Is China Committing Genocide In Xinjiang?
On the last day it could, the Trump State Department officially declared that the Peoples’ Republic of China is committing “genocide” in Xinjiang Province against the mostly Sunni Muslin Uighr minority, the previously dominant group in the province. New SecState Antony Blinken has publicly stated that he agrees with this judgment. However, reportedly the State Department is reviewing this decision, as it is doing with many other parts of US foreign policy, including such things thought to be fairly straightforward such as rejoining the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran that Biden ran on rejoining and should. So whether or not this last minute action by Pompeo at State remains official or not is up in the air at the moment.
There is no question that the PRC’s policy towards the Uighurs is simply awful, not remotely defensible. Ir involves having large numbers of people in reeducation camps as well as lots of torture. This is combined with the more general program of simply having Han people fully dominating the province, which parallels a similar program in Tibet, although somehow currently the central government is not engaging in quite as unpleasant programs regarding the native ethnic Tibetan population as is happening regarding the Uighurs.
Which brings us to this question of whether or not the indubitably bad things the central PRC government is doing to the Uighurs constitutes genocide or not. Prominent comparative economist, Gerard Roland, who knows a great deal about China and is at UC-Berkeley, has put up a post on Facebook arguing that it is not. His argument is that the true meaning of the term involves actual killing, a systematic effort to actually kill off members of a group, with what happened in the Holocaust and more recently in Rwanda, being prime examples. If this is the criterion then, no, for all of its horror, what is happening in Xinjiang is not genocide. Roland argues that the term should not be watered down from its more horrific meaning, with indeed genocide something that does happen and can happen again. So it should be saved for those fully true cases. I happen to agree with this.
The argument for why the term is appropriate takes the form of saying that trying to exterminate a culture deserves to have the term be applied to it. That is not a completely ridiculous argument. And it does seem that the PRC central government is certainly out to massively damage and reduce Uighur culture, although perhaps not completely eliminating it. I know that they do have Uighurs represented in national bodies, who show up in ethnic clothing, and so on. So I do not think they are out to completely obliterate the culture. But it is clear that Uighurs will be expected to acknowledge the dominance and superiority of the central government rule and culture. But it does not seem that there is a move to completely end the culture, and more importantly, for all the camps and torture, no effort to actually physically elminate the Uighurs by killing them.
I understand that the Biden administration faces a difficult decision about what line to take with China. Relations have deteriorated between China and the US and also with many other nations. I do not wish to go through all the issues that are out there, but while Trump engaged in a lot of unnecessarily aggressive actions, such as his trade war, it is also the case that China has engaged in various actions that have made its neighbors less happy with it, such as aggressive actions on borders and claims on territories legally belonging to other nations. There are clearly grounds for the Biden administration to take a less friendly position than was taken during the Obama administration. But there are many areas from dealing with climate change to dealing with terrorists and also the pandemic where there are grounds for cooperation. By all reports Biden seeks some kind of reasonably balanced approach. That will be hard to achieve, and there will be hard decisions coming up, such as whether the US will lead a move to boycott next Winter’s Olympics in Beijing over the Uighur issue. Clearly the prelude to that and some other issues will be how this review about the genocide question is resolved. I understand many will be unhappy and critical, but I hope that they undo this last minute Trump admin decision.
Barkley Rosser
“Ir involves having”
It involves
Barkley
words are words. defind by the way people use them.
if there are abuses against people of sufficient horror and scale that ordinary people call it genocide, then that’s what the word means, whatever it meant to the people who first used it.
you appear to be saying “let’s not argue about ‘oo tortured ‘oo” in an efffort to eliminate a people’s identity and covert them to “good germans.”
i happen to not agree.
i am not sure of the usefulness of trying to use our moral credibility to persuade China to abandon a policy it deems in it’s
national interest. But if I find myself unwilling to buy chinese toys because i believe the reports of “genocide” i will feel a little cleaner at the end of the day.
