NOTICE: Since this article was first published, The Prog has received a number of complaints about the article and the claims made herein. At this time, The Prog would like to acknowledge that in its minimization of the Chinese government’s oppression of minority groups in Xinjiang, and in its use of the tu quoque fallacy to discredit international criticisms of that oppression, this piece does not rise to the standards of accuracy and logical argumentation that The Prog strives to uphold. The Prog wishes to reaffirm its commitment as a platform for the expression of a multi-tendency progressive movement founded on bedrock values of anti-racism, inclusivity, and anti-imperialism. The expression of diverse perspectives is necessary for the progression of human society, but The Prog will not support the expression of perspectives which serve as apologia for repressive governments intolerant of minorities and alternative political views, including those on the left. At the same time, it is necessary for publications like The Prog to recognize, admit to, and remember their mistakes in order that they not be repeated in the future. For this reason, The Prog will allow this article to remain on its website, given that it is contextualized by this notice and this article by one of our staff writers, which offers a detailed response and rebuttal to many of the points raised below.
Signed,
Editors and Writers of The Prog
On October 10, 1990, 15 year old Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥ tearfully recounted her harrowing experience of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in front of packed congressional hearing. Supported by Amnesty International, Nayirah’s story of Iraqi soldiers storming Kuwaiti hospitals and ripping babies out incubators shocked America. Her testimony was widely republished in the media and became a rallying cry for politicians and the public alike in favor of America’s entrance into the Gulf War. The only problem was that her story was not true. Two years after her testimony, it was discovered that Nayirah’s accusations of Iraqi infanticide was a fabrication coordinated by American PR firms, the Kuwaiti government, and her father Saud Al-Sabah, then the American ambassador to Kuwait. Sadly, fabricated atrocities like Nayirah’s testimony are not unique. For decades, American intelligence organizations have worked closely with human rights organizations and the mass media to manufacture support for American imperialism. To justify the invasion of Iraq, Colin Powell held up a vial in front of the UN to prove Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (invading American forces found no weapons of mass destruction). To justify the invasion of Libya, Hillary Clinton stated that mass rapes had occurred in the region (multiple organizations found no evidence of mass rapes). And most recently, to justify the coup in Bolivia, the OAS accused of Evo Morales of election fraud (multiple independent investigation found no evidence of the OAS’s claims). The American government has constantly coordinated with the media to plunder and destroy foreign countries on dubious claims of atrocities that are often dwarfed in scale by the US’s own actions. So why should we be so quick to believe it when America now claims that China, one of America’s largest and most threatening global rivals, is committing genocide of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang?
Westerners can sometimes forget just how geographically large and culturally diverse China is. Part of this is due to the fact that, over its 5000 year imperial history, many disparate ethnic groups have conglomerated into the cultural group, Han, that is dominant today. Another part of that is due to a tendency of orientalism to homogenize large sects of Asia. As such, the West tends to think of China as a predominantly Eastern nation, in geopolitical contention with the Koreas and Japan exclusively. But China also borders Kazakhstan, Russia, Pakistan, and even Afghanistan. Western China is directly subject to the ongoing violence in Middle East caused largely by historic and ongoing Western imperialism. Because China borders countries directly affected by fundamentalism, China’s claim that it is facing increasing radicalization of some of its Islamic citizens in its western provinces is materially well-founded. In fact, Al Queda and ISIS both publicly declared war on China in as early as 2014, with Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi naming Xinjiang specifically as a region ISIS should seek to occupy. The existence of terrorism in Xinjiang is something even the US has acknowledged is true; the US government has designated the East Turkestan Islamic Movement a terrorist organization for working with ISIS.
