The average westerner would have had to be living under a rock for the last 15 years not to have been exposed to at least some of the avalanche of accusations that have been levelled against the People’s Republic of China regarding the state of affairs in its westernmost province of Xinjiang.
Throughout this period, it has been regularly and emphatically asserted by western politicians and media that the Communist Party of China (CPC) government is guilty of the most horrific crimes against its own people. It is claimed that the CPC has:
- outlawed Islam, suppressed those who practice it and interred millions of muslims in concentration camps;
- built a regime characterised by Han chauvinism, treating all China’s other ethnic minorities as second-class citizens;
- used forced/slave labour to build industry in Xinjiang;
- tried to eradicate the indigenous minorities native to the region, destroying their culture and replacing their populations;
- committed a wholesale genocide of the Uyghur muslim minority (although this is now being quietly downgraded to rather vaguer allegations of a ‘cultural genocide’).
Islam in Xinjiang
Islam and the muslim community alike are thriving in Xinjiang. This author had the opportunity to visit the region in July and saw no sign of repression during his time there.
Far from suppressing local ethnicities and their religion, billions of Chinese yuan are being spent by the government on mosques, schools and cultural protection efforts in the region. Far from banned, Islam is receiving huge state subsidies.
The Xinjiang Islamic Institute is one example of this support. Its large college-style campus not only provides practicing muslims with prayer facilities, but also contains a one thousand student-capacity school, complete with a gym, playgrounds and canteens, where imams and other religious leaders can be trained.
The institute has an extensive library containing many islamic texts, which have been translated (at government expense) from Arabic into the local Uyghur language, as well as into Chinese. Newspapers, books on Chinese law and political texts have likewise been translated into local languages for the benefit of the students.
A large sum is being spent by the state on the preservation and renovation of Xinjiang’s existing mosques, some of which date back many centuries. This renovation is carried out in consultation with local muslims and party cadres.
Any objective visitor to Xinjiang (and the province is open to tourists from all over the world) can see for themselves that the west’s wild accusations about the repression of muslims and eradication of Islam have absolutely no basis in reality.
Last year, a group of islamic scholars and experts from 14 countries visited Xinjiang and came away extremely impressed with what they saw. Mestaoui Mohamed Slaheddine, advisor to the Tunisian prime minister and secretary general of the Supreme Islamic Council, gave his impression of the Islamic Institute’s new campus and its elegantly designed prayer hall, saying: “I believe that muslims can feel peace the moment they step in here.” (Global Times, 9 January 2023)
If any criticism were to be made of China’s efforts in Xinjiang, it would not be over suppression of religion but over its active promotion. Rather than upholding the communist principle that religion must become a private matter (a matter kept separate from the state and funded only by those who participate in its congregations), the Chinese government is providing state funds to religious houses.
The result is that instead of allowing religion and religious practices to quietly die out of their own accord as life under socialism erodes the people’s superstitious beliefs, the present CPC policy is providing the basis for religious growth – thus assisting in the creation of a force that has the potential to become a bastion of anti-socialist reaction in the future.
The CPC’s view is that the steps it has taken in Xinjiang have been necessary to counter the urgent situation created by the infiltration of US-funded extremist groups and ideology. Brutal attacks by these west-created fundamentalist terrorists had been killing and injuring large numbers of people, of all ethnic groups, and had led to great instability in the region.
In order to undermine this infiltration, great efforts have been made by the CPC government to cut it off at the root – removing the economic factors that had led to some poor Uyghur muslims becoming fodder for the USA’s terror-gang groomers.
‘Concentration camps’
An oft-repeated slander against China is the imperialists’ accusation that the CPC is guilty of ‘genocide’. Many variations of the claim that “millions of muslims are being held in extermination camps” have been circulating for some time, and have acquired by their frequency the weight of a popular prejudice in the west.
The way these accusations are phrased deliberately aims to conjure images of (and popular revulsion against) the Nazi concentration camps of the 1930s and 40s (although it was actually the British imperialists who invented such camps, and who used them extensively in their colonial wars). US imperialism likewise used methods of mass extermination in removing the indigenous people as it implemented the North American settler-colonial strategy.
