Interventions
Dismissing China’s repression in Xinjiang: A reply to Vijay Prashad and Tings Chak
By CCS Member David Brophy
This article was originally published on Tempest.
April 17, 2026
The featured article of this month’s issue of Monthly Review is a defense of China’s policy toward ethnic Uyghurs in the province of Xinjiang—and of the official claims to millennia of Chinese sovereignty over the place. David Brophy, an Australian socialist scholar of Chinese and Uyghur history, delivers a critical response.
Vijay Prashad and Tings Chak’s article in Monthly Review, “The Idea of the ‘Uyghur Genocide’ and the Realities of Xinjiang,” is among the more substantial recent efforts on the international Left to defend China’s repressive policies in Xinjiang and dismiss the grievances of local Muslim peoples. Their article strikes a similar tone to the Chinese government sources that they often rely on, featuring the same questionable historical narratives and narrow focus on a few individual critics and their affiliations. By the end of the piece, I was noting signs of intellectual sloppiness. As I did my due diligence and dug into its sources, my suspicions were confirmed.
Prashad and Chak now edit the international edition of the journal Wenhua Zongheng 文化纵横. This has brought them into dialogue with Chinese intellectuals such as Wang Hui 汪晖, and it was unsurprising to see the article’s conclusion riffing off Wang’s critique of technocratic governance in the PRC. Wang was cited here for the view that “[g]enuine ethnic unity cannot be achieved through depoliticization, but must be built on recognition of history, diversity, and substantive equality.” I found this a well-meaning note to end on, even if the article itself had done little to advance these objectives.
But as has now been confirmed through an exchange with Prashad online, Wang did not write these lines. The “landmark essay” attributed to him was made up. It also emerged that the authors had invented a book by Wang Ke 王柯, a scholar of Xinjiang who works in Japan, and a Grayzone article by Max Blumenthal.
I’m unsure how much weight to give all this. Needless to say, I found it dismaying to find a left forum like Monthly Review infected by the same fake sourcing that I now must watch out for in the undergraduate essays I receive. Prashad says that there was no AI use involved in their article. Only he and his co-author know the truth of that. He has also said that the flaws in its referencing do not materially impact the substance of the article. Here we agree. Let us note this shortcoming and move on. Any debate should indeed focus on points of substance. On that, I’m afraid to say, my conclusion is that the article’s substance is as deficient as its referencing.
Misusing history
Take the authors’ sketch of Xinjiang’s history. Like every State Council White Paper, they repeat a version of the mantra that this territory has been part of China since ancient times. They claim that not only Xinjiang, but Tibet as well, were part of China during the Eastern Han dynasty (25–229 CE)—and also during the Tang (618–907), Yuan (1271–1368), Ming (1368–1644), and Qing (1644–1912) dynasties.
Before going on, I must pause to note how absurd it is for Prashad and Chak to drag us onto this terrain of debate at all. Since when has the Left considered the political status of a territory millennia in the past to have any bearing on the justice of its political configuration in the present? What business is it of today’s radicals to plumb dynastic chronicles to decide whether this or that piece of land rightfully “belongs” to a modern state? Prashad and Chak would not appreciate the comparison, but the similarity between this kind of argumentation and the logic of Zionism is striking.
Space precludes a full dissection of the specific claims. Briefly, though, the Han and Tang participated in multisided rivalries in the Tarim Basin, both establishing intermittent control there across a century or so—i.e., for less than half their existence. As for the “Yuan,” this was the Chinese name for the “Great Mongol Empire,” i.e., it was a Mongol, not a Chinese dynasty. In any case, the Toluid family ruling the Yuan were mostly kept out of Xinjiang by their Ögedeid and Chaghatayid cousins. The Ming then garrisoned Hami, on the very eastern edge of Xinjiang, for a century or so before the Islamised Chaghatayid Mongols drove them out. Finally, while maintaining that Xinjiang “belonged” to the Qing, the authors acknowledge that it was only after the destruction of the Junghar khanate (1634–1758) that this empire was able to tax it. The admission brings them close to recognizing the obvious reality: that the Qing dynasty’s mid-eighteenth-century incorporation of Xinjiang was an act of imperial conquest.