I have too little education and think slowly, so please forgive me, but when the people of China are attacked as in this essay, I think the bases for the attacks should be carefully referenced so the documentation is clear.
There is article after article describing just how well the people of Xinjiang have been treated for years. Foreign observers, Muslim observers, have repeatedly praised the comprehensive and inclusive development of Xinjiang. Poverty in Xinjiang has been ended. Social-economic well-being is found through the region. Xinjiang has been entirely peaceful for more than 4 years now.
Please document the supposed problems, the supposed abuses, so that I can understand the reality of the problems.
A reader commented here about the “disgusting” Chinese diet, but I could not understand. Please explain to me, with documentation, what warrants such a description of the diet of 1.4 billion.
Please help me understand these condemnations of the people of China. Please help.
Please explain in a way a slow thinking person like me can understand, why the Chinese deserve such condemnation.
As for the essay, I think it is superb even if there is no documentation. I mean no criticism of any person here, only praise.
Anne
here we go again?
i meant to say that i, I, find their diet disgusting. I don’t eat dogs or pangolins. I understand that in a country on the edge of starvation people learn to eat what they can. I do not condemn them.
anne
in case you haven’t heard the story: some American Indians found the Lewis and Clark expedition’s eating of dogs disgusting.
Been to China many times for business reasons and to explore and talk to the plants we had there. Ate Chinese with our plant sponsors and ate KFC at The Wall north of Beijing and just past the Ming tombs. My Chinese associates loved KFC.
China is a mix of many cultural dining habits. Yes and there are some things I will not eat the same as when I am at home. Enough!
Interesting article at “Foreign Affairs” mag. “How the WTO Changed China”
I referred to no reader by name, only to a comment made that found the diet of the Chinese “disgusting.” There was no explanation, no documentation. There were other comments that condemned the Chinese, but with no confirming reference. I am sure the comments were sincere and just used them as examples of writing on China that is severely critical but with no evident justification or support.
Since education in Mongolia or Xinjiang, for instance, is in both the regional language and Mandarin and includes English language study, I am confused as to what cultural suppression could be about. There are Muslim temples, for instance, through Xinjiang. Dress from children to adult is often but not always traditional. Food is traditional and also of other regions and countries.
Poverty has been ended in Xinjiang and Mongolia and other regions. There is new housing and utilities for people from previously isolated and poor villages. Health care, employment, social security….
I simply think writers should explain and document why China needs to be condemned, however I surely respect writers no matter how harsh the words may seem to me.
A writer refers to torture in writing about China. This writer is superb, but I find the word torture disturbing and I would like specific references and documentation. I know of no such “torture,” but I am of little education. Please do help me understand.
I remember the New York Times referring to “the genocide Olympics” to be held in Beijing in 2008, yes, 2008. I really want to understand such language, but I have never understood. 2008? Yes, 2008. Now it is 2021. Are we to read the same? I want to understand, but I am slow of learning and still do not understand.
Anne,
Your comments on the treatment of the Sunni Muslin Uighr by the Chinese is beyond the pale. Simply ridiculous propaganda.
And one more thing you have held over from the days of EV. Chinese have not ended poverty in Xinjiang and Mongolia and other regions. They have ended extreme poverty. Huge difference and your years long abuse of that is sickening.
This:
“They have ended extreme poverty.”
is true.
And the idea that you can ignore facts like this show you should never be listened to about China in any way, shape or form. You are horribly biased.
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is “deeply disturbed” by reports of systematic rape and sexual abuse against women in internment camps for ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region and there must be serious consequences for atrocities committed there, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday.
A BBC report earlier on Wednesday said women in the camps were subject to rape, sexual abuse and torture. The British broadcaster said “several former detainees and a guard have told the BBC they experienced or saw evidence of an organized system of mass rape, sexual abuse and torture.”
