By the Bloomberg Reports, am getting the feeling that CCP China China China is intent on cracking down on Chinese islamism by ways of making the Muslims richer, a different approach, unless millions are locked up, which is also different than crackdowns elsewhere on the planet
am agnostic but very curious to find out whether any of the approaches work, say in Iran, Iraq, Syria, parts of Europe, Paris, Berlin, London, Lebanon, ... India, and Gaza, as opposed to Sinkiang
bloomberg.com
Inside Xinjiang: A 10-Day Tour of China’s Most Repressed State
Xi’s economic ambitions drive the anti-Muslim crackdown in Xinjiang.
Peter Martin
25 January 2019, 04:00 GMT+8
A security officer keeps watch as women perform a traditional dance at the main bazaar of Xinjiang’s regional capital, Urumqi, in November.
Source: Bloomberg
Twice a day, employees at an upscale jewelry boutique in China’s remote western region of Xinjiang stop what they’re doing and don bulletproof vests and combat helmets. Thrusting long clubs, they practice defending the store against attackers. Their imaginary assailants aren’t jewel thieves—they’re Muslim terrorists.
The state-mandated drills are part of China’s suppression campaign against Uighurs, predominately Muslim ethnic groups whose members have periodically lashed out with riots, stabbings and other attacks in protest of a government controlled by the Han Chinese majority. China has responded by installing a pervasive surveillance system in cities across Xinjiang and locking up as many as 1 million Uighurs—almost 10 percent of their regional population—in mass detention camps.
This detention center in Hotan was identified using satellite coordinates. The United Nations has described as credible estimates that as many as 1 million Uighurs are being held in such camps. Local officials said it was a high school.
Source: Peter Martin/Bloomberg
The Xinjiang crackdown has drawn condemnation from human rights groups and calls for sanctions from U.S. lawmakers, who reject China’s claims that the camps are voluntary education centers that help purge “ideological diseases.”
“It is like if you have a child who misbehaves,” said Du Xuemei, a supporter of the camps and the spokeswoman for Yema Group, a trading company that operates the jewelry boutique. “The parents need to teach it right from wrong.”
But China’s severe actions in Xinjiang are about more than forcing ethnic minorities into line, as I saw on a recent trip to five cities in the region.
Far-flung Xinjiang is critically important to President Xi Jinping’s loftiest goal: completing China’s return as one of the world’s great powers. Although it represents just 1.5 percent of China’s population and 1.3 percent of its economy, Xinjiang sits at the geographic heart of Xi’s signature Belt and Road Initiative. It’s a trillion-dollar plan to finance new highways, ports and other modern infrastructure projects in developing countries that will connect them to China’s markets—and, skeptics say, put them in China’s debt for decades to come.
The government has spent vast sums building up cities in Xinjiang to attract companies and fuel growth in the relatively poor region. Concerns about lawlessness in Xinjiang could chill investment. China's campaign against the Uighurs is aimed in part at reassuring wary investors that Xinjiang is a safe place to live and work.
The Alaska-sized region borders eight countries and serves as a crossroads for a railway link to London and a route to the Arabian Sea through Pakistan, where China is financing a $62 billion port and transportation corridor.
But while Xi builds Xinjiang into a platform to project global influence, he risks undercutting his efforts to present China as a defender of free markets and international rules. Already, the surveillance tactics used in Xinjiang are spreading throughout China. Facial-recognition cameras, internet monitoring and experiments with so-called social credit systems to grade citizens based on behavior are becoming commonplace. And they are not just targeted at Muslims, but at anyone who threatens the Communist Party’s hold on power or is perceived to stand in the way of China’s geopolitical goals.
China’s Belt and RoadModern-day Silk Road aims to revive and extend the ancient routes
Sources: Belt and Road Portal, China’s National Development and Reform Commission
Western politicians and economists long-predicted that once China opened its markets, its society would inevitably open up, too. As China digs in for a protracted trade war with the United States that’s as much about competing worldviews as steel and soybeans, he appears out to prove them wrong. If anything, China under Xi is becoming less free even as he preaches openness abroad.
That has ramifications for investors concerned about their own reputational risk. It also poses a broader challenge to the West as China holds out its centralized model of government as a viable alternative to Western-style democracy. For the leaders of some poorer countries weighing different paths to development, a top-down system may be appealing—especially if it comes with cash to finance high-cost roads, bridges and power plants.
