes of Marco Rubio accused China of diverting funds from the World Bank to “persecute” Uyghurs and put them in “concentration camps”. World Bank just released this official statement:
““The World Bank’s work is driven by core principles of inclusion, with special consideration for the protection of minorities and other vulnerable peoples. When allegations are made, the World Bank takes them seriously and reviews them thoroughly. In line with standard practice, immediately after receiving a series of serious allegations in August 2019 in connection with the Xinjiang Technical and Vocational Education and Training Project, the Bank launched a fact-finding review, and World Bank senior managers traveled to Xinjiang to gather information directly. After receiving the allegations, no disbursements were made on the project.
The team conducted a thorough review of project documents, engaged in discussions with project staff, and visited schools directly financed by the project, as well as their partner schools that were the subject of allegations. The review did not substantiate the allegations.”
TIME Magazine: If China Is Anti-Islam, Why Are These Chinese Muslims Enjoying a Faith Revival?
This piece, published by Time Magazine before the current wave of anti-China propaganda, still tries to spin the situation in Xin Jiang, but does make it clear that there is no Islamophobia on the part of the CPC.
“With the bloodshed in Xinjiang escalating — the most recent clash late last month, which the Chinese government labeled a “violent terrorist attack,” saw nearly 100 people killed, according to an official count — authorities have intensified a crackdown on spiritual expression by Uighurs (EDIT: disallowing non-Uyghur dress such as long beards and burqas imported from the Middle East). But this does not mean that Beijing is curtailing Islam nationwide. Indeed, members of the Muslim Hui community are enjoying a flowering of faith in what is, officially, still an atheist communist nation.”
CHINA’S RESPONSE: ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND CULTURAL PROTECTION
Besides education, Beijing understands that underdevelopment and poverty forms the material basis for the breeding of violent extremism, and has implemented many large scale projects to foster prosperity and integration of this remote region.
China Daily: Xinjiang to invest $70 billion in infrastructure in 2018
$70 billion for infrastructure development in Xinjiang; the CCP actively alleviating poverty, improving life conditions, and combating inequality in the region:
XinHua News: Xinjiang lifts over 500,000 out of poverty in 2018
At the same time, the state actively represses islamophobia:
Global Times: China bans anti-Islam words on social media
460,000 Xin Jian residents in extreme poverty have also been relocated by the government to places with more economic opportunities.
“The influx of Han migrants from other provinces further complicates ethnic relationships in Xinjiang. Because migrants and ethnic minorities are both disadvantaged compared to local Han Chinese, they tend to compete against each other, escalating inter-ethnic tensions and conflicts. While the Chinese government has never been sympathetic towards migrants (Solinger 1999), for a long time the authorities were quite sensitive to the problems of local minorities in Xinjiang caused by the inflow of Han.
A series of socioeconomic policies have been implemented to favour minorities with respect to family planning, college admission, job recruitment and promotions, and representation in legislative and other government bodies (Sautman 1998). A policy known as the Xinjiang Six Principles set a 60 percent quota for Uyghur in college admission, job recruitment and army enlistment (valued in China as an important avenue for social mobility). Law enforcement for many crimes is also more lenient towards Uyghur in Xinjiang (He 2009). “
Dealing with “real diversity” is exactly what China has done. There are 21 universities scattered around China built specifically for ethnic minorities. Ethnic minorities were exempt from the one child policy. Like the Soviet Union before it, the PRC is an alternate action empire. They just don’t want backwards feudal practices like families forcing their kids to reject modern medicine, jihadism, or slavery to take root again in China.
“Cultural Protection and Development in Xinjiang” (November 2018)
By: The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China
This paper details efforts in the following areas:
— Protection of cultural heritage yields results.
— Archeological findings attract wide attention.
— Protection of ancient books has been strengthened.
— Intangible cultural heritage is effectively protected.
— Folk cultures are respected and preserved.
The protection of Uyghur culture and identity is a small part of the larger and historic affirmative action policies implemented ever since the beginning of modern China.