The difficulty for the authors is that the Chinese government line on Xinjiang has evolved in the last decade, in line with the heightened repression. The official position today is not that some dynasties had control of Xinjiang, but that they all did. The State Council report that Prashad and Chak cite says that Xinjiang became “Chinese territory” in the Han Dynasty and that all dynasties since “exercised the right of jurisdiction” there. This is where things get truly awkward for anyone interested in preserving their credibility as a historian, and Prashad and Chak decide to dodge the issue by shifting to questions of ideology. “Chinese political thought,” they argue, “is not rooted in fixed territory but in a more abstract idea of belonging.” All Chinese empires had documents that “suggested” their rule in Xinjiang, grounded in the civilizational notion of “all under Heaven”, i.e. Tianxia.
There is a term for a style of analysis that rests on a stark binary between Eastern and Western ways of thinking and doing. Edward Said once wrote a book about it. But the fact is, there is nothing particularly unique about the universalist pretensions exhibited by China’s dynasties. The Holy Roman Empire once claimed to rule all “Christendom,” even though its actual writ was far more limited.
What the imperial self-aggrandizing of the past might have to do with the rights and wrongs of policies in the present is again something the authors entirely fail to explain.
At this point Prashad and Chak add a final disclaimer: that the historical literature on Xinjiang is vast and “beyond our command to interpret.” Were they genuinely so perplexed, the appropriate thing to do would be to present various sides of the debate. But this they have studiously avoided doing. The only version of history they have presented is the distorted one preferred by Beijing. Their closing gesture towards the inscrutable Orient is a last-ditch effort to restore some distance between themselves and the obviously false claims they have rehashed.
We move from here to an equally common talking point in official publications: that the notion of “East Turkistan” was a foreign invention. I can assure the authors that well before any Russian influence, the notion that Xinjiang was part of “Turkistan” was commonplace. It is also true that modern nationalism came relatively late to Central Asia, and that when it did, local imaginings of nation and place were part of a trans-Eurasian dialogue, connecting to intellectual trends among Muslims and non-Muslims in Russia and the Ottoman Empire. There is nothing particularly unique in such a story. Entering the twentieth century, activists in or from Xinjiang laid claim to the territory using a mixture of old and new vocabulary: Uyghuristan, East Turkistan, Altishahr, occasionally even the archaic “Moghulistan.”
So what? Again, I am reminded of the way that Zionists try to discredit the Palestinian cause by claiming that “Palestine” was not a well-defined, or meaningful geographic unit for the inhabitants of the region at the time of Zionist colonization. Those facts are in dispute, but even assuming this was the case, what follows? Are people to be punished for arriving late to a fully elaborated nationalist program? Are we reinventing here the category of “non-historic” peoples, destined to be swept aside by those with more viable national movements?
The fact is, Prashad and Chak show no serious interest in the complex political history of the region they are discussing. They skip the entire history of Islamic reformism and Soviet-aligned Uyghur nationalism; there is no mention of Comintern strategies towards Xinjiang, which saw various schemes to extend the Russian revolution there; nothing on Uyghur labor organizing or cultural radicalism in Soviet Central Asia. Their “left” analysis sets all this aside to commence a narrative of “secession” movements at the time of the Sino-Soviet split, aligning with a trend in China today to reduce Uyghur nationalism to a tool of Russian/Soviet intrigue. They devote two long paragraphs to the relatively insignificant figure of Yusupbek Mukhlisi (1920–2004), with only a brief nod to the Second East Turkistan Republic as part of his life story. They inform us that Mukhlisi’s Kazakhstan-centered network claimed responsibility for attacks in China in the 1990s, neglecting to mention that not even the Chinese government took these claims seriously. Prashad and Chak’s narrative of more recent militancy likewise zooms in on individuals and organizations at the expense of any consideration of social conditions. No one denies that jihadists have emerged from discontented sections of Xinjiang’s populace, and that some of these have engaged in unconscionable attacks on ordinary Chinese civilians. But simply recycling official narratives on the scale and nature of these attacks adds little clarity to the discussion.
Counter-terrorism and repression
The authors’ master narrative of recent years is of a Communist Party gradually shifting from a counter-terrorism crackdown to recognizing the social and economic grievances that generated support for Uyghur militancy and addressing these through development schemes. There is a grain of truth here, and recent improvements in basic living standards in Xinjiang have indeed been impressive. But the party has long had grand designs for Xinjiang’s economy. The relevant policy shift between the first and second decades of the twenty-first century was not from counterterrorism to development, but from militarized counterterrorist policing to a far more wide-ranging “de-radicalization” paradigm. This involved a panoply of War on Terror techniques: predictive policing (on the basis of Islamophobic “indicators” of radicalization), surveillance of social media and domestic space, public loyalty ceremonies, and of course mass ideological re-education carried out through detention centers.
At the same time, a Stalinist purge hit Xinjiang’s institutions, targeting non-Han elites deemed insufficiently loyal. As one Chinese commentator described it in 2020: “Xinjiang has punished a large number of ‘two-faced people’ and ‘two-faced factions’ in the fields of public security, prosecution, law, education, publishing, propaganda and culture.” The Chinese government has itself publicized stories of Uyghur intellectuals imprisoned for publications that were once approved by state censors, but which now fall foul of tightening ideological standards. Alongside this, there is ample evidence of people receiving devastating sentences for acts as simple as providing religious instruction at home or maintaining contact with relatives outside China.
All this is grossly minimized by Prashad and Chak. In the only mention of formal incarceration in their entire article, they note in passing that “several people” were imprisoned from 2014 to 2019 for “violent activities.” “Several people”? Total prosecutions in Xinjiang soared during this period, jumping from 41,305 in 2016 to 215,823 in 2017, and increased in average length. China has not hidden the fact that thousands have been convicted for “terrorism” offenses—keeping in mind that a UN review of available judicial documentation described “judgments referring to conduct being ‘extremist’ despite none of the formal charges being related to terrorism or “extremism.’” This was seen as indicative “of an approach that considers any type of violation of law committed by a Muslim person as presumptively “extremist.’”
The authors would have us believe that stories of repression in Xinjiang originate in a narrow circle of U.S.-aligned diaspora activists. But some of the most chilling stories I have encountered—of family members ripped from their beds at night, eventually returning months or years later as broken individuals—have been from people who studiously avoid all involvement in diaspora politics. Against such narratives, the authors counterpose the glowing reports that China has received from bodies such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. I suppose if China’s State Council is a trustworthy source on human rights in Xinjiang, then why not Egyptian or Indonesian diplomats?
In the end, Prashad and Chak fall back on a form of whataboutism: Sure, the camps might have been coercive, but China’s counter-terrorism policies were still preferable to Russia’s in Chechnya, America’s in Iraq, or Israel’s in Palestine. This is true enough. China has not engaged in the mass slaughter of Uyghurs and Kazakhs. Gaza stands in ruins, while Xinjiang’s modern infrastructure grows. But the comparison strikes me as odd, given the earlier insistence that Xinjiang has been part of China for millennia. If so, why are imperialist wars and colonial genocides the points of reference here?
The question of “genocide”
Which brings me to the question: Is this genocide? This often sits at the center of debate on Xinjiang, but in my opinion it need not. When public discourse shifted to talk of “genocide” in Xinjiang, I was among those who were wary. The hope that accusing China of the crime of crimes might prompt international action was understandable, if misplaced. But it was equally obvious that the claim would serve as a lightning rod for skeptical critique, and risk obscuring the wider question of mass repression and cultural erasure. Some adopt capacious definitions of genocide that may arguably capture the Xinjiang case. Personally, I use the term in its common-language sense of the deliberate destruction of a people. While some have died in China’s camps and prisons, I am not convinced that “genocide” best describes the situation.
I can also concur with the authors that talk of genocide in Xinjiang has been cynically exploited by governments that have no business lecturing anyone on human rights, implicated as they are in their own horrific crimes. Liberal human rights organizations have often been too quick to make common cause with China hawks. The Left should have no truck with any of this.
But equally, the Left should not allow criticism of genocide claims to smuggle in an attitude of indifference to the human suffering that those claims point to—precisely what Prashad and Chak are trying to do. In their hands, talk of genocide is reduced to the work of a handful of individuals affiliated with right-wing think tanks, a move that allows them to focus on cultivating a sense that the entire Xinjiang issue is a construct of funding sources and self-interest. This will pass for “materialism” in some circles, but it is the sort of analysis that Gramsci had in mind when he complained of the reduction of Marxism to “economic superstition.” In such thinking, “‘Critical’ activity is reduced to the exposure of swindles, to creating scandals, and to prying into the pockets of public figures.”
Sadly, far too much of today’s China debate has this feel to it. Prashad and his co-thinkers are often enough on the receiving end themselves of critiques focusing on funding sources. It is a pity that instead of elevating the discussion above this level, they choose to descend to it.
Concluding
Aligning as they do with official Chinese government positions, Prashad and Chak’s argumentation draws more on the logic of nationalism than left traditions of debate on the national question. They are quite often wrong, but just as often they present talking points with little obvious relevance to determining where the Left should stand on the situation in Xinjiang. Wang Hui’s critique of “depoliticization,” which the authors embrace in their conclusion, expresses a desire for more dialogue and debate to build trust among the peoples of Xinjiang. Well and good. But who do they imagine participating in this dialogue? Minzu University Professor Ilham Tohti once tried to initiate such an exchange, and is now serving a life sentence in prison for separatism. Any comment from the authors on that?
Marxists have always insisted that the only way to build trust amid national antagonisms is through the forthright defense of national rights—something that is entirely missing from Prashad and Chak’s lengthy presentation. In the absence of this, what is the import of a call for more “politicized” governance in Xinjiang? After all, Xinjiang has seen plenty of politics in the last decade: relentless ideological bullying, the constriction of non-Han languages and cultural expression, and life-destroying punishments for anyone who steps out of line. The full implications of China’s new Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress remain to be seen, but it looks likely to involve more of the same. Some may choose to keep downplaying all this in the name of anti-imperialism. I think the Left needs to tell the truth.
Critical China Scholars* Respond to New McCarthyism and New York Times
16 August 2023
The Critical China Scholars collective writes in anger and dismay at the situation now brewing following the New York Times (NYT) report about Neville Roy Singham’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party and funding of leftist organizations and news outlets, the New McCarthyism petition signed by named organizations and individual academics and the opportunistic escalation by Marco Rubio and Niki Haley into red-baiting and spy-mongering. We feel the need to disentangle a few issues and make our position clear.
For starters, little in the NYT report was news. Most of the money trail the NYT “exposed” and the organizational information contained in the report was known already and had been tracked by Alexander Reid Ross and Courtney Dobson in their New Lines piece (January 18, 2022). What was new about the NYT report was the prominence it lent to overblown rhetoric and innuendos, which implied guilt by association in ways that dangerously resurrect the wholesale assault on “the left” at the height of the Cold War. We are familiar with these tactics, as they were used historically by Joe McCarthy, and are used today by right-wing outlets and spokespeople to discredit any organization funded by those (George Soros, for example) they find objectionable; we might also draw a parallel to the way the PRC state-run media attempts to discredit anyone they deem to be a “dissident” by highlighting any real or imagined association with international groups. The majority of the people and organizations mentioned in the NYT article have not hidden their support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or their interaction with CCP leaders. That they express pro-CCP perspectives does not mean they are mouthpieces of the state of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In the United States, they still have the freedom to associate and to articulate their perspectives. In this sense, we appreciate and emphatically join their condemnation and righteous alarm at the rhetoric and tactics of the NYT and sycophantic politicians.
Yet, even as we support their freedom to express their views and agree with their condemnation of the disastrously destructive historical and contemporary role of United States imperialism at home and in the world, we must criticize Neville Roy Singham, Code Pink, Tricontinental, and others for their failure to recognize and call attention to the many oppressive realities of the PRC state. The willingness of these or any on the left, including some in the venerable anti-war movement, not only to paper over or outright deny the repressive policies and practices of the PRC, but also to actively collaborate in spreading disinformation about those practices, is deeply troubling. The persecution of Uyghurs, Tibetans, labor organizers, feminist activists, Marxist students, Hong Kong democracy activists, and many other groups in China is very real. The dangers of an increasingly powerful surveillance state are upon us, and are not limited to China alone. We strongly object to the efforts of some portions of the “Western” left to downplay these phenomena, and find the defense of the PRC state as a beacon of socialism not only far-fetched but detrimental to a creative discussion of what socialism can and should be.
We recognize that in the context of escalating Sino-US tensions, reporting on the abuses of the PRC state can feed the flames of red-baiting opportunism and dangerous war-mongering in the US, China, Taiwan, and elsewhere. Yet, it must be possible to take stands against Sinophobia, US imperialism, and war without glorifying the PRC state or diminishing the experiences of people who suffer at its hands.
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*This statement was drafted by three members of the steering committee of the Critical China Scholars—Rebecca Karl, Fabio Lanza, and Sigrid Schmalzer—and reflects the contributions of multiple others who participated in a discussion on the CCS listserv. As we were finalizing the statement, we learned of Dan La Botz and Stephen R. Shalom's piece, "We Oppose McCarthyism and Apologizing for China," which we were glad to see expresses a very similar position.
Statement on Taiwan and the US-PRC Conflict
September 22, 2022
Critical China Scholars (CCS) stands in solidarity with the people of Taiwan in their struggle for self-determination, caught in the middle of the growing conflict between the PRC and the US.
We write this at a time of heightened tensions provoked by Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, but we recognize that the larger crisis is the product of much deeper and more complex historical processes. Those processes need to be understood and addressed if there is hope for true justice and peace in the region.
First is the legacy of imperialism. Taiwan has a long and multi-layered history of imperialist subjugation: a frontier region of the Qing empire, it was ceded to an expansionist Japan in 1895, and at the fall of the Japanese empire in 1945 was entrusted to the KMT-ruled Republic of China--all without consideration for the rights or wishes of the people living there. The Democratic Progessive Party (DPP) owes its current power to the courageous efforts of social movements against authoritarianism and imperialism over the past four decades, but its increasing fomentation of nationalist ideology does not do justice to Taiwanese people’s diverse and complex social identities. Although we cannot expect them to speak with one voice, Taiwan’s own social movements are the best sources of knowledge about empire and identity in Taiwan.
Second is the legacy of the Cold War, which is also in many ways an imperialist legacy. Following the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949, Taiwan became a crucial piece of the “arc of containment” constructed by the US government in its efforts to combat communism and strengthen the US’s own empire in Asia. This Cold War history was vividly evoked in Nancy Pelosi’s tour of Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan–all key nodes of that old “arc” of Cold War US power. While we by no means condone the PRC’s military response, which was reckless and utterly without justification, we cannot fail to recognize the threatening nature of Pelosi’s trip as a whole, crowned by the knowingly provocative inclusion of Taiwan, especially in the context of US state rhetoric and policies that are increasingly hostile to the PRC. We do not see it as realistic or morally defensible for the US to seek to maintain a favorable military balance on the other side of the globe indefinitely.
Third is the legacy of neoliberalism. In recent decades, it appeared to some that global capitalism would succeed in knitting together the interests of power-holders in China, Taiwan, and the US, and so secure the peace despite persistent ambiguity over the future of Taiwan’s political identity. Opponents of capitalism found some cause for optimism in expressions of labor solidarity that recognized the threats to workers in both Taiwan and the PRC brought by integration of the national economies. As neoliberalism has increasingly come apart at the seams, it is not surprising that these nation-states are no longer willing to paper over the differences in their geopolitical interests. While CCS will not mourn the death of neoliberalism, we recognize that its unraveling is producing extremely negative consequences: any solution to the conflict over Taiwan must be founded on a more just and sustainable set of economic relationships.
These complex historical legacies have produced a situation that is both highly dangerous and also highly challenging to resolve. For many of us, as opponents of empire mostly based in the West, our first responsibility is to recognize the damaging effects of US imperialism, and to call on the US and its allies to cease the ramping-up of militarist activities in Asia and the Pacific. As China scholars, we also have a responsibility to correct the inaccuracies of much rhetoric of the international left, which too often portrays the US government’s “One China Policy” (which acknowledges without recognizing the PRC’s claim that Taiwan is a part of China) as reflecting sacred truth rather than necessary fiction, and which fails to recognize the legitimacy of the anti-imperialist struggles of the people of Taiwan. By and large, the Taiwan public opposes unification with the Chinese mainland, and the international left should not ignore this fact.
Until China ceases its aggressive military actions in the Strait, Taiwanese people will continue to pursue US protection; and until the US ceases military buildup in the region, China will continue to feel justifiably threatened. Durable peace in Taiwan must be built upon commitments from both the PRC and the US to de-escalate and fully reject the use of military force to resolve the conflict.
In the face of very daunting forces, speaking not for the interests of any government but as critical China scholars and members of global movements for justice, we support the right of the people of Taiwan to cease being pawns of the PRC, US, or any other empire–and to determine their own identities and their own future.
STATEMENT ON THE "LAB-LEAK" INVESTIGATION
June 2, 2021
The Critical China Scholars issue this statement to register grave concern about the politicized re-opening of the inquiry on the “lab-leak hypothesis” about COVID-19 origins. The specific political motivations underlying the inquiry, led by the Biden administration, guarantee that there can be no findings that will be useful for the kind of internationally trusted science necessary to promote global health. The only likely outcome is the further deterioration of relations between the US and the PRC, stoking already high degrees of Sinophobia and anti-Asianism in the United States and beyond. Countries such as the PRC have no good reason to believe the United States is engaged in a legitimate inquiry as every bit of information that has been released already has become inflamed and embedded into a political quagmire of antagonism and mistrust. The further poisoning of the political atmosphere means, moreover, that the scientific collaborations that have been ongoing throughout this past 18 months – those collaborations that yielded the vaccines, the sequencing, and other breakthroughs in understanding the behavior of the virus – could also be curtailed, which would be a setback for science, humanity, and our common global society.
The safety of biomedical research is a concern greatly exacerbated by the narrow pursuit of national and corporate interests; it will require a global approach that rigorously avoids privileging any country – including or especially the US. A Biden-led inquiry cannot lead to anything but the further empowering of US supremacists. Programs such as the Department of Justice’s China Initiative – which has engaged in a nationwide witch hunt for US-located Chinese and Chinese-American lab collaborations allegedly connected to the Chinese state – sow distrust and embed racist assumptions into the very core of the scientific world.
A multilateral inquiry into the origins of COVID-19 is desirable, but it can only succeed if it is carried out on a foundation of trust between China and the other powers. The measures required to establish such trust are also desirable on their own terms: cooperation to end the pandemic globally and, in place of the US’s current zero-sum orientation toward economic growth and technological development, cooperation for global sustainable development.
STATEMENT ON RECENT SANCTIONS
March 29, 2021
The cycle of sanctions now being engaged by the US, EU, UK, and the PRC is destructive. As fellow academics, the Critical China Scholars wish to register our dismay and protest at the retaliatory sanctioning of our colleague, Jo Smith Finley, by the PRC. Jo Smith Finley is a responsible and respected scholar. That she should be caught up in this episode is particularly distressing. We extend to her our full solidarity.
STATEMENT ON ATLANTA MURDERS AND ANTI-ASIAN SEXIST VIOLENCE
March 19, 2021
The Critical China Scholars join the many professional and community-based organizations in condemning anti-Asian violence and hatred in all its forms. We are particularly concerned to issue this statement in response to the recent murderous rampage against Asian working women in Georgia. Yet, we wish also to register our understanding that this is but one result of a long history of anti-Asian sexist violence, a history that over the past year has been re-animated and invigorated in the pandemic era through federal-level as well as police-level rhetorics and practices that condone as well as give succor to white supremacist expressions of racist violence, hatred, and mysogyny.
A related podcast from Time to Say Goodbye features an interview with Canary Song organizer Yves Tong Nguyen about greater rights for workers, not further policing of communities: https://goodbye.substack.com/p/i-want-you-to-care-when-people-are
OPEN LETTER TO MONTHLY REVIEW ON XINJIANG AND THE QIAO COLLECTIVE
A dialogue between CCS and Lausan addressing this issue, along with that of Hong Kong activism, was published by Spectre magazine and is available here.
A Turkish translation of this letter is available below and has been published on Bianet.
19 October 2020
Dear friends at Monthly Review,
As scholars and activists committed to charting a course for an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist left in the midst of rising US-China tensions, we write in response to your recent republication of a “report and resource compilation” by the Qiao Collective on Xinjiang.
We fully acknowledge the need for a critique of America’s cynical and self-interested attacks on China’s domestic policies. We are committed to that task. But the left must draw a line at apologia for the campaign of harsh Islamophobic repression now taking place in Xinjiang.
Qiao’s “report” is written in a style that is sadly all too common in leftist discussions of China today. While the report “recognize[s] that there are aspects of PRC policy in Xinjiang to critique,” it finds no room for any such critique in its 15,000 words. Eschewing serious analysis, it compiles select political and biographical facts to suggestively point at, but not articulate, the intended conclusion – that claims of serious repression in Xinjiang can be dismissed.
We wish it were the case that talk of internment camps was a myth, fabricated by the National Endowment for Democracy and the CIA. But it is not. Problematic links do exist between individual activists and organisations and the American security state, and there have been errors and misattributions in reporting on Xinjiang. The applicability of terms such as “genocide” and “slavery” can be debated. But none of this should permit agnosticism, let alone denialism, towards what is clearly a shocking infringement on the rights of Xinjiang’s native peoples.
