So I was in a class where Darren Byler came to speak on Xinjiang, recounting the experiences of his student of being given an ethnic ID card and subjected to checkpoints.
I asked him when he visited China and he said he never had, he'd only interviewed his student.
Then I asked how we could sort out reputable info on Xinjiang from stuff by right wing cranks like Adrian Zenz and he clammed tf up before saying that he had a lot of respect for his collegue Adrian.
Afterwards I did some research and found out he'd co-published with Zenz!
I am probably more skeptical of CPC line on Xinjiang than most of this site, but what really struck me was that the professor who brought him in was an abolitionist and anti-racist activist.
In addition, Darren Byler's slant was as a lefty. He was theorizing China's approach as one of using the threat of terrorism to discipline an ethnically defined labor force.
The state was explicitly trying to target lefties and flip them on US foreign policy issues. An approach we saw them roll out again with "Russian Imperialism in Ukraine"
I don't like love what China or Russia are doing in those two places, but the way the US has blatantly and openly tried to manipulate us about it leaves a covid level swamp taste in my mouth.
Man, no offense but I am completely averse to that genre of rhetoric. The smug tweets, the curated tourism show in a rich family's house, the population graphs, the focus on the think tanks. It's not real evidence but it wants me to feel like the smartest guy in the room for agreeing with it.
What I like really want is a breakdown of like:
What proportion of people go through these rehabilitative detention centers?
How is power exercised outside of them? Is it through clubs and associations like in in the east part of the country?
How free are people to practice traditional life ways, things like language, governance, sustenance (and in fact, what are these institutions and what is their history? Who's had a hand in shaping it? Presumably more people than a few right wing think tanks have had their hand in the pie)
but I can't find this shit the propaganda is so thick on both sides that you absolutely cannot find any normal information on this stuff the way you could other, more studied parts of the world where right wing think tanks aren't muddying the waters with the most annoying aspects of the online left responding in kind.
I'm reading through the law itself rn, gonna read the UN reports next.
The law is pretty bad though. Like, implementation is always an open question but it gives the state authority to define "distortions of religion" and states a goal of making Islam "more Chinese" which is exactly what the critics have been worried about.
It also escalates vandalism to being extremism. Imo this law is similar to US "gang" enhancements. Take normal crimes and increase their severity when done by a certain ethnicity. Just like gang enhancements, it's in response to a real problem, but we already have strong critiques of these practices.
The context is that terror attacks have been happening, and they are not trying to make them "more chinese", they're giving them vocational training so they can speak chinese for example in workplaces.
They've also banned head coverings and calling anything besides food "haram" or "halal" and instructed every single cultural and political institution to curb "extremism" (incredibly broadly defined) using whatever tools they have. For the police and prisons, those will be violent and carceral tools.
Like, I believe you that they're offering vocational lessons but I've got questions like "are they arresting people for wearing burkahs?" These are real questions that can only be answered with field work that no independent scholars have done.
Like, we get so hung up on proving it's not a genocide we end up looking past the fact that it's still something we'd be fighting tooth and nail in our own countries.
Like, I believe you that they're offering vocational lessons but I've got questions like "are they arresting people for wearing burkahs?"
I'm not gonna suggest that this definitely isn't happening, because we don’t know, but what we do know is that if the west had anything that even looked like evidence for it, we would be having it shoved in our faces nonstop, like they tried to do for a while with those satellite images of high schools they claimed were extermination camps before walking it back a couple years ago.
Of course, that doesnt make the situation not bad. I think that broadly, the CPC's course of action is probably the least worst option for diffusing the homegrown-Afghanistan situation the US has been trying to stir up over there for a while, but acknowledge that their solution, like all policing/reeducation initiatives, creates power differentials that are ripe for abuse. Real damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, and I really hope they manage to thread that needle.
Sure, it's an insanely heavyhanded policy, and it's not really "good" in any way, but racial profiling and ethnic discrimination does not make it genocide, or even a cultural genocide as certain libs like to call it. I also don't really like the heavyhandedness that China uses, and wishes they had come up with something else, but I guess the logic was that the heavy hand was needed at first to create enough stability for the government to begin investing and doing development.
This is referring to Chinese national identity, not Han culture. China is a multicultural nation, which I'd have expected any principled leftist to know.
So I was in a class where Darren Byler came to speak on Xinjiang, recounting the experiences of his student of being given an ethnic ID card and subjected to checkpoints.
I asked him when he visited China and he said he never had, he'd only interviewed his student.