Adolf Hitler and his ministers were openly admiring and envious of the successes of British imperialism, both in dominating their colonies and in successfully spreading lies about the true nature of their activities.
Today, we again see such methods being used against the Palestinian people by Anglo-American imperialism’s attack dog in the middle east: Israeli zionism.
All of which is to say that working people the world over have seen enough of imperialism to know that it does indeed commit such horrific crimes against humanity. And that the workers in the west have been lied to so much that they are prey to confusion about who exactly are today’s evil imperialists and who are those striving to defend humanity from imperialist crimes.
Imperialist ideologues have created this confusion, and they make use of it when they portray the socialist People’s Republic of China as an aggressive, domineering, inhuman imperial power that must be stopped.
The accusations of a Chinese-committed genocide in Xinjiang began to circulate in 2016, at a time when the Chinese government had successfully stopped the destructive wave of terrorist attacks to which the region had been subjected. The claims reached a fever pitch in 2019, after a letter had been signed by 37 countries (nearly half of them muslim-majority states) praising China’s human rights record and dismissing the west’s allegations that up to two million muslims were being kept in concentration camps.
“Faced with the grave challenge of terrorism and extremism, China has undertaken a series of counterterrorism and deradicalisation measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centres,” said the letter. It went on to applaud the result of these measures, which was that there had been no terrorist attacks at all in the past three years, and that the people of the region as a result were happy, fulfilled and secure.
A counter-letter was duly penned by 22 western countries, a veritable ‘who’s who’ of imperialist nations and their lackeys (the so-called ‘international community’, which comprises a minority of people in a minority of countries), insisting on the western narrative and demanding closure of the “camps”.
Never let a crisis go to waste
When one looks a little more closely, it is found that all these claims of repression, eradication and genocide emanate from a tiny handful of sources, all of which are funded, directly or indirectly, by the US state department. Much of the ‘proof’ on which these organisations base their spurious reports has been provided by a single ’expert’, one Adrian Zenz.
A far-right fundamentalist christian, Adrian Zenz is the source of nearly every false claim about Xinjiang aimed at China and its government. Zenz first appeared on the scene in 2007, a very willing and no doubt handsomely rewarded propagandist for US imperialist interests, claiming that he had been “led by God” to destroy China.
A senior fellow at the Victims of Communism [!] Memorial Foundation (VOC), a US-funded anti-communist group that lays the blame for everything from the deaths of Nazi soldiers during WW2 to the global fatalities caused by Covid-19 at the feet of communism, Zenz has impeccable pro-imperialist credentials.
His ‘proofs’ of a Uyghur genocide actually consist in presenting statistics that show the slowing of the rate of population growth (a near universal hallmark of a developing country) as proof of population decline resulting from an intentional policy by the CPC to eradicate the, mostly muslim, Uyghur population.
The flimsiness of his claim is immediately exposed when we consider the absolute increase in the region’s population – from 4.78 million in 1953 to 25.85 million in 2020, during which time ethnic minorities were exempt from policies that restricted family sizes in the majority Han population. (Xinjiang population dynamics and data, State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, September 2021)
Another easily debunked narrative is Zenz’s attempt to use official CPC statistics on birth control. Fudging the maths, Zenz has come up with a claim that 80 percent of all intrauterine contraceptive devices (IUDs) in China have been administered to women in Xinjiang. In fact, the true figure is 8.7 percent!
Although Zenz is rarely cited directly these days by bourgeois media, his lies have gained a life of their own and refuse to be flushed away, despite the abundance of evidence debunking them.
Meanwhile, the claim of supposed ‘concentration camps’ is ‘evidenced’ by showing grainy satellite images of nondescript buildings. In each case, on-the-ground inspections have revealed these to be anything and everything except what has been claimed, from chicken farms to schools.
Nevertheless, the dramatic lies continue to be repeated, aligned as they are with a narrative that serves imperialist interests, transforming China’s immense success in combatting insurgent terrorism into a horror story to be served up to western workers.
The Chinese government has indeed set up re-education centres that have been very successful in rehabilitating misguided Xinjiang citizens who had travelled abroad for indoctrination and training. These unfortunates had been duped by Turkish and US-funded outfits like Isis into joining the kind of death squads that have spread such vicious mayhem in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere – tricked into becoming foot soldiers for imperialist destabilisation efforts.
Weijian Shan, chairman and CEO of PAG, an Asia-focused private equity firm, described the scale and violence of these terror attacks on Chinese soil:
“Starting around 2007, it became increasingly dangerous to visit Xinjiang. The region was rocked by a spate of horrific terrorist attacks, resulting in over a thousand deaths and countless injuries.
“For example, on 5 July 2009, there was a riot in the capital city of Urumqi. One hundred and ninety-seven people were hacked, beaten or burned to death and 1,721 were injured. On 22 May 2014, two car bombings in the same city killed 43 people and wounded 94. There were dozens of other attacks.
“The extreme violence was not just confined to Xinjiang. In 2013, five people died and 38 were injured in a suicide attack by three Uyghurs in Beijing. In 2014, a killing spree by eight knife-wielding Uyghurs left 31 people dead and 141 wounded at a Kunming railway station.
“A 2016 study commissioned by the US government noted that, from 2012 to 2014, domestic attacks in China ‘apparently became more frequent, more geographically dispersed, and more indiscriminately targeted’. The perpetrators, in many cases, were radicalised members of the Uyghur ethnic group.” (Xinjiang: what the west doesn’t tell you about China’s war on terror, SCMP, 14 April 2021)
The imperialists fully adhere to the adage of ‘never letting a crisis go to waste’, especially one that they have created!
Extremism defeated
Displaying outstanding patience, solid knowledge of the Xinjiang region and a most laudable restraint, coupled with the trust gained among the people (greatly aided by the extensive poverty reduction and doubling of life expectancy since the 1950s), the CPC, working with and for the citizens of Xinjiang, has made the area safe once more. Not a single attack has taken place there since 2019.
China has found an extremely effective method for reintegrating returning radicals into their communities via a mixture of secular education, vocational training and work opportunities – a method that removes most of the drivers of radicalisation: poverty, ignorance and lack of opportunity. Compare this with the atmosphere of fear and the treatment of people of foreign descent in the west that has resulted from more than 20 years of the so-called ‘war on terror’.
This author saw no signs of any such suspicion or hostility towards muslims while visiting cities and prefectures in the region. Muslims are free to pray and go about their lives. Uyghur and Kazakh minority citizens are not only enjoying rising living standards but have the full backing of the state to preserve their cultural traditions.
Measures taken in this regard range from setting up museums and restoring cultural buildings to the promotion of intangible heritage (music, dance and the arts) and language protection. Many Uyghurs and Kazakhs sit in government and party offices at every level, from the most local right up to the provincial and national organs of power.
None of these gains could be secured in an environment where death and destruction were being visited on ordinary people.
Imperialism and China
The attempt to break up China by fuelling a radical separatist movement in Xinjiang has not been the first imperialist plot to destroy the country’s unity. China has a long history of being targeted by imperialism, which really gathered momentum with the criminal launching of the first Opium war by British imperialism in 1839, during the course of which the territory of Hong Kong was seized by the invaders as booty.
The aim of this war was to force opium addiction onto the Chinese people as a far more satisfactory way of managing balance of trade payments than continuing to drain the British treasury of its currency. In the eighteenth century, huge quantities of European silver had made their way to China in payment for the silks, teas, porcelains and other luxuries that could not be obtained anywhere else at that time.
Britain’s East India Company decided it would be more convenient to pay for Chinese goods using opium, which it forced peasants in India to grow. When the Chinese emperor tried to stop this practice and eradicate the opium addiction that was spreading amongst the people, the British launched their war in the name of ‘free trade’!
A second opium war was waged against China for four years from 1856, after which more territory was snatched by Britain and Russia. Then in the 1890s and early 1900s, China was forcibly partitioned by various imperialist powers (Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Japan and the United States), which grabbed huge swathes of its territory. The final act in this saga was the full-scale invasion of China by imperial Japan from 1931 onwards.
Through long decades of struggle and sacrifice, during which tens of millions lost their lives, the Chinese people finally defeated the Japanese imperialists in 1945. The communist Red Army then continued its revolutionary war to secure China’s sovereignty by ousting the west-aligned nationalist forces led by Chiang Kai-shek.
Thus it was that, in a heroic victory in 1949, the workers and peasants led by Chairman Mao Zedong and the CPC founded the People’s Republic of China and finally ended their ‘century of humiliation’.
The imperialists did not take their defeat easily, however. They have never ceased to covet China’s territory, resources and manpower. When US imperialism launched its genocidal war against the Korean people in 1950, snuffing out the lives of over four million Koreans in just three years, the Chinese people stood shoulder to shoulder with their Korean brothers and sisters.
Understanding that the imperialists wanted to turn Korea into a launchpad for wider aggression in Asia and against the whole socialist camp, some three million Chinese volunteered to join the struggle to defend their brother people and frustrate this ambition.
China knows full well the fascistic horrors that imperialism routinely unleashes on working people outside of the imperial core. Since the Chinese people stood up in 1949, their socialist government has been determined not to lose the country’s hard-won sovereignty nor tolerate any threats to the people’s security.
Every accusation a confession
Besides having a vast land area, huge natural resources and a massive labour force, all of which have made it a magnet for the pillaging by imperialism, socialist China has now become a sovereign military and industrial power.
This has not only prevented rapacious capital from freely exploiting its people and looting its natural wealth, but has also undermined US-led imperialism’s efforts elsewhere, since China today is able to offer fraternal alternatives to the crushing economic coercion (via such mechanisms as the US-controlled IMF and World Bank) that the imperialists continue to use against under-developed countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia and eastern Europe.
It is not in Imperialism’s nature to say, “Good fight, well fought!” and go home. Its inherent contradictions demand continual expansion, leading to a desperate quest to create and seize markets and to destroy competitors, no matter what the cost in human life or social wealth.
But since we live in the era of anti-imperialism and proletarian revolutions, launched by the Great October Revolution in Russia in 1917, the imperialists are unable to ride roughshod over the globe as they once did, nakedly proclaiming their aims and avowing their innate superiority and civilisation. Today, they are forced to use sneakier, more obscure methods to achieve their ends, pretending to hold the progressive values of equality and fraternity that the masses aspire to, but which they themselves daily trample underfoot.
This need for pretence is a weakness, however. The imperialists’ hypocrisy is becoming all too evident, and this is steadily undermining the trust that workers have in bourgeois institutions and bourgeois rule. The western powers’ self-proclaimed ‘defence’ of human rights and individual freedoms is one of many fables that is losing its power over the minds of the masses.
This is the approach that today’s imperialists use against China. On the one hand, spending vast sums on covert operations to build a proxy army that can be directed to wage war against the Chinese people and their government. On the other, creating narratives for popular consumption at home that exaggerate small grievances among the targeted population or simply fabricate imaginary ones in order to paint the Chinese government as an irredeemable evil and their own aggression as being in the ultimate interests of the Chinese people.
In the case of Xinjiang, as we saw also in Syria, Libya and elsewhere, the victims of imperialist aggression have been painted by western media as aggressors while imperialism’s vicious proxies are presented as heroic freedom fighters.
Whether wittingly or no, all those who repeat the narratives regarding the alleged ‘Uyghur genocide’ in Xinjiang are facilitating the very crimes they claim to be trying to prevent – the mass murder of workers in the pursuit of profit.
At a time of rising anti-imperialist struggle, these lies, and the criminal activities they are covering for, can have only one purpose: to hold back the tide of history, to prevent workers and oppressed peoples everywhere from liberating themselves, and to secure for another few decades the continued domination of the globe by blood-soaked finance capital.