“I see what’s happening in Xinjiang not as a local phenomenon, but as a symptom of the larger system that holds in China now under Xi,” said Rian Thum, a senior research fellow at the University of Nottingham who wrote a book about Uighurs. “It shows that Xi’s Communist Party is an organization that’s willing to go to greater extremes of repression than I think any outside observer expected.”
So far the police state in Xinjiang doesn’t appear to be reassuring investors, even as tourism picks up and a rush of government spending lures workers in search of well-paying jobs. Almost no foreign companies have located there and the region’s economy slowed last year. China sees that as a temporary setback. But as the Xinjiang campaign continues to draw unwelcome scrutiny, it is focusing attention not only on China’s treatment of Muslims but Xi’s vision for the nation’s future.
Xi Jinping's image is unavoidable in Xinjiang, as are the police patrols. Modern buildings and businesses sit alongside mom and pop street vendors.
Source: Bloomberg
Crossing into Xinjiang from neighboring Gansu province, a deep divide soon becomes clear between Uighurs and the Han, who comprise more than 90 percent of the country’s 1.4 billion people, including Xi and almost all the party’s top leadership. Many Han have little interaction with the Turkic-speaking minority, and receive a steady stream of government news painting them as unsophisticated and susceptible to extremist ideas.
Ten Days in XinjiangExploring the police state at the heart of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road initiative
Source: Bloomberg
On an overnight train into the city of Urumqi, a retired People’s Liberation Army soldier with the surname Cai told me he had no sympathy for Uighurs in the once “desolate, backward and poor” region. He thinks they should be thankful for all China has done for them.
“We have built roads for them, homes for them, given them schools,” said Cai, 69. “Some people lack any sense of gratitude to the country and the party.”
Read more: China Tests Facial-Recognition Fence in Muslim-Heavy Area
Many Uighurs have long resented the influx of Han into Xinjiang; some Uighurs consider the region an independent nation called East Turkestan. Beijing, in turn, has feared Xinjiang could peel away the same way the neighboring Central Asian republics abandoned Moscow as the Soviet Union collapsed.
China’s crackdown on the region began after a series of Uighur attacks on civilians starting in 2013, including a flaming car attack in the heart of Beijing: Tiananmen Square. The escalation alarmed authorities who had repeatedly attempted to pacify Xinjiang, most recently after 2009 riots in Urumqi killed some 200 people, mostly Han.
People inspect a burned vehicle after days of rioting by Uighurs in Urumqi in 2009. The uprising killed almost 200 people and raised concerns about how China treats its ethnic minorities.
Photographer: Peter ParksAFP/Getty Images
“The government decided that openness wasn’t working,” said Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London, whose research focuses on counter-terrorism as well as China’s relations with its Western neighbors. “A massive heavy hand came crashing down on the region.”
Almost all Han I spoke to in Xinjiang shared Cai’s view of the Uighurs as disloyal. They said they approved of Xi’s efforts to modernize the region, painting an optimistic picture of economic opportunities on a pacified frontier—though it was often difficult to tell whether they were truly speaking their minds, or repeating the official Communist Party line.
By contrast, most Uighurs appeared too scared to say anything, They engaged in hushed and cryptic conversations, insisting all was fine and abruptly walking away. Two Uighurs eating lamb and radishes in a restaurant just outside Xinjiang had warned it would be hard to get anyone to talk. Many of their neighbors back home had disappeared to “study,” one said.
Cameras watch over ancient forts; a Muslim man prays at a train station in Jiayuguan in Gansu province, just outside Xinjiang; Communist kitsch displayed at Yema Group's Urumqi headquarters; a tourist poses for a photo with a Uighur.
Source: Bloomberg
Uighurs have reason to be paranoid. The police presence designed to track them is anything but subtle. Always, there is the fear of being taken away.
Police question them on the street, demanding to know where they’re going and why. Metal detectors, facial scanners and document checks are routine. Surveillance cameras are everywhere, even in some public restrooms. In one Uighur mosque, I counted 40 of them.
The mosques themselves were sparsely attended and I never heard a call to prayer in Xinjiang. Over time, authorities have banned “abnormal beards,” religious names for children, fasting during Ramadan and attending lavish weddings—part of a broader effort to assert control over all religions, including Christianity.