Since 2016, Xinjiang has seen a massive expansion of its security infrastructure, featuring a network of camps that mete out a punishing program of political indoctrination, compulsory language drills, and workhouse-style “vocational” training. Internees range from party members deemed disloyal, intellectuals and artists whose work has sustained the distinct non-Chinese cultural identities of the region, through to those thought to display signs of excessive piety. In the same period Xinjiang has seen a surge in incarcerations, with Muslim Uyghurs imprisoned for as a little as encouraging their peers to observe their faith. Others, meanwhile, have been sent to the Chinese interior, as part of non-voluntary labor programs designed to instill factory discipline into Xinjiang’s rural population. In some cases, these workers have been sent to factories linked to the supply chains of Western corporations.
Families inside Xinjiang have been torn apart, with some 40% of school-age children now enrolled in boarding schools, and many growing up in state orphanages. Outside China, Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and others live with the trauma of not knowing the fate of their relatives.
While elements of these policies call to mind the excesses of past ideological campaigns in China, they occur today in new conditions of rapid capitalist development in Xinjiang, intended to turn the region into an economic hub of Central Asia. The link here between capitalist expansion and the oppression of indigenous communities is one the left has long been familiar with. To fail to recognise and critique these dynamics in this case is a form of wilful blindness.
There are various ways in which the politics of the Qiao Collective abandons what should be key principles of an internationalist left today, but we wish to highlight one in particular: their treatment of the issue of “counterterrorism.”
Qiao would have us believe that the PRC’s “deradicalization” campaign stands in “stark contrast” to American policies in the War on Terror. On the contrary, China’s deradicalization discourse represents a deliberate appropriation of Western counterterror practices. In his speeches, China’s President Xi Jinping himself encouraged officials to adapt elements of the Western-led War on Terror since 9/11.
The authors of the report are aware of these precedents, citing Western policies to preemptively identify those “at risk” of radicalization and intervene. They make note of France’s highly intrusive deradicalisation policies, as well as Britain’s Desistance and Disengagement Programme, part of the notorious Prevent Strategy. (To this list we could of course add the abuses of counterterror policing in the US, Australia, and elsewhere). Astonishingly, though, they cite these policing techniques not to criticize them, but simply to accuse the West of double standards: China, they complain, has received a level of criticism that these European governments have not.
This is entirely disingenuous on Qiao’s part, a deflection worthy of the Chinese state media that they frequently cite. The left, along with Muslim advocacy groups, have long called for an end to these Islamophobic policies, resting as they do on a bogus association of Islamic piety and/or anti-imperialist views with a proclivity to anti-social violence (see here for a recent example of such a call). Would Qiao then be happy for China to receive only the same level of criticism, and face these same calls?
Judging from their report, they would not. The entire thrust of their report is instead to normalize harmful paradigms of “deradicalisation” and “counter-extremism” as an acceptable basis for a state to engage its Muslim citizenry.
Qiao is evidently impressed by the fact that “Muslim-majority nations and/or nations that have waged campaigns against extremism on their own soil” stand in support of China at the United Nations. We are not so impressed. These local “campaigns against extremism” have replicated the worst violations of America’s War on Terror, and often in collaboration with it.
One example Qiao gives here is Nigeria, whose counterterrorism Joint Task Force was accused by Amnesty International in 2011 of engaging in “unlawful killings, dragnet arrests, arbitrary and unlawful detentions, extortion and intimidation.” Another is Pakistan, which the US commander-in-chief in Afghanistan once praised as a “a great ally on the war on terror,” and whose air and ground forces are responsible for serial abuses against civilian populations.
The incidents of violence against ordinary Chinese citizens that Qiao cites should of course not be dismissed: we must criticize those who engage in terrorism, while at the same time recognizing the social conditions that produce it, and pointing to the need for political solutions.
Qiao, by contrast, directs us toward the murky world of “terror-watching” punditry that has arisen in symbiosis with the two-decade-long Global War on Terror, and has provided justifications for that state violence. One of the authorities they cite on terrorism in Xinjiang is Rohan Gunaratna, a discredited figure who made his name in the 2000s urging America and its allies to invade Muslim-majority countries and enact repressive security laws at home. If Gunaratna and his ilk are our friends, the left will have no need of enemies.