After victory, the Communist Party reversed the Han-chauvinist policies of the Nationalist Party which ordained that anyone living within national borders should be assimilated to Han culture. How ever, because Han chauvinist and prejudiced attitudes still exist, as well as many cases of discrimination, the CPC has implemented anti-chauvinist policies which suppressing Han-supremacy, protect ethnic minority cultures and identities, and promotes the economic empowerment of minorities. These are so comprehensive and far-reaching that affirmative action policies in the West are trifling in comparison:
— Ethnic minorities have always been exempt from the “1-Child” policy, which was only applied to the ethnic majority of Han people. This is the major reason for Uyghur population having grown at a pace 12 X faster than that of Han in the past 70 years.
— Local governments of ethnic minority regions are all headed by members of the ethnic minority group, without exception.
— Free elementary, middle and high-school-level boarding schools and special college-preparatory classes for minority children.
— Minority children can get into a university with exam scores 20 to 30 points below the minimum score for Han children.
— A separate network of universities exists only for minority students. Similar to HBCUs in the US, but better.
— No-interest loans are offered for small minority businesses.
— Businesses are officially encouraged to hire minorities.
— A comprehensive, bilingual-education program aims at helping minorities learn both their own languages as well as Mandarin. Meanwhile, scholars are creating alphabets for minority languages that had no writing systems to help ensure that these languages do not die.
— Han people living in ethnic minority regions are required to learn the minority languages. For example, Han living in Tibet are required to learn Tibetan.
WESTERN PROPAGANDA
Here is a twitter thread exposing the sources behind an Australian “documentary film” about the “Chinese Concentration Camps”:
Here is another exposing one of who knows how many hundreds of fake-news generators on the CIA’s pay-roll:
Keep in mind these are examples of easy to debunk fake-news, noticeable by anyone armed with google who takes only a cursory glance under the surface.
And here is another blatant example of how the most progressive, liberal, and even leftist media in the West is part of the anti-China, anti-socialist smear campaigns: Democracy Now!, a major liberal/leftist media channel in the USA, recently published 2 pieces condemning Chinese treatment of Uyghurs in Xin Jinang:
Re-education Camps, Infiltration, Surveillance: China Criticized over Persecution of Uyghur Muslims
But their primary source is this woman, who works extensively with US government agencies, Department of Defence, Homeland Security, and is a consultant at Guantanamo Bay:
The following are a very few of the endless articles accusing China of crimes against Muslims; any cursory google search will bring up hundreds:
Washington Examiner: State Department Compares China to Nazi Germany
Washington Examiner: State Department Preparing For Clash of Civilizations with China
ChannelNewsAsia: China Putting Minority Muslims in Concentration Camps — US Says
From a man who has clearly always deeply cared about and championed the interests of Muslims (sarcasm):
Financial Times: Donald Trump presses allies to confront China over Uighur rights
As usual, most of the stories of XinJiang horror come from Radio Free Asia:
“Radio Free Asia (RFA) is a private, nonprofit international broadcasting corporation[2] that broadcasts and publishes online news, information, and commentary to listeners in East Asia while “advancing the goals of U.S. foreign policy.”[3][4] Founded in the 1950s as an anti-communist propaganda operation,[5] RFA is currently funded by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), an independent agency of the United States government[6] responsible for all non-military, international broadcasting sponsored by the U.S. government (such as Radio Free Europe), which appoints the board of RFA. RFA distributes content in nine Asian languages for audiences in six countries.” — wikipedia
This is how it works: RFA is one of the strong arms of the US in East Asia, which exaggerates, distorts, and fabricates inaccurate, partially true, and blatantly false stories against socialist nations, then Reuters, New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, CBS, Buzzfeed, et al., republishes them, with RFA as source.
Even people who know that Western media is biased usually have very little inkling of the sheer SCALE of propaganda operations of the empire which controls near 100% of mainstream news sources, and its overwhelming, ubiquitous, and totalising influence on public opinion. Before XinJiang and HongKong it was Falung Gong, Tibetan separatists, Tian An Men, etc., etc., etc., all part of the ceaseless effort to take back what the colonial empires had lost.
A major recent book release includes a thorough debunking of the imperialist lies:
