China to invite EU officials to Xinjiang
China will invite Beijing-based European diplomats to visit its far western region of Xinjiang, the foreign ministry told media, furthering its outreach to fend off criticism about a de-radicalisation programme.
The visit would be the first by a large group of Western diplomats to the region as China faces growing opprobrium from Western capitals and rights groups for seting up facilities that UN experts describe as detention centres holding more than one million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims.
Several diplomatic sources said the invitation to visit by the end of March had been issued informally, specifically to ambassadors, with one source describing it as a “sounding out” of interest, and the government had not explicitly said who they would meet or where they would go.
It is also not clear if the Europeans would accept the invitation, or how many of their diplomats or ambassadors would go.
Last year, more than a dozen ambassadors from Western countries, including France, Britain, Germany and the EU’S envoy in Beijing, wrote to the government to seek a meeting with Xinjiang’s top official, Communist Party chief Chen Quanguo, to discuss their concerns about the rights situation.
Diplomatssaythegovernmentneverresponded to that leter, aside from publicly denouncing it as a violation of diplomatic norms.
It was not clear if a meeting with Chen would be on the agenda.
“In order to increase the European side’s understanding of Xinjiang’s achievements at economic and social development, and promote bilateral exchanges and cooperation, China plans in the near term to invite European envoys based in China to visit Xinjiang,” the foreign ministry said in a statement to Reuters.
The date and other details were still being worked it, the ministry added.
“Hearing something for a hundred times is not as good as seeing it for yourself,” the ministry’s statement said. The European Union’s mission in Beijing declined to comment. Chinese President Xi Jinping travels to Europe on Thursday for a state visit to Italy, Monaco and France.
Beijing has been ramping up its efforts in defence of its measures in Xinjiang, which it says are aimed at stemming the threat of hardliner militancy. It calls the camps vocational training centres.