Uncritically invoking China’s “terrorism problem,” and downplaying the severity of Beijing’s response to it, paints a left-wing façade on a global discourse of counterterrorism that poses a threat to Muslim communities everywhere. The struggle against anti-Muslim racism and the devastating effects of the ongoing War on Terror is international, and our solidarity in that struggle must extend to its victims in China.
For these reasons, we find it regrettable that you have chosen to give wider audience to the Qiao Collective’s “report and resource compilation.” In recognition of the existence of alternative perspectives on the left, and in the interest of debate, we hope you will also publish this letter alongside it.
We look forward to future opportunities to collaborate on critical left analysis regarding China and the US-China conflict, and we hope you will contact us whenever we can be of assistance. To find out more about the Critical China Scholars and our activities, please see our website, which includes video recordings of past webinars.
In solidarity,
Joel Andreas
Angie Baecker
Tani Barlow
David Brophy
Darren Byler
Harlan Chambers
Tina Mai Chen
Charmaine Chua
Christopher Connery
Manfred Elfstrom
Christopher Fan
Ivan Franceschini
Eli Friedman
Jia-Chen Fu
Daniel Fuchs
Joshua Goldstein
Beatrice Gallelli
Paola Iovene
Fabio Lanza
Soonyi Lee
Promise Li
Kevin Lin
Andrew Liu
Nicholas Loubere
Tim Pringle
Aminda Smith
Sigrid Schmalzer
Alexander Day
Rebecca Karl
Uluğ Kuzuoğlu
Ralph Litzinger
Christian Sorace
JS Tan
Jake Werner
Shan Windscript
Lorraine Wong
David Xu Borgonjon
For the Critical China Scholars
Monthly Review dergisindeki arkadaşlarımıza:
Amerika-Çin arasında artan gerilim ortamında anti-kapitalist ve anti-emperyalist sol için bir hat çizmeye çalışan akademisyenler ve aktivistler olarak, bu mektubu Qiao (Çiyao) kolektifi tarafından Sincan (Çin’in Uygur Özerk Yönetim Bölgesi) hakkında hazırlanan “rapor ve kaynak derlemesi”ni yayınlamanız üzerine yazıyoruz.
Amerika’nın çıkarcı ve kendini merkeze alan bir tavırla Çin’in yurtiçi politikalarına yaptığı saldırıları eleştirme ihtiyacını tamamen anlayışa karşılıyoruz. Biz de bu eleştiriyi yapma konusunda kararlıyız. Fakat sol, bu eleştirinin halihazırda Sincan’da devam eden İslamofobik baskılama kampanyasının özrüne dönüştürülmemesi konusunda bir hat belirlemeli.
Qiao kolektifinin “raporu” ne yazık ki bugün Çin’e dair yürütülen sol tartışmalarda sıkça gördüğümüz bir tarzda yazılmış. Rapor, “Çin Halk Cumhuriyeti’nin Sincan politikalarının eleştirilecek tarafları olduğunu” kabul ederken, 15,000 kelime içinde böyle bir eleştiri için yer bulamamış görünüyor. Ciddi bir analizden kaçınarak, bazı seçmece politik ve biyografik bilgileri derleyerek niyet edilen sonuca açıkça dillendirmektense imalı bir şekilde varıyor: Sincan’daki baskılar görmezden gelinebilir.
Keşke çalışma kampları hakkında konuşulanlar Amerikan Ulusal Demokrasi Vakfı veya CIA tarafından uydurulan bir mit olsaydı. Ama değil. Bazı bireysel aktivistler ve örgütler ile Amerikan güvenlik devleti arasında problemli ilişkiler olduğu doğru ve Sincan hakkındaki raporlarda hatalar ve yanlış atıflar var. “Soykırım” ve “kölelik” gibi kavramların kullanılabilirliği de tartışılabilir. Ama bütün bunlar bırakın reddiyeciliği Sincan’da yaşayan yerli halka dönük hak ihlallerinin bilinemezliği/şaibeli olduğu iddiasının temeli olmamalıdır.
2016’dan bu yana Sincan, politik eğitim, zorunlu dil eğitimleri ve ıslahevi benzeri “mesleki” eğitim veren bir kamp ağını içeren güvenlik altyapısında devasa bir genişleme gördü. Kamplarda tutulanlar partiye liyakati sorunlu görülen parti