The influence of Islam in Western Chinese culture immediately suggests that broad claims of systemic Chinese islamophobia are untrue. In fact, in 2014, Time magazine found that Hui Muslims in Xinjiang and across China were actually experiencing a faith revival. In addition to greater public practices of faith, Hui participation in the Hajj has significantly increased, partially due to China’s state sponsored Hajj programs. Islamic holidays such as Eid Al Fitr, the end of Ramadan, are widely and publicly celebrated, even by Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
With the geographical and cultural context of China in mind, then, let’s take a closer look at the specific accusations America has made against China. In January, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo formally declared China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims an “ongoing genocide,” claiming that over 1 million Uyghurs in the area were subjected to “arbitrary imprisonment, … forced sterilization, torture, … [and] draconian restrictions on freedom of religion or belief,” among other accusations. Biden’s new Secretary of State Antony Blinken agrees with Pompeo’s claims. The accusations of forced sterilization and internment of up to 1 million Uyghur Muslims made by both the Trump and the Biden administration can be traced back to a study of the region performed by German anthropologist Adrian Zenz. In fact, it is extremely hard to find media about Xinjiang that does not lead directly back to Zenz’s study; NPR cites his work, so does Human Rights Watch and the New York Times.
Therefore, it should raise significant alarms that Zenz is a Christian fundamentalist whose book Worthy to Escape: Why All Believers Will Not Be Raptured Before the Tribulation argues that postmodernism, gender equality, non-violent parenting, and LGBTQ tolerance are threats to Christianity. Zenz claims that Jews who do not convert to Christianity will be “refined” by God in a “fiery furnace” during the Rapture. He also writes that hate crime laws barring discrimination of LGBTQ individuals were tools of the Antichrist designed to persecute true believers of Christianity. On Twitter, Zenz stated that Hitler’s control mechanisms were popular because they “reduced crime and rid society of unpopular minorities.” In addition, Zenz works for the Victims of Communism Foundation, an ultra-conservative organization that remarkably claims that every worldwide death caused by COVID-19 is the result of Communism. Granted, Zenz’s being a Christian fundamentalist and a dogmatic anti-Communist does not mean that his work is inaccurate. Indeed, other investigations made by the New York Times, Buzzfeed, and the BBC, among others, have claimed to substantiate some of the accusations made by Zenz. But look closer, and you’ll almost always find a who’s who of CIA front groups, defense contractors, and Western government sources that all frequently lie about subjects of imperial domination.
While sourcing from this unholy alliance is not necessarily a death blow to accusations of genocide, the regular occurrences of mistranslations, misleading statements, and unsubstantiated claims certainly can be. According to other investigations into the primary source data, a math error made by Zenz significantly overinflates the rate of IUD usage in Xinjiang, casting some doubt on his claims of forced sterilization. Additionally, while China’s draconian one-child policy constituted a definite human rights violation, ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs were notably exempt from the policy. And Zenz contradicted his own claim that minority population growth in Xinjiang was falling by comically tweeting a zoom-in on a diagram that indicated a rise in the Uyghur population in comparison to the Han.
Other outlets like the New York Times report on the leaked documents revealing Xinjiang policy on the treatment of Uyghur Muslims are no better. While the sensationalist headline implies a vigorous crackdown on all ethnic minorities, reading the article itself reveals that the internal document only verifies the Chinese explanation for what is going on: vocational schools for a region that has extremist elements and a history of terrorist attacks. The document even says that “local officials meet [family members] as soon as they returned [to China] ‘to show humane concern'” for the feelings of those who have family members in the schools. According to the New York Times, President Xi even “warned against overreacting to natural friction between Uighurs and Han Chinese, the nation’s dominant ethnic group, and rejected proposals to try to eliminate Islam entirely in China,” denouncing calls for restrictions on the religion “biased, even wrong.”
Contradictions of all sorts abound in Xinjiang pieces. A BBC video documenting the re-education camps shows Uyghur script on the walls and participants of the school returning home at the end of the day, countering the claims the reporters make in their own video. Satellite investigations of supposed camp buildings done by Buzzfeed and the ASPI were countered by Chinese close up shots of those same buildings, revealing them to be schools or markets. There’s a whole cottage industry if re-appropriating videos to claim they are footage of Chinese atrocities, when they may, in fact, be videos of a Taiwanese BDSM club. And many of the Western media’s claims (including Zenz’s) are based entirely on interviews with defectors, a group that has historically proven dubious due to financial incentives for sensational headlines.
