Beyond hatred and anger - after the successful campaign against terrorism and Islamism, Beijing wants conditions in Xinjiang to return to normal

News from the Xinjiang region in China rarely reaches the world. For fear of terror and secession, Beijing keeps the Uyghur population under control through repression. However, a trip to China's far west suggests that things are taking a turn for the better. Thomas Heberer and Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer 31 comments September 11, 2023, 5:30 a.m

Sensational reports of strictly managed internment camps, forced labor and cultural oppression of the Uyghurs continue to shape the world's image of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China to this day. However, the fact that this region suffered from massive Islamist terror between 2010 and 2016, which almost led to a loss of control on the part of the central government, has been less discussed. Beijing was forced to react with undoubtedly overly harsh measures in order to stop the terror and get the situation back under control. At stake was the internal security of all of China. It should not be overlooked that the Uyghur population itself suffered from the terror.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the renaissance of Islamism in neighboring Central Asian states spread to Xinjiang, so that twelve separatist Islamist movements became active there in the mid-1990s. The Chinese authorities responded to bombings and armed attacks with repressive measures. However, these were not very effective.

Iron disciplinary regime

Poverty and unemployment, restrictions on religious activities and uncontrolled immigration of Han Chinese increased discontent among the Uyghur population. At the same time, it became clear that Uighur fighters were joining Islamist movements abroad. In 2016, extremist Uyghurs said in an IS video that they planned to “drown Han Chinese in a sea of blood.” Accordingly, they began recruiting young Uighurs as fighters in southern Xinjiang from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

There are now clear signs of a return to “normality”.

Due to terror and intimidation, Beijing was forced to declare a “state of emergency,” deploy military units to Xinjiang and impose a harsh disciplinary regime. This resulted in state arbitrariness.

Four German China scholars (including the two authors) and an international law expert investigated on their own initiative in May 2023 the question of whether the situation in Xinjiang remained the same after the new leadership was appointed by Beijing at the end of 2021 or whether the situation had changed situation has now changed.

According to the local Chinese authorities, the “fight against terrorism and Islamism” in Xinjiang from 2017 to 2020 represented a transitional phase. The new party secretary Ma Xingrui, who has been in office since December 2021, is pursuing the goal of returning to “normality” as quickly as possible . The focus is currently on the institutionalization of law and the return to legal procedures and their expansion.

On the part of the Uyghur population, the modernizations initiated by the central government in terms of education, medical care and work are clearly met with sympathy. It is reported that the various camps that emerged during the peak phase of the fight against terror have now largely been dismantled. This is also what the critical Xinjiang expert Adrian Zenz, who has presented most of the documentation on developments in Xinjiang in recent years, suggests in a recently published paper.

There are now clear signs of a return to “normality”. In the regions visited by the group, police road checkpoints are clearly no longer in use. With the introduction of fifteen years of free education (kindergarten, school and vocational training) for young Uyghurs, the state has initiated a new development push. In addition, there is state-subsidized health care, initially in the southern part of Xinjiang.

Gateway to the West

In the same direction, regionally divided and adapted development aid and resource provision by Chinese provinces from the more prosperous east of the country goes. This can be seen in modern vocational training centers in every Xinjiang region is. In addition to free education, students receive 200 yuan a month to support their parents. State-sponsored establishment of modern branch companies in the agricultural and industrial sectors, which have to employ almost exclusively Uyghurs at national minimum wage standards, are intended to help solve the employment problem.

The tour group was unable to detect any general discrimination against the Uyghur language and culture, although in Xinjiang, as in all areas of ethnic minorities with their own language and script, Standard Chinese is the main language of instruction in schools from secondary school onwards. At compulsory school age, your own language is offered as a subject.

Just as Xinjiang has been the continental “gateway to the West” for China for thousands of years, it will also remain one of the most important corridors for encounters and exchange for Central Asia and, by extension, Europe in the future. If the human rights situation continues to demonstrably normalize, the EU should start dialogue and reconsider the sanctions imposed on China over Xinjiang.

Thomas Heberer is senior professor of Chinese politics and society at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer is professor of Chinese studies and director of the China Center Tübingen.

Top Two Comments

I try to differentiate. It is to be expected that a western travel group will only be shown positive examples. On the other hand, our complaints about the oppression of the Uighurs are always hypocritical: our own relationship with Islamists is shaped by very negative experiences. Beijing's dealings with Tibet and Hong Kong, its threats against Taiwan and its "friendship" with the warmonger Putin are sufficient reasons to approach the country with restraint. Its dominance over the West, especially the US, no longer looks so inevitable with the recent economic problems. Discussions and trade relations should be continued and dependencies on China should be avoided.

I don't know. I remember the visits of Western delegations to what was then the Eastern Bloc. If you went there officially, and the four German China scientists mentioned in this article certainly did, then you will get the official version. I would be interested to know whether there were unofficial contacts, chance contacts, conversations with the other side, otherwise the assessment is quite worthless. I also remember my visit to Tibet. There is always the official line and the "other" line and from the official line you only get the information that the CCP wants to send. Otherwise, was the transformation from Stalin to Khrushchev also a “return to normality”?