Read more: China Takes Diplomats to Tour Xinjiang ‘Re-Education Camps’
As I was riding in a packed third-class train car to Hotan, a former oasis town that once connected China to India, Uighur passengers fell silent and lowered their heads as a police officer walked in. Parents shushed their children.
Soon, a dozen more men wearing blue train conductor suits and red armbands clambered in, pulling bags from the overhead racks and shouting commands.
“Take this down!” “Open it!” “What’s this?” They took a young Uighur girl into the next car for questioning. A child started crying.
When we arrived in Hotan, I approached a Uighur man and told him what had happened.
“That’s what it’s been like every day for three years,” he said cautiously. Some of his family members had been sent to the Muslim camps, he added, where they spend all day studying Chinese law.
Foreign news outlets and non-profit organizations have detailed physical and psychological abuse inside the camps, with the Associated Press reporting that Uighurs were forced to disavow their Islamic beliefs, praise the party and endure solitary confinement. Former detainees told Human Rights Watch they were jailed without hearings, shackled and beaten.
“People go for two years minimum, and many for three years,” the Uighur man told me. “The first one or two years you can take it, but after that, you can’t.”
Today, ancient Kashgar is a city in lockdown. In Urumqi, cameras, personnel and metal detectors at the entrance to the main bazaar; shop employees, many Uighur, wield clubs during a drill to practice defending themselves against Uighur attacks.
Source: Bloomberg
Officially, Xinjiang is just as open as most other parts of China. Yet as I arrived in Khorgas, a city established in 2014 on the border with Kazakhstan, four police officers with body armor and rifles ordered me from the car. One instructed me to kneel on the ground and empty my bag. He pointed a laser at things he wanted to inspect more closely.
A man in a black jacket joined the uniformed policemen. He introduced himself as “Mr. Li, a local businessman.” But his ID card said he was Mr. Wang, of the Public Security Department
“We knew you were coming,” he said pleasantly.
Wang took my phone and erased photos and files, something that happened repeatedly during my time in Xinjiang. “I am deleting these for your own good,” he said, before handing it to a colleague who took down the phone’s identifier number, presumably to track my location.
Wang and two propaganda officials were my constant companions. They pointed out construction sites and exhibitions hailing Xi’s accomplishments, including a display titled “My Country Is Awesome.” Wang encouraged me to take pictures, but only of “positive things.”
Read more: The Architect of China’s Muslim Camps Is a Rising Star Under Xi
At one restaurant a waitress wore body armor, though it was unclear why: there is little visible crime in Khorgas. Police stations with flashing lights dotted the road and a near-constant whir of sirens filled the air.
At the end of my time in Khorgas, Wang bid me farewell. “You are welcome back anytime,” he said. “As soon as you arrive, I’ll appear.”
In Kashgar, another former Silk Road oasis, the full gamut of Xinjiang’s security state was on display. Police patrolled the streets in teams of three, wielding shields and pointed black sticks. Soldiers marched with automatic weapons and sheathed bayonets.
Wittingly or not, Han civilians play a part in the government’s efforts to stoke fears that a Uighur attack could happen at any moment. Groups of shopkeepers all around the city performed drills with wooden clubs. Knives were chained to the tables in butcher shops, and storefronts were barricaded at night.
At times, the surveillance was excessive to the point of absurdity. Seven security officers were assigned to shadow me in Kashgar. When I asked a local police officer why such a large group was required, he denied the men were there at all.
“You’re hallucinating,” he said.
Khorgas, a key Belt and Road hub, strives to attract global business by selling itself in a promotional exhibit as a dazzling, safe city. Nearby, a waitress wearing body armor complicates that message. So do scenes in Kashgar, where carpenters work with chained-down tools and painters capture landscapes cluttered with cameras.
Source: Bloomberg
Across Xinjiang, the fear of saying something wrong hung over every conversation, even with the Han. It was impossible to know who was telling the truth.
One afternoon in Hotan, when the police didn’t seem to be following me, I ventured into a coffee shop. A young Han woman came charging toward me through the metal detector at the entrance. When she saw I was a foreigner she burst into nervous laughter
“You scared me to death!” she said. “I thought it was the police inspecting our security arrangements—and our guard isn’t here.” If it had been the police, “we’d all have to go for a study session on security in the community.”