What’s remarkable is that even if every claim made by Zenz and the West were true, for America, of all countries, to call the treatment of Uyghurs a genocide is such a bad faith claim that it should immediately call America’s motives into question. Taking the reported 1 million interned Uyghurs at face value, which is 10% of the Chinese Uyghur population, America would have China beat in both the proportion and the absolute scale of its incarceration of African Americans. By some estimates, 30% of all African-Americans can expect to be imprisoned some time in their life, which amounts to the interment of 14 million total African Americans. By all metrics, what America has done and is doing to black and indigenous people is far worse than any action taken by China. Just because America is brutal and violent does not mean China is absolved of any crimes; if reports of Chinese repression of Uyghurs is true, it is undoubtedly a grave human rights abuse. But it is not immaterial that the accusing party is responsible for even worse offenses to its own ethnic minorities and to Muslims worldwide. If America actually cared about the lives of Muslims or thought that mass interment was genocide, it would immediately stop the torture of innocent people in Guantanamo, the plundering wars in the Middle East, and the mass incarceration of Black and Brown Americans.
It is no coincidence that the mounting Western claims against China’s policies in Xinjiang have come after the West spectacularly failed to properly deal with coronavirus, placing the Western economy in dangerous precarity. Anti-China propaganda in general has heightened significantly after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. America is It is no longer uncommon to see obscenely ridiculous headlines from “reputable” national outlets, such as “Has China Done Too Well Against COVID-19,” “Developing Nations are First in Line for China’s COVID Vaccine. Analysts Question Beijing’s Intent,” or “Coronavirus Exposes Core Flaws, and Few Strengths, in China’s Governance,” while in America, the government effectively murders American citizens at the rate of a 9/11 every day, cracks down on honest reporting of COVID numbers, and continues to fail dramatically at rolling out vaccines (except for the politicians, of course) at a rate slow enough to reach full immunity in 7 years. Similarly, when video was released showing Australian soldiers mocking and murdering a teenage Afghan civilian, there was greater criticism in the media of a Chinese artist’s political cartoon then there was of the actual war crime. Anti-Chinese bias can even be seen in what Western media chooses to ignore; France has begun to not only monitor its Muslim population, but also plans to send radicalized fundamentalists to re-education centers, a strategy that has received very little criticism in the media despite being nearly the same as the stated plan of Chinese officials.
American officials have even publicly declared that internally destabilizing Xinjiang is an active geopolitical strategy. In a 2018 speech at the Ron Paul Institute Media and War Conference, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson stated that “the CIA would want to destabilize China” and “[forming] an unrest and [joining] with those Uyghurs in pushing the Han Chinese in Beijing from internal places rather than external” is the best way to do it. In fact, “there are not a handful of Americans who realize that … for these strategic reasons, which are well thought out, [the American military] is going to be in Afghanistan for the next half century” Wilkerson admits.
It is not clear that Americans can even productively ameliorate these regional conflicts. What are our options? Sanctions? Trade restrictions, even “targeted” ones, would predominantly hurt ordinary, innocent Chinese civilians, not to mention the ripple effects this would have on American workers. Even targeted sections, with what limited evidence they have of working, also would not even stop whatever policies are ongoing in China. Outright hot conflict? An invading American force would almost assuredly be more brutal. After all, the American army created open air slave markets in Libya to “free” Libyans from Ghaddafi.
While the accusations the West has made about Xinjiang are almost assuredly in bad faith, that does not mean the region is free of contradictions. Even though China is facing legitimate threats of violence in Xinjiang, such as a 2009 Uyghur riot in Urumqi that reportedly included violent threats against Hui and Han residents, their response may not be entirely humane. Even removing the most dubious and exaggerated claims of forced sterilization and extremely widescale internment, there are worrying signs in the public stances of Chinese officials that seem to be particularly eager to surveil, arrest, and racially profile Uyghurs. But when 50 ambassadors from neighboring Muslim countries have supported China, EU leaders have been publicly invited to visit, several Muslim diplomats have actually visited Xinjiang, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation actually commends China’s treatment of Muslims, at what point should we realize that America’s accusations against China are in service of a larger imperial project? While we can recognize that China’s treatment of Uyghurs Muslims is imperfect, we must unequivocally oppose the manufacturing of consent for imperialist aggression in China.
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