Then I asked how we could sort out reputable info on Xinjiang from stuff by right wing cranks like Adrian Zenz and he clammed tf up before saying that he had a lot of respect for his collegue Adrian.
Afterwards I did some research and found out he'd co-published with Zenz!
I am probably more skeptical of CPC line on Xinjiang than most of this site, but what really struck me was that the professor who brought him in was an abolitionist and anti-racist activist.
In addition, Darren Byler's slant was as a lefty. He was theorizing China's approach as one of using the threat of terrorism to discipline an ethnically defined labor force.
The state was explicitly trying to target lefties and flip them on US foreign policy issues. An approach we saw them roll out again with "Russian Imperialism in Ukraine"
I don't like love what China or Russia are doing in those two places, but the way the US has blatantly and openly tried to manipulate us about it leaves a covid level swamp taste in my mouth.
Its fucking insidious.
https://zscruggs.substack.com/p/xinjiang-and-the-propaganda-war?r=bjopi&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=
you may find this helpful on xinjiang:
and this: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Vocational_Education_and_Training_Centers (sources are provided)
Man, no offense but I am completely averse to that genre of rhetoric. The smug tweets, the curated tourism show in a rich family's house, the population graphs, the focus on the think tanks. It's not real evidence but it wants me to feel like the smartest guy in the room for agreeing with it.
What I like really want is a breakdown of like:
What proportion of people go through these rehabilitative detention centers?
How is power exercised outside of them? Is it through clubs and associations like in in the east part of the country?
How free are people to practice traditional life ways, things like language, governance, sustenance (and in fact, what are these institutions and what is their history? Who's had a hand in shaping it? Presumably more people than a few right wing think tanks have had their hand in the pie)
but I can't find this shit the propaganda is so thick on both sides that you absolutely cannot find any normal information on this stuff the way you could other, more studied parts of the world where right wing think tanks aren't muddying the waters with the most annoying aspects of the online left responding in kind.
Have you read any of the links in the prolewiki link?
I'm reading through the law itself rn, gonna read the UN reports next.
The law is pretty bad though. Like, implementation is always an open question but it gives the state authority to define "distortions of religion" and states a goal of making Islam "more Chinese" which is exactly what the critics have been worried about.
It also escalates vandalism to being extremism. Imo this law is similar to US "gang" enhancements. Take normal crimes and increase their severity when done by a certain ethnicity. Just like gang enhancements, it's in response to a real problem, but we already have strong critiques of these practices.
The context is that terror attacks have been happening, and they are not trying to make them "more chinese", they're giving them vocational training so they can speak chinese for example in workplaces.
They've also banned head coverings and calling anything besides food "haram" or "halal" and instructed every single cultural and political institution to curb "extremism" (incredibly broadly defined) using whatever tools they have. For the police and prisons, those will be violent and carceral tools.
Like, I believe you that they're offering vocational lessons but I've got questions like "are they arresting people for wearing burkahs?" These are real questions that can only be answered with field work that no independent scholars have done.
Like, we get so hung up on proving it's not a genocide we end up looking past the fact that it's still something we'd be fighting tooth and nail in our own countries.
I share your concerns but just want to address:
I'm not gonna suggest that this definitely isn't happening, because we don’t know, but what we do know is that if the west had anything that even looked like evidence for it, we would be having it shoved in our faces nonstop, like they tried to do for a while with those satellite images of high schools they claimed were extermination camps before walking it back a couple years ago.
Of course, that doesnt make the situation not bad. I think that broadly, the CPC's course of action is probably the least worst option for diffusing the homegrown-Afghanistan situation the US has been trying to stir up over there for a while, but acknowledge that their solution, like all policing/reeducation initiatives, creates power differentials that are ripe for abuse. Real damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, and I really hope they manage to thread that needle.
Sure, it's an insanely heavyhanded policy, and it's not really "good" in any way, but racial profiling and ethnic discrimination does not make it genocide, or even a cultural genocide as certain libs like to call it. I also don't really like the heavyhandedness that China uses, and wishes they had come up with something else, but I guess the logic was that the heavy hand was needed at first to create enough stability for the government to begin investing and doing development.
"Every ethnic group shall study and follow the law; and build identification with the great motherland, the Chinese people, Chinese culture, the Communist Party of China, and socialism with Chinese characteristics"
This is referring to Chinese national identity, not Han culture. China is a multicultural nation, which I'd have expected any principled leftist to know.
You telling me a Kissinger Fellow has shady foreign policy takes?