‘Birthrates among Uighurs falling due to coercive policies’

BEIJING: Coercive policies in China’s far western region of Xinjiang have led to a sharp decline in birthrates for Uighurs and other minorities, which could add to evidence of genocide, an Australian think tank said in a report released on Wednesday.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) report, citing official Chinese data, said that there has been an “unprecedented and precipitous drop in official birthrates in Xinjiang since 2017”, when China began a campaign to control birth rates in the region.

Xinjiang’s birthrate dropped by nearly half from 2017 to 2019, and counties where the population was predominately Uighur or another minority group saw much sharper declines than other counties.

China maintains that changes in birth rates are linked to improved health and economic policy and it strongly rejects accusations of genocide.

ASPI “fabricates data and distorts facts”, Hua Chunying, China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, told reporters in Beijing on Thursday.

Xinjiang’s Uighur population grew faster than that of the Han between 2010 and 2018, and Xinjiang’s birth control policies do not target any single ethnic minority group, she said.

The ASPI analysis is based on Chinese government data, including regional population figures released in March.

“Our analysis builds on previous work and provides compelling evidence that Chinese government policies in Xinjiang may constitute an act of genocide,” it said.

The ASPI report said birthrates in counties with a 90% or greater indigenous population declined by an average of 56.5% from 2017 to 2018, far more than other regions in Xinjiang and China during the same period.

Fines, internment, or the threat of internment, were among the methods used by authorities to discourage births, it said.