Apt way to describe it. They’re telling ghost stories. Tall tales under a upward pointed flashlight.

I’m not following…

Should be the name of your biography.

Lmfao, hope they crawled back to reddit

“You’ve got to vet your sources and protect yourself, and this feller looks a little too friendly with them chinese for my liking”

You are exactly the kind of fear-driven peasant brain that would crush village women between rocks because learning to read is clearly witchcraft. You can’t prove it, but it just feels scary somehow, you know?

Nah you just sound sinophobic tbh. I doubt you apply this scrutiny to Western countries.

Lol right, gotta protect yourself from the wrongthink by ignoring all evidence that disagrees with you

deleted by creator

Why is it untrust worthy?

The US tried to foment division in China by funding and organizing terrorist cells in Xinjiang, and once those efforts failed, it concocted and promoted a genocide narrative.

• The Xinjiang Genocide Allegations Are Unjustified
• The Uyghur Human Rights Project is a product of the National Endowment for Democracy, which is the American government’s main regime change NGO.
• Uyghur genocide allegations
• American Debunks All Major Western Propaganda on Uyghurs and Xinjiang
• US-Funded Uyghur Activists Train as Soldiers of Empire
• A Reddit AMA Claiming To Be A Uyghur Quickly Exposes A CIA Asset Slandering China
• The blueprint of regime change operations How regime change happens in the 21st century with your consent

The pollution is the direct result of other countries outsourcing their manufacturing to exploit chinese labor for increased profits, and they’re rapidly reducing that pollution with the infrastructure investments I mentioned. The censorship is clearly necessary, as evidenced by the US getting absolutely bodied by relatively simple online disinfo campaigns. And the ethnic cleansing is fictional, fucking duh. Uighurs are directly represented in the ruling party, their language is present in official documents and on their currency. Xinjiang is literally open to foreign tourism right now, you could go there yourself and learn better in person.

Let us look at a specific example. A claim like “There’s cultural genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang” is simply unreal to most Westerners, close to pure gibberish. The words really refer to existing entities and geographies, but Westerners aren’t familiar with them. The actual content of the utterance as it spills out is no more complex or nuanced than “China Bad,” and the elementary mistakes people make when they write out statements of “solidarity” make that much clear. This is not a complaint that these people have not studied China enough — there’s no reason to expect them to study China, and retrospectively I think to some extent it was a mistake to personally have spent so much time trying to teach them. It’s instead an acknowledgment that they are eagerly wielding the accusation like a club, that they are in reality unconcerned with its truth-content, because it serves a social purpose.

What is this social purpose? Westerners want to believe that other places are worse off, exactly how Americans and Canadians perennially flatter themselves by attacking each others’ decaying health-care systems, or how a divorcee might fantasize that their ex-lover’s blooming love-life is secretly miserable. This kind of “crab mentality” is actually a sophisticated coping mechanism suitable for an environment in which no other course of action seems viable. Cognitive dissonance, the kind that eventually spurs one into becoming intolerant of the status quo and into action, is initially unpleasant and scary for everybody. In this way, we can begin to understand the benefit that “victims” of propaganda derive from carelessly “spreading awareness.” Their efforts feed an ambient propaganda haze of controversy and scandal and wariness that suffocates any painful optimism (or jealousy) and ensuing sense of duty one might otherwise feel from a casual glance at the amazing things happening elsewhere. People aren’t “falling” for atrocity propaganda; they’re eagerly seeking it out, like a soothing balm.

The Uyghurs in Xinjiang

Anti-Communists and Sinophobes claim that there is an ongoing genocide-- a modern-day holocaust, even-- happening right now in China. They say that Uyghur Muslims are being mass incarcerated; they are indoctrinated with propaganda in concentration camps; their organs are being harvested; they are being force-sterilized. These comically villainous allegations have little basis in reality and omit key context.

Background

Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is a province located in the northwest of China. It is the largest province in China, covering an area of over 1.6 million square kilometers, and shares borders with eight other countries including Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia, India, and Pakistan.

Xinjiang is a diverse region with a population of over 25 million people, made up of various ethnic groups including the Uyghur, Han Chinese, Kazakhs, Tajiks, and many others. The largest ethnic group in Xinjiang is the Uyghur who are predominantly Muslim and speak a Turkic language. It is also home to the ancient Silk Road cities of Kashgar and Turpan.

In the aftermath of the Cold War, several factors contributed to a resurgence of separatist sentiment among Uyghur nationalists in Xinjiang. Since the early 2000s, there have been a number of violent incidents attributed to extremist Uyghur groups in Xinjiang including bombings, shootings, and knife attacks. Some high-profile examples include:

• Ürümqi bombings (2014): SUVs were driven into a busy street market in Ürümqi, the capital of Xinjiang. Up to a dozen explosives were thrown at shoppers from the windows of the SUVs. The SUVs crashed into shoppers, then collided with each other and exploded. 43 people were killed and more than 90 wounded.
• Kunming train station attack (2014): A group of 8 knife-wielding Uyghur separatists attacked passengers in the Kunming Railway Station in Kunming, Yunnan, China, killing 31 people, and wounding 143 others. The attackers pulled out long-bladed knives and stabbed and slashed passengers at random.
• Tiananmen Square attack (2013): A car ran over pedestrians and crashed in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, in a terrorist suicide attack. Five people died in the incident; three inside the vehicle and two others nearby. An additional 38 people were injured.
• Kashgar attack (2013): A group of Uyghur militants attacked a police station and government offices in Kashgar, killing 15 people and injuring more than 40 others.
• Kashgar attack (2011): Two Uyghur men hijacked a truck, killed its driver, and drove into a crowd of pedestrians. They got out of the truck and stabbed six people to death and injured 27 others.
• Ürümqi riots (2009): Ethnic riots erupted in Ürümqi. They began as a protest, but escalated into violent attacks that mainly targeted Han people. A total of 197 people died, most of whom were Han people or non-Muslim minorities, with 1,721 others injured and many vehicles and buildings destroyed.
• Kashgar attack (2008): Two men drove a truck into a group of approximately 70 jogging police officers, and proceeded to attack them with grenades and machetes, resulting in the death of sixteen officers.

In 2014-2016, the Chinese government launched a “Strike Hard” campaign to crack down on terrorism in Xinjiang, implementing strict security measures and detaining thousands of Uyghurs. In 2017, reports of human rights abuses in Xinjiang including mass detentions and forced labor, began to emerge.

The Material Conditions Necessary for Terrorism and Extremism

As materialists, we understand that terrorists don’t magically appear out of thin air. There are material reasons for people resorting to such extreme measures. In order to combat the threat of rising extremism, these reasons must be indentified and resolved. One of the main causes is economic marginalization. When people are economically disadvantaged or excluded from mainstream economic activity, they may be more likely to turn to extremism as a way to address their grievances and gain a sense of purpose. Generally speaking, people who feel like they have a bright future do not resort to terrorism. It is only when people feel hopeless or trapped that they resort to such measures.

If the issue is that the Uyghurs were disenfranchised, and that is the reason they were susceptible to religious fundamentalism and resorting to terrorism, then surely the solution is to enfranchise them to remove that material condition. This is what the Strike Hard campaign ultimately sought to accomplish.

Counterpoints

There is only flimsy evidence for the most egregious of the allegations being made about what China is doing in Xinjiang, it should be an easy matter to dismiss. Normally, the burden of evidence lies with the party making the claims. However, Western media is happy to spread rumours and present the allegations as having merit because it serves America’s imperialist interests. Additionally, given the severity of the allegations and the gravity of the crimes China is being accused of, this issue has been taken very seriously by the international community, especially the international Muslim community.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is the second largest organization after the United Nations with a membership of 57 states spread over four continents. The OIC released Resolutions on Muslim Communities and Muslim Minorities in the non-OIC Member States in 2019 which:

20. Welcomes the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat’s delegation upon invitation from the People’s Republic of China; commends the efforts of the People’s Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and looks forward to further cooperation between the OIC and the People’s Republic of China.

In this same document, the OIC expressed much greater concern about the Rohingya Muslim Community in Myanmar, which the West was relatively silent on.

Over 50+ UN member states (mostly Muslim-majority nations) signed a letter (A/HRC/41/G/17) to the UN Human Rights Commission approving of the de-radicalization efforts in Xinjiang:

…separatism and religious extremism has caused enormous damage to people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, which has seriously infringed upon human rights, including right to life, health and development. Faced with the grave challenge of terrorism and extremism, China has undertaken a series of counter-terrorism and deradicalization measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centers. Now safety and security has returned to Xinjiang and the fundamental human rights of people of all ethnic groups there are safeguarded. The past three consecutive years has seen not a single terrorist attack in Xinjiang and people there enjoy a stronger sense of happiness, fulfillment and security. We note with appreciation that human rights are respected and protected in China in the process of counter-terrorism and deradicalization.

We appreciate China’s commitment to openness and transparency. China has invited a number of diplomats, international organizations officials and journalist to Xinjiang to witness the progress of the human rights cause and the outcomes of counter-terrorism and deradicalization there. What they saw and heard in Xinjiang completely contradicted what was reported in the media. We call on relevant countries to refrain from employing unfounded charges against China based on unconfirmed information before they visit Xinjiang.

The World Bank sent a team to investigate in 2019 and found that, “The review did not substantiate the allegations.” (See: World Bank Statement on Review of Project in Xinjiang, China)

Even if you believe the deradicalization efforts are wholly unjustified, and that the mass detention of Uyghur’s amounts to a crime against humanity, it’s still not genocide. Even the U.S. State Department’s legal experts admit as much:

The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor concluded earlier this year that China’s mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity—but there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide, placing the United States’ top diplomatic lawyers at odds with both the Trump and Biden administrations, according to three former and current U.S. officials.

State Department Lawyers Concluded Insufficient Evidence to Prove Genocide in China | Colum Lynch, Foreign Policy. (2021)

China has like half the pollution of us or are you gonna do that thing liberals do where they suddenly don’t understand what per capita is when this topic comes up.

I am once again inviting libs to xiaohongshu to see the uyghur culture featured front and center when you search for it. The language, the music, the art, the script, the stories. Did you know there is a made for tv puppet show of nasreddin hoca’s stories, known there as Afanti? You can see for yourself, from the comfort of the couch what the Uyghur culture, that is supposedly being erased, features. In a chinese app. Thats predominantly for chinese people. Go look for yourself.

Just fyi this is the ML instance and it’s full of tankies - in case you’re confused by how many people suddenly seem fervently culty about China.