The razor wire that once ringed public buildings in China’s far northwestern Xinjiang region is nearly all gone.
Gone, too, are the middle school uniforms in military camouflage and the armored personnel carriers rumbling around the homeland of the Uyghurs. Gone are many of the surveillance cameras that once glared down like birds from overhead poles, and the eerie eternal wail of sirens in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar.
Uyghur teenage boys, once a rare sight, now flirt with girls over pounding dance music at rollerblading rinks. One cab driver blasted Shakira as she raced through the streets.
It’s hard to know why Chinese authorities have shifted to subtler methods of controlling the region. It may be that searing criticism from the West, along with punishing political and commercial sanctions, have pushed authorities to lighten up.
On the state-led tour in April, they took us to what they said was once a “training center”, now a regular vocational school in Peyzawat County. A mere fence marks the campus boundaries — a stark contrast from the barbed wire, high watchtowers and police at the entrance we saw three years ago. On our own, we see at least three other sites which once appeared to be camps and are now apartments or office complexes.
So if they've released hundreds of thousands or even millions of people from concentration camps, how come there isn't an absolute shitload of testimony available now? The best AP can do is go on a state led tour?
They can't talk to the AP because a dozen cars were following them around listening to everything everyone said to them.
At one point, I was tailed by a convoy of a dozen cars, an eerie procession through the silent streets of Aksu at 4 in the morning. Anytime I tried to chat with someone, the minders would draw in close, straining to hear every word.
Did they take a picture of the cars? No, of course not.
100%. I'm reminded of those AP journalists in a city in china who were terrified to discover a mob was hunting for them after they published some racist as hell propaganda stories the day before lol
There was a German camera crew in some city that was shocked that people started following them around and shouting at them after they were focusing on shooting things like piles of refuse. Instead of the clean, nice new highrises. They had written their story before they ever got on the plane to China.
They were stupefied, too. They thought they were the victims. 100% they still tell the story at cocktail parties with other journalists, with the conclusion "and we just barely got out of there, and filed our report containing the truth."
Ah, but China has dirt, unlike our sparkling clean German cities like Hamburg.
Chinese authorities have shifted to subtler methods of controlling the region
:parenti: From Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds:
During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence.
If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative.
If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime's atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom.
A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.
If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained.
What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
Same shit, different decade. It’s an old playbook and they’re running out of plays.
On the state-led tour in April, they took us to what they said was once a “training center”, now a regular vocational school in Peyzawat County. A mere fence marks the campus boundaries — a stark contrast from the barbed wire, high watchtowers and police at the entrance we saw three years ago. On our own, we see at least three other sites which once appeared to be camps and are now apartments or office complexes.
:astronaut-2: :astronaut-1:
Western media and being fucking braindead, name a better combo. These fucking idiots drive through a city with massive construction programs going on and were so out of there element having never seen construction on that scale outside the construction of new prisons at home.
these losers get paid like $50k a year writing speculative fiction
Probably closer to $100k
That Parenti quote about Soviet policy and western framing, if you may.
It’s hard to know why Chinese authorities have shifted
No, it isn't. They publicly said in 2019 that the mandatory de-radicalization programs had done what they needed them to and were finished. Turns out that's true.
On our own, we see at least three other sites which once appeared to be camps and are now apartments or office complexes.
Westoid journalists mystified at re-purposing of infrastructure. :miyazaki-laugh: Or they just... never were vocational training centers, which is also a possibility, knowing western journalists.
The Chinese Communist Party is the weirdest government we've ever studied. They say they're going to do something good, and they actually do it without any tricks or terms and conditions. Mystifying.
Please, you have to believe us. They were committing genocide, but then we said mean things about them and they stopped.
Also, lol @ how this started with accusations of genocide, then slowly slid back into less and less serious accusations as the lack of evidence became clear, and now apparently what was going on was so minor that pressure from the west was enough to completely end it.
I found this article on r/worldnews (downvoted and with no comments) earlier but I can’t find it through searching any more, has it been removed (could just be :reddit-logo: notoriously bad search though)
I can only find it on neoliberal (which is expectedly very bad) and gzd, which is obviously very similar in tone to hexbear regarding the topic.
All the news subs seem to be ignoring it. Curious.
It did its job. You can barely say a solitary positive word about China anymore without someone accusing them of genocide and you of being a genocide denier or supporter.
It's hate of the ruling class being redirected to The Other. They were anti-American as long as Trump was around because his people were The Other. Now with Biden, they can't do that any more and it's back to the old reliable "blame the foreigners".