Conditions like this would drive businesses and people away from any Western city. In Xinjiang, the police presence is a selling point and source of pride for some newly arrived Han.
While it’s unclear how many Han migrants have moved to Xinjiang—the most recent annual statistics available, from 2016, showed a decline in the Han population—the number of visitors is rising. The state-run China Daily reported that Xinjiang attracted more than 105 million tourists in the first eight months of 2018, almost as much as in all of 2017.
A Han man named Tian, who traveled to Xinjiang from Shanghai with his girlfriend, said he wouldn’t have imagined vacationing in the region until recently.
“Look around, there are police everywhere,” he said while watching Uighurs wrestle on stage in a bazaar. “It’s true it’s a little inconvenient but there’s a guarantee of our safety. The terrorists and bad people have nowhere to hide.”
Chinese paramilitary troops attend an anti-terrorism oath-taking rally in Hotan in 2017. These specialized troops oversee regular police, and are now a fixture in Xinjiang.
Source: STR/AFP/Getty Images
Xinjiang’s cities can’t hire police quickly enough. Official statistics show that regional government spending on public security nearly doubled in 2017. From August 2016 to July 2017 more than 90,000 security-related jobs were advertised, according to research published by the Jamestown Foundation. Xinjiang accounted for 21 percent of all criminal arrests in China in 2017.
Many Han had stories about recently graduated friends who headed west to find work. In Hotan, I met a 67-year-old woman named Lu who moved from Gansu province a decade ago in search of a better life. Now her sons operate two liquor stores.
“When we first came here, the Uighurs would tell us, ‘This is our place, we don’t want you Han here,’” she said. Now that’s changed, and she credits Xi.
“I really like him,” she said. “There are a lot more Han now and it’s very safe.”
It’s not at all clear, however, whether the huge public investment and police presence are spurring the economic miracle China envisions for the region.
Xinjiang’s economic growth slowed to 5.3 percent in the third quarter of last year, compared with 7.6 percent during the same period in the previous year, according to government data. Growth has been propped up by fixed-asset investment, which increased 20 percent in 2017 and was set to rise again thanks to a new rush of government spending.
Companies are not flocking to the region. Foreign direct investment into Xinjiang fell more than 40 percent year-on-year in the first 11 months of 2016, according to the most recent release from the local statistics office. That year FDI amounted to 0.4 percent of Xinjiang's economy, about a third the rate of the national average.
QuickTake: China’s ‘Project of the Century,’ the Belt and Road Initiative
“It’s one of the main tensions in the Belt and Road as a concept,” said Jonathan Hillman, a former U.S. trade official who heads the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Reconnecting Asia project. “If you want to be promoting the movement of goods and people and data, having an overwhelming security presence is at odds with that. You need to be willing to give up some control.”
There is little evidence that Xi intends to do that. Some of the methods now used in Xinjiang are spreading to other Chinese cities. An anti-terrorism task force from the former British colony of Hong Kong recently visited Xinjiang to study local security initiatives, the South China Morning Post reported. The neighboring area of Ningxia also signed a cooperation agreement to learn from the region’s efforts to fight terrorism and promote "social stability."
Some Uighurs were finding it easier to join with the Communist Party than to resist: Perhaps half of the shadowy men and propaganda officials who followed me during various parts of my trip were Uighur.
Plainclothes and uniformed security officers mingle among tourists at Kashgar’s daily city gate opening.
Source: Bloomberg
On my last night before heading back to Beijing, I met a Uighur couple who personified the anguish many face between retaining their local identity and succeeding in Xi’s China.
It was a rare moment when I had no visible minders, and we spoke over cigarettes and warm beer. Although both worked for Chinese state-owned enterprises, they were subject to the same threat of heading to the camps as other Uighurs.
“All Uighurs are scared that if we do anything we will get in trouble,” the man said. At the same time, he defended Xi’s government: “If you think about it, those people in camps could have all been executed, but they’ve been given a second chance.”
His girlfriend said she was angered that Uighurs were searched before they could enter buildings.
“It’s a real problem,” she said. “And when it happens we feel really uncomfortable. Like we’re being accused.”
Then she, too, caught herself. Like a good student, she changed her tone to echo Xi’s party line.
“The fact that they are there says they must have been influenced by those extreme thoughts,” she said. “They are really very uneducated—and they need to learn.”
— With assistance by Adrian Leung, and Hannah Dormido |