Asked to comment, a State Department spokeswoman said: “We are deeply disturbed by reports, including first-hand testimony, of systematic rape and sexual abuse against women in internment camps for ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang.”
The spokeswoman reiterated U.S. charges that China has committed “crimes against humanity and genocide” in Xinjiang and added: “These atrocities shock the conscience and must be met with serious consequences.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-usa/u-s-deeply-disturbed-by-reports-of-systematic-rape-of-muslims-in-china-camps-idUSKBN2A338W
And the idea that you can ignore facts like this show you should never be listened to about China in any way, shape or form. You are horribly biased.
[ Remember, please, it is essential that I be insulted and demeaned and vilified, no matter how polite I am. Please do continue to insult and demean me, because I surely deserve that and I would deserve to be smashed to bits if I were in the presence of writers here.
Please, continue the insults. ]
Remember, smashing me is important, so do continue.
I am so grateful.
The BBC report in question is false, being given to the BBC by a group that is committed to destroying China and has repeatedly invented such reports. But, I do appreciate the reference.
These are just the type of reports that were used during the 1930s to inflame people against a German minority ethnic group. Vilifying a people is tragic and very, very dangerous.
[ Carry on with the insults now. ]
You deserve to be insulted. Just continue to swallow what Xi and his thugs tell you.
”
Gulzira Auelkhan, a Kazakh who was also detained for 18 months, said her job was to remove the clothes of young Uighur women chosen and paid for by Chinese men and handcuff them so they could not move. “Then I would leave the women in the room and a man would enter — some Chinese man from outside or policeman. I sat silently next to the door, and when the man left the room I took the woman for a shower,” she said.
An estimated 1 million Uighurs have been held in what the Chinese government claims are “re-education camps” over the past decade.
The Communist Party has claimed the facilities, which are heavily fortified, are necessary to combat terrorism after isolated acts of violence occurred between 2011 and 2014. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute used satellite imagery in September to find the Chinese government had been expanding its detention centres in the remote region despite its claims that all detainees had “graduated” from the vocational education programs.
Ziawudun told the BBC the camp spent hours singing patriotic songs and watching patriotic TV programs about Chinese President Xi Jinping.”
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/horrific-abuses-uighur-report-reveals-first-hand-accounts-of-torture-20210203-p56z3u.html
anne,
I did not mention it in my post but the charges being made that come closest to “genocide” involve not outright killing people but the reported use of forced sterilization, abortions, and implanting of iUDs in Xinjiang. I just googled “forced sterilization Xinjiang” and there were lots of hits reporting this, not just BBC but more than one from The Guardian, as well as CNN, AP, and a variety of other sources. This cannot be so easily dismissed as just propaganda by people who do not like the PRC government.
These reports are denied officially by the Chinese government as noted in some of these stories. However in 2018 alone there was a decline in births among Uighurs in Xinjiang by a third, a datum that is apparently accepted as true by the Chinese government, which provides no explanation for this massive decline, which is something rarely seen in history and when it has been has been associated with exceptional and very bad circumstances, such as mass famine or epidemic.
On Facebook I was recently denounced very vigorously by someone for arguing that these sorts of practices are not as immoral and unacceptable as simply outright killing people. I had made the argument that I did in this post that the term “genocide” should be reserved for outright killing people from a group in a systematic way, which nobody as of now is claiming is what is happening in Ximjiang, and I noted to the person denouncing me that killing a pregnant woman certainly looks much worse than merely forcing her to have an abortion.
I fully recognize that the PRC has had a record of rapid and sustained economic growth, and while income is now more unequally distributed than some time ago, indeed extreme poverty appears to have been eliminated. There is much to admire. But eliminating extreme poverty all the more raises the question as to why we are seeing this massive decline in the birth rate among Uighurs in Xinjiang that even the PRC government admits has happened. The demographic transition does associate birth rate declines with rising incomes and urbanization, but not at such a dramatic rate.
