Hong Kong, Xinjiang and the Insecurity of China’s Leadership
There is no excuse for China’s human rights violations against its Muslim minority in Xinjiang nor its intransigence in Hong Kong. For all his bluster, ‘lifetime’ President Xi Jinping seems to act out of a deep and dangerous insecurity about his country’s future. How the world reacts to China’s dismal human-rights record could prove crucial in the near term, writes Mel Gurtov. Bellicose, often inaccurate statements from both sides of the aisle in Washington risk making the situation worse when the times call for wary coexistence.
HONG KONG REMAINS in chaos, with no sign that pro-democracy protesters will yield on their demands. Mass incarceration and indoctrination of uyghurs and other Chinese Muslims has become so widely known that Chinese leaders no longer try to deny that a roundup has taken place, although they dispute the numbers and offer justifications. As China extends its economic reach, its leaders have to confront another reality: Reputation matters, and economic clout will not easily convert to political or cultural influence. China now, of course, also has to cope with the fallout from international reaction to its handling of the Covid-19 epidemic.
While the jury is still out on how the virus outbreak that apparently began in Wuhan will eventually play out, international repugnance is already widespread over the Xi Jinping government’s flouting of human rights norms and seeming indifference to human suffering. Xi’s belated response to the coronavirus outbreak has encouraged these doubts, especially at home, as responsive leadership proved less important than concern about social stability.
the larger context here is Xi’s determination
to wipe out all sources of resistance to his lifetime rule, foreign or domestic. he is hardly looking like the “people’s leader” (renmin lingxiu:
his government typically cites “three evils” to justify repression: separatism, terrorism and extremism. Actually, it has several other “evils” in its sights, including organized religion, protests, cultural autonomy, activist lawyers, independent journalists and environmental organizations. (One wonders if the coronavirus epidemic has added another: healthcare workers who speak the truth.) in its view, all these forces threaten the one-party state, disrupt economic plans and unravel the myth of the unified multi-ethnic state. For an insecure leadership, these points of unrest are challenges to regime control and legitimacy, and justifications for the dubious title Xi has earned for China: the surveillance state.
‘Cultural genocide’ in xinjiang
By now it is crystal clear that Xi long had designs on the Muslim minorities in Xinjiang Province.1
these have evolved from a once-legitimate concern about attacks on han Chinese, in particular a stabbing incident in 2014 that took 31 lives, to entirely illegitimate and inhumane forced detention and incarceration of uyghurs and other Muslims. the figures on incarceration are staggering; one expert, Adrian zenz, estimates that in Xinjiang 1.8 million people are detained.2 Most other estimates range from just under 1 million to 1.5 million. this full-on subjugation has been facilitated by deployment of advanced surveillance technology and by collection of blood samples that can be used to identify not just Muslims but potentially any minority group through DNA analysis.3
Persistent reports and aerial images suggest that what the Chinese authorities call “retraining” centers are in fact prisons devoted to wiping out Muslim identity and inculcating han Chinese and
Communist Party cultural and political norms. Forced labor, disguised as poverty alleviation and training sessions, is another tool employed against those who resist this gulag-like regimen.4 Beijing does not help its cause with responses such as it gave to us criticisms at the un.5 China’s spokesman not only defended the actions in Xinjiang as an anti-terrorism effort and insisted that China’s rise includes respect for religious freedom generally, but also pointed to us human-rights problems such as religious intolerance, gun violence and racism. this may be a fair enough item for debate, but it’s not a way to justify China’s behavior.
is there anything the international community can do to mitigate the human-rights violations in Xinjiang? Naming and shaming can sometimes help. Bringing the uyghur repression (which some call cultural genocide) before the un high Commissioner for human Rights has already produced a joint statement by 22 countries, in July 2019, condemning “large-scale arbitrary detention” and other violations.6 the us government has taken a minimalist position on Xinjiang, despite what secretary of state Mike Pompeo called “the crime of the century.” sanctions on surveillance technology have been applied, but since the us is not involved with the un human Rights Council or the international Criminal Court, it cannot join the governments that have brought the Xinjiang case before those bodies.
the ‘deal’ in hong Kong
the hong Kong protests are more explosive than Xinjiang inasmuch as hong Kong is visible in ways that Xinjiang is not. this is a defiant and widely popular uprising, exposed to international media, situated in an international trade and financial hub. the protesters, however, have no central leadership, an advantage while in resistance but a disadvantage if the aim is a settlement. Only if the pro-beijing establishment in hong Kong responds