Analysis: By failing to be more tolerant, Chinese officials fomented 'chaos' in Xinjiang
Armed police patrol on motorbikes along a street in Hotan, in China's
western Xinjiang region, earlier this month (AFP Photo/Greg Baker)- Dan Long, Beijing
- China
- April 28, 2015
In 2011, when high-level Chinese officials asked Uyghur scholar Ilham
Tohti to write an assessment of recent troubles in restive Xinjiang,
there was every reason to believe Beijing might listen.
Two years earlier, rioting in Xinjiang’s regional capital Urumqi left an estimated 197 to 600 people dead, shocking the government. In the aftermath, the central government fired senior officials in Xinjiang.
As the Communist Party looked for answers to quell future unrest, moderate professor Tohti was among few Uyghurs with a direct line to the highest echelons of Chinese power.
But the government never listened to his surprisingly accurate and thoughtful warnings of “chaos” in Xinjiang, according to translations released over the past week and authenticated by ChinaChange.org.
The consequences have been dire. In October 2013, Tohti completed first-draft revisions of his assessment and recommendations for changes to repressive policies in Xinjiang. Fourteen months later, in January last year, he disappeared.
By the time Tohti faced trial and was sentenced to life in prison on separatism charges in September, a series of attacks by Muslim Uyghur separatists meant China was facing its bloodiest year in modern memory.
Overall, at least 500 people died in 2014 from attacks including one on the Kunming railway station last March. Tohti’s grim predictions for Xinjiang had sadly proven accurate.
“If the government does not change its thinking and tactics with respect to religious issues, I fear that religion will become the single biggest cause of ethnic strife and social discord in Xinjiang,” he wrote.
Other sections of his 24,000-word report paint a damning and illuminating picture of a region that has become increasingly shut off to the outside world by authorities as violence has escalated.
Tohti details the strict quotas on people entering each of Xinjiang’s roughly 24,000 mosques, black market trade in the Qur’an — pirated Uyghur-language copies sell for up to 80 yuan (about US$12) — and a lurch towards extremism.
By enacting increasingly strict requirements on Islamic dress, he wrote, authorities are only serving to turn ordinary Muslims into extremists, both in the way the government recognizes them and because of resulting resentment.
Since Tohti was imprisoned, Beijing has added a ban on burqas to the growing list of attire deemed illegal in Xinjiang.
“During religious services at mosques, it is not uncommon to see young people praying silently, with tears streaming down their faces. This is a social signal worthy of our close attention,” wrote Tohti.
He recommended that China allow imports of religious texts so that the trade is not pushed underground, the development of religious academia to international standards and a more transparent, less bureaucratic hajj registration process. Still most Uyghurs complain they will never get a chance to visit Mecca.
As the government in Beijing continues to blame violence in Xinjiang on religious extremism without looking at the causes, almost none of Tohti’s recommendations have been enacted.
Although the Xinjiang Islamic Institute announced a $48-million expansion plan last month, when completed in 2017 it will still only be able to train 1,000 students, or roughly one new religious leader each year for every 24 mosques in the region. It is the only official school for religious leaders in Xinjiang, a region where the vast majority of religious figures have no education beyond primary level.
What Tohti rightly urges overall is a lighter, more understanding touch from Beijing instead of the knee-jerk crackdown later shown by President Xi Jinping’s recent “strike-hard” campaign in Xinjiang.
Tohti’s call for pragmatism — never heeded — echoes problems facing many of China’s minorities. For example, the Dalai Lama — Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader — was earlier this month rebuffed in his calls for greater religious freedoms and more lenient rule.
In its defense, China has denied religious persecution, calling on hypocritical Western governments to stop interfering in its internal affairs. By implication, Beijing is rightly referring to the unsavory records of countries like the US, UK and Australia who have all enacted violent repression on ethnic minorities in recent centuries, both at home and in their current and former colonies.
But Chinese need only revert to the man who founded the People’s Republic as a guide for how to better manage still simmering ethnic tensions.
Chairman Mao’s famous speech in 1953 repeatedly warned of the dangers of “Han chauvinism” in China’s treatment of minorities four years after the Communists took power.
“It will be very dangerous if we fail now to give timely education and resolutely overcome Han chauvinism in the party and among the people,” Mao said. “The problem in the relations between nationalities which reveals itself in the party and among the people in many places is the existence of Han chauvinism to a serious degree and not just a matter of its vestiges.”