I have elsewhere suggested that you would improve your credibility as being clearly an independent commentator if you were ever to express a view that goes against official views of the CCP. Perhaps your referring to Hong Kong as a “country” in a discussion elsewhere under a different identifier of a possible Chinese digital currency might constitute that.
Rosser
Wow. drawing a fine line between mass murder and mass forced abortion, sterilization, or even – god help me – forced re-education… strikes me as an over-nice concern for language purity (which does not exist in the real world) as against what we euphemistically call “human rights.”
having been mildly chastized myself for taking on a chinese bot, i am glad to hand over the burden to you. so just to add a dimension to the problem of “how do we know anything?” to modern epistemology, the reports of forced organ donation have been supported by witness testimony [as always, suspect…like Kuwaiti babies torn from incubaters and tossed on the floor by iraqui monsters in the days before mushroom cloud smoking guns] and by reports that the number of organ transplants in China somewhat exceeds what could be expected by normal rates of availability of voluntary donations.
i hated to bring that up in my rounds with said bot because i was, carefully, i thought, trying NOT to get involved in an argument over unverifiable “facts” but merely persuade the bot that I was not committing genocide against the Chinese people by a “blood libel.” but even I catch on sooner or later that i am not talking to a rational being.
Barkley,
Nice effort but it will come to naught. Did I ever tell you that Anne defended Chinese actions in building islands and naval bases because it occurred in the South “China” Sea?
and Americans build military basis in Afghanistan to defend human rights with only an acceptable amount of collateral damage.
bases. but basis will do in a pinch.
coberly,
It does not look like a “fine line” to me. I certainly do not at all approve of forced abortions, sterilization, IUD implantations. But it looks to me to be a very thick line, not a fine one, between those practices and outright killing people systematically, the traditional definition of “genocide.” Indeed, I am among those who think that because it is a thick line, the term should be reserved for the much more awful mass killing of people systematically. Would we be as critical of the Holocaust if it had involved forcibly sterilizing 6 million Jewish women as opposed to outright killing six million Jews? No, this is not a “fine line.”
I also note that there has been a substantial history in the PRC of forced abortions. This went during the Mao period and for some time after in conjunction with the “one child” policy, which gradually got relaxed, initially in rural areas, and eventually throughout the nation, not sure of exact dates on all that. But now we have it being selectively reimposed on the Uighurs reportedly. I would note that there were some environmentalists in the West who actually supported the Chinese one child policy, even though it involved this pretty awful policy, something careless people now think should be labeled “genocide.” Sorry, but I disagree on that.
Actually for some of the Uighurs this seems to be a “no child” policy, not a resumption of the old one child one.
Barkley
no need to say sorry because you disagree with me. unless you mean something different by sorry than the traditional meaning.
it was going to say it would help if you knew what you were disagreeing with me about, at first i thought it was not the morality but the pedantry. after your explanation I am not so sure.
i think killing people is pretty bad, even if it’s only six million or so.
or half a dozen collateral damage. or one person. and you could argue that since you are not killing them, but only their potential for having children, or doing whatever other harm it is to their body that’s certainly worse that waterboarding. but then you are getting pretty close to the morality of “let’s not argue about ‘oo killed oo” when there is Camelot to consider, good pig country.
the word has changed with use. god knows what the “original meaning” of 90% of the words we use was, but i doubt god cares. on the other hand he might care about forced abortions, forced sterilization even if, after all, they are not actually killing anyone. personally i don’t like forced detention. you can be pretty sure that if any of those people seriously resisted forced detention they would be killed. Then you would be faced with a moral dilemma, i guess.
but this is not a debate about morality or the relative seriousness of crimes. it is just an academic kerfuffle.
my use of “you” in the above does not mean you. at least not in the sense of the original meaning of “you.” it’s just a not quite grammatically accepted substitute for “one” which has fallen out of favor among people who speak english. except, of course, in its orginal sense of “1”.