I could go on and on about Adrian Zenz, his terrible methodologies; about terrorist groups trained by Isis and utilized by American for creating unrest in Xinjiang; stats about real population numbers in Xinjiang; about differences between American and Chinese anti-terror efforts regarding radical islamic terror groups; about infrastructure building in the area, investment by China; about the number of mosques per capita; about the preservation of regional identity that Xi is working towards; etc. Etc.
But, regardless, just saying that I don't believe that there is religious persecution in Xinjiang means, in their eyes, that I don't care about our Muslim brothers and sisters.
It's similar to talking about Hong Kong.
Libs use these places as tools to spread liberalism, so caring about the actual policies, people, and reality is a disadvantage to conversation.
How can I approach these subjects?
The Chinese have many observers from Muslim-majority countries in Xinjiang who are all signing off that what's going on there as above-board. It's not Muslim countries that are talking about genocide or concentrations camps, that's exclusive to the west. Pretty much all Muslim-majority counties are on China's side on this one. Maybe this argument is a helpful one to make?
There are significant political and strategic reasons for them to back China, a lot of it has to do with geography. It's a near mirror image of why the west has their significant reasons to come at China like they do. You can make the argument, but it's easily countered by the fact that the countries that back China are obviously biased by their material interests. This is not even to say that they are lying, just that the argument is quickly cancelled out imo.
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Right I agree with that, I don't agree with "well the Muslim countries are fine with it so it's fine, actually". It is a sign that there are probably not death camps, and there probably isn't widespread abuse of detainees (I guarantee that it happens though), and it definitely doesn't mean everything is above board and good to go.
And, as always, liberals are always happy to play imperialist if they can justify it with their conscience. I'm sure most of them genuinely don't understand geopolitics well enough to know what they are doing, and if I get into a discussion with them about it I'm going to firmly introduce a better framing of the issue, which probably means playing China-advocate for the most part.