Sixty years later, Tohti’s sentiments were almost identical, and similarly ignored. If China is ever going to quell the cycle of uprisings and violence in its ethnic minority regions, surely Beijing needs to finally listen.
churchasia/worldfeaturesopinionmultimediadirectoryspirituality
ucanews on Twitterucanews on facebookucanews RSSsubmit to reddit
In Hong Kong propaganda war, China plays waiting game
Analysis: Beijing hopes protest fatigue, commerce will defeat Occupy Central
<p>(AFP photo/Philippe Lopez)</p>
(AFP photo/Philippe Lopez)
Dan Long, Beijing
Hong Kong
September 30, 2014
Facebook
PrintMailShare
China's National Day could not have come at a worse time for Beijing. Following a lull in protests on Connaught Road and Causeway Bay on Tuesday afternoon, tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong are expected to join rallies on Wednesday as the Communist Party celebrates 65 years of rule on the mainland.
But can Occupy Central maintain its recent momentum? Beijing and Hong Kong's Chief Executive CY Leung clearly think not. They believe Occupy Central now finds itself in a difficult position after making the decision to withdrew riot police on Sunday following increasingly physical confrontations with protesters.
After protest leaders altered their stance from calling for dialogue with Leung to demanding his resignation, the chief executive responded on Tuesday by reminding protesters that if he steps down - or is forced aside by Beijing - a nominating committee will choose his replacement, as happened in 2012. In other words, protesters face a choice between two different brands of Chinese Communist-style “democracy”.
In withdrawing police, Leung has gained the upper hand for the time being. Firstly, Occupy Central said it would halt demonstrations if things got out of hand, which it is yet to do. Similarly, withdrawal of riot police plays into the pro-Beijing message that the lingering protesters are using physical intimidation and even violence against the authorities.
Propaganda is likely to be decisive: In East Asia, only the Japanese have a greater appetite for reading newspapers than Hong Kong's seven million people, and here again the authorities have an advantage.
Of the top-three newspapers in Hong Kong by circulation, two are pro-Beijing ‑ the free Headline Daily and the long-running Oriental Daily.
Mirroring the party line in mainland China, these papers have characterized Occupy Central as violent rule-breakers who represent an extreme minority. Many have also portrayed Occupy Central as a brainwashing force on vulnerable students who started their own protest last Monday.
Some have even created links between protest leaders and foreign meddlers, a favorite Communist Party strategy. Last week, the pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po newspaper accused student leader Joshua Wong, a Christian, of being manipulated by the American government.
This approach was echoed on Monday when the pro-Beijing Oriental Daily, which claims a circulation of half a million copies, drew parallels with the “color revolutions' in Eastern Europe.
“This is a game between powers against the bigger backdrop of the United States' 'pivot to the Asia-Pacific', and an inevitable result of Hong Kong's internal affairs under the influence of international politics,” it printed in an editorial.
Only the Apple Daily, a staunchly pro-democracy Chinese-language paper, has anywhere near the circulation to challenge the pro-Beijing papers in the ongoing propaganda war ‑ last year it recorded over a quarter of a million daily readers.
It's a tough audience, however. In a city that boasts among the highest property prices ‑ and rents ‑ in the world, worrying about money comes before taking to the streets in protest. As such, people here are considered to have a lower threshold for long, disruptive rallies more commonly seen in cities including Bangkok and Kiev.
This is not lost on the Communist Party. The state-run China Daily, the highest circulation Chinese language newspaper in the world, ran a front-page article on Tuesday on the 1.9-percent decline on Hong Kong's stock exchange on Monday. It then went on to quote a 60-year-old woman who had problems going to a doctor's appointment because of the protests.
Whether or not some of the more far-fetched claims stick ‑ Apply Daily founder Jimmy Lai has been linked to the CIA, for instance ‑ is largely irrelevant.
Directly or through proxies and supporters, the Communist Party controls most of Hong Kong's media and its censorship shackles newspapers and television stations on the mainland. Its political control in both China and Hong Kong works in a similar way.
In biding its time and withdrawing riot police, authorities are clearly hoping that the protests will burn themselves out as an increasing majority is influenced by the anti-protest media messages that surround them and gets tired of disruption.
