The Strategic Aspect Of Bashing China's Re-education of Uyghurs
moon of alabama
The New York Times reports on China's re-education program for Uygurs in Xinjiang, who are in danger for falling to Islamist extremism. The report is part of a larger U.S. campaign to instrumentalize the issue as a pressure point against China. It is a strategic issue for both sides.
The lede:
HOTAN, China — On the edge of a desert in far western China, an imposing building sits behind a fence topped with barbed wire. Large red characters on the facade urge people to learn Chinese, study law and acquire job skills. Guards make clear that visitors are not welcome.Inside, hundreds of ethnic Uighur Muslims spend their days in a high-pressure indoctrination program, where they are forced to listen to lectures, sing hymns praising the Chinese Communist Party and write “self-criticism” essays, according to detainees who have been released.
The goal is to remove any devotion to Islam.
There are rumors that up to a million people will be moved through such programs. The real number is likely in the lower thousands. There is no evidence that any serious harm is done in these.
The NYT report includes this gem of Orientalism:
One official directive warns people to look for 75 signs of “religious extremism,” including behavior that would be considered unremarkable in other countries: growing a beard as a young man, praying in public places outside mosques or even abruptly trying to give up smoking or drinking.
The writers of the New York Times seem to have little knowledge of their own city. In 2007 the New York Police Department published a study on Islamist radicalization that remarked on exactly those points:
As these individuals adopt Salafism, typical signatures include:
- Becoming alienated from one’s former life; affiliating with like-minded individuals
- Joining or forming a group of like-minded individuals in a quest to strengthen one’s dedication to Salafi Islam
- Giving up cigarettes, drinking, gambling and urban hip-hop gangster clothes.
- Wearing traditional Islamic clothing, growing a beard
- Becoming involved in social activism and community issues
The Chinese government probably copied its list of signs of religious radicalization from the NYPD and other 'western' sources. A French law prohibits public praying in the street. Other European states enacted laws against the wearing of certain religious attire. The Chinese do not lead in such analysis, they follow 'western' examples.
The re-education program became necessary after religious and even ethnic radicalization in Xinjiang became a real problem for the local population and the government.
Deep down the NYT acknowledges this:
[Hotan, a] city of 390,000 underwent a Muslim revival about a decade ago. Most Uighurs have adhered to relatively relaxed forms of Sunni Islam, and a significant number are secular. But budding prosperity and growing interaction with the Middle East fueled interest in stricter Islamic traditions. Men grew long beards, while women wore hijabs that were not a part of traditional Uighur dress.Now the beards and hijabs are gone, and posters warn against them. Mosques appear poorly attended; ...
The real wake up came only after and riots and acts of terrorism:
The government shifted to harsher policies in 2009 after protests in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, spiraled into rioting and left nearly 200 people dead.
But there is more behind this than the extinction of a local insurgency. The NYT report misses the geopolitical point of the endeavor.
China is developing new rail and road connection throughout Eurasia as part of its strategic One Belt One Road initiative.
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Xinjiang province is larger than Great Britain, France, Spain, and Germany combined. It is a mostly uninhabitable landscape of mountainous and desert terrain with a tiny population of some 24 million of which only 45% are Muslim Uyghurs of Turkic ethnicity. It would be rather unimportant outer province for China were it not at the core of the new Silk road connections.
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It is a vulnerable point. An established insurgency in the area could seriously interrupt the new strategic communication lines.
Chinese strategists believe that the U.S., with the help of its Turkish, Saudi and Pakistani friends, was and is behind the Islamic and ethnic radicalization of the Turkic population in the province. It is not by chance that Turkey transferred Uyghur Jihadis from Xinjiang via Thailand to Syria to hone their fighting abilities. That the New York Times publishes about the Xinjiang re-education project, and also offers the report in Mandarin, will only confirm that suspicion. China is determined to end such interference.
The re-education or indoctrination program for people suspected of following an Islamist or national-ethnic trend is only one long term part of a security initiative that comes with intense surveillance and police control. The other part is economic development. Large infrastructure investments in Xinjiang create new options for a formerly rural or nomadic population.
But people do not live by bread alone. It is doubtful that Turkic and Muslim identity of Uyghurs can be exterminated by re-education. It will be necessary to adopt it in some pacified form that can integrate itself into the larger ideological construct of the Chinese state.
Posted by b on September 9, 2018 at 12:49 PM | Permalink
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/09/the-strategic-aspect-of-bashing-chinas-re-education-of-uyghurs.html
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