As the protests enter a critical phase, it's these challenges that will surely determine whether the pro-democracy movement can further test Beijing’s staunch resolve.
Dan Long is the pseudonym of a journalist based in Beijing who has reported on the region for more than a decade.
Two years earlier, rioting in Xinjiang’s regional capital Urumqi left an estimated 197 to 600 people dead, shocking the government. In the aftermath, the central government fired senior officials in Xinjiang.
As the Communist Party looked for answers to quell future unrest, moderate professor Tohti was among few Uyghurs with a direct line to the highest echelons of Chinese power.
But the government never listened to his surprisingly accurate and thoughtful warnings of “chaos” in Xinjiang, according to translations released over the past week and authenticated by ChinaChange.org.
The consequences have been dire. In October 2013, Tohti completed first-draft revisions of his assessment and recommendations for changes to repressive policies in Xinjiang. Fourteen months later, in January last year, he disappeared.
By the time Tohti faced trial and was sentenced to life in prison on separatism charges in September, a series of attacks by Muslim Uyghur separatists meant China was facing its bloodiest year in modern memory.
Overall, at least 500 people died in 2014 from attacks including one on the Kunming railway station last March. Tohti’s grim predictions for Xinjiang had sadly proven accurate.
“If the government does not change its thinking and tactics with respect to religious issues, I fear that religion will become the single biggest cause of ethnic strife and social discord in Xinjiang,” he wrote.
Other sections of his 24,000-word report paint a damning and illuminating picture of a region that has become increasingly shut off to the outside world by authorities as violence has escalated.
Tohti details the strict quotas on people entering each of Xinjiang’s roughly 24,000 mosques, black market trade in the Qur’an — pirated Uyghur-language copies sell for up to 80 yuan (about US$12) — and a lurch towards extremism.
By enacting increasingly strict requirements on Islamic dress, he wrote, authorities are only serving to turn ordinary Muslims into extremists, both in the way the government recognizes them and because of resulting resentment.
Since Tohti was imprisoned, Beijing has added a ban on burqas to the growing list of attire deemed illegal in Xinjiang.
“During religious services at mosques, it is not uncommon to see young people praying silently, with tears streaming down their faces. This is a social signal worthy of our close attention,” wrote Tohti.
He recommended that China allow imports of religious texts so that the trade is not pushed underground, the development of religious academia to international standards and a more transparent, less bureaucratic hajj registration process. Still most Uyghurs complain they will never get a chance to visit Mecca.
As the government in Beijing continues to blame violence in Xinjiang on religious extremism without looking at the causes, almost none of Tohti’s recommendations have been enacted.
Although the Xinjiang Islamic Institute announced a $48-million expansion plan last month, when completed in 2017 it will still only be able to train 1,000 students, or roughly one new religious leader each year for every 24 mosques in the region. It is the only official school for religious leaders in Xinjiang, a region where the vast majority of religious figures have no education beyond primary level.
What Tohti rightly urges overall is a lighter, more understanding touch from Beijing instead of the knee-jerk crackdown later shown by President Xi Jinping’s recent “strike-hard” campaign in Xinjiang.
Tohti’s call for pragmatism — never heeded — echoes problems facing many of China’s minorities. For example, the Dalai Lama — Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader — was earlier this month rebuffed in his calls for greater religious freedoms and more lenient rule.
In its defense, China has denied religious persecution, calling on hypocritical Western governments to stop interfering in its internal affairs. By implication, Beijing is rightly referring to the unsavory records of countries like the US, UK and Australia who have all enacted violent repression on ethnic minorities in recent centuries, both at home and in their current and former colonies.
But Chinese need only revert to the man who founded the People’s Republic as a guide for how to better manage still simmering ethnic tensions.
Chairman Mao’s famous speech in 1953 repeatedly warned of the dangers of “Han chauvinism” in China’s treatment of minorities four years after the Communists took power.
“It will be very dangerous if we fail now to give timely education and resolutely overcome Han chauvinism in the party and among the people,” Mao said. “The problem in the relations between nationalities which reveals itself in the party and among the people in many places is the existence of Han chauvinism to a serious degree and not just a matter of its vestiges.”
Sixty years later, Tohti’s sentiments were almost identical, and similarly ignored. If China is ever going to quell the cycle of uprisings and violence in its ethnic minority regions, surely Beijing needs to finally listen.
churchasia/worldfeaturesopinionmultimediadirectoryspirituality
ucanews on Twitterucanews on facebookucanews RSSsubmit to reddit
In Hong Kong propaganda war, China plays waiting game
Analysis: Beijing hopes protest fatigue, commerce will defeat Occupy Central
<p>(AFP photo/Philippe Lopez)</p>
(AFP photo/Philippe Lopez)
Dan Long, Beijing
Hong Kong
September 30, 2014
PrintMailShare
China's National Day could not have come at a worse time for Beijing. Following a lull in protests on Connaught Road and Causeway Bay on Tuesday afternoon, tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong are expected to join rallies on Wednesday as the Communist Party celebrates 65 years of rule on the mainland.
But can Occupy Central maintain its recent momentum? Beijing and Hong Kong's Chief Executive CY Leung clearly think not. They believe Occupy Central now finds itself in a difficult position after making the decision to withdrew riot police on Sunday following increasingly physical confrontations with protesters.
After protest leaders altered their stance from calling for dialogue with Leung to demanding his resignation, the chief executive responded on Tuesday by reminding protesters that if he steps down - or is forced aside by Beijing - a nominating committee will choose his replacement, as happened in 2012. In other words, protesters face a choice between two different brands of Chinese Communist-style “democracy”.
In withdrawing police, Leung has gained the upper hand for the time being. Firstly, Occupy Central said it would halt demonstrations if things got out of hand, which it is yet to do. Similarly, withdrawal of riot police plays into the pro-Beijing message that the lingering protesters are using physical intimidation and even violence against the authorities.
Propaganda is likely to be decisive: In East Asia, only the Japanese have a greater appetite for reading newspapers than Hong Kong's seven million people, and here again the authorities have an advantage.
Of the top-three newspapers in Hong Kong by circulation, two are pro-Beijing ‑ the free Headline Daily and the long-running Oriental Daily.
Mirroring the party line in mainland China, these papers have characterized Occupy Central as violent rule-breakers who represent an extreme minority. Many have also portrayed Occupy Central as a brainwashing force on vulnerable students who started their own protest last Monday.
Some have even created links between protest leaders and foreign meddlers, a favorite Communist Party strategy. Last week, the pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po newspaper accused student leader Joshua Wong, a Christian, of being manipulated by the American government.
This approach was echoed on Monday when the pro-Beijing Oriental Daily, which claims a circulation of half a million copies, drew parallels with the “color revolutions' in Eastern Europe.
“This is a game between powers against the bigger backdrop of the United States' 'pivot to the Asia-Pacific', and an inevitable result of Hong Kong's internal affairs under the influence of international politics,” it printed in an editorial.
Only the Apple Daily, a staunchly pro-democracy Chinese-language paper, has anywhere near the circulation to challenge the pro-Beijing papers in the ongoing propaganda war ‑ last year it recorded over a quarter of a million daily readers.
It's a tough audience, however. In a city that boasts among the highest property prices ‑ and rents ‑ in the world, worrying about money comes before taking to the streets in protest. As such, people here are considered to have a lower threshold for long, disruptive rallies more commonly seen in cities including Bangkok and Kiev.
This is not lost on the Communist Party. The state-run China Daily, the highest circulation Chinese language newspaper in the world, ran a front-page article on Tuesday on the 1.9-percent decline on Hong Kong's stock exchange on Monday. It then went on to quote a 60-year-old woman who had problems going to a doctor's appointment because of the protests.
Whether or not some of the more far-fetched claims stick ‑ Apply Daily founder Jimmy Lai has been linked to the CIA, for instance ‑ is largely irrelevant.
Directly or through proxies and supporters, the Communist Party controls most of Hong Kong's media and its censorship shackles newspapers and television stations on the mainland. Its political control in both China and Hong Kong works in a similar way.
In biding its time and withdrawing riot police, authorities are clearly hoping that the protests will burn themselves out as an increasing majority is influenced by the anti-protest media messages that surround them and gets tired of disruption.
As the protests enter a critical phase, it's these challenges that will surely determine whether the pro-democracy movement can further test Beijing’s staunch resolve.
Dan Long is the pseudonym of a journalist based in Beijing who has reported on the region for more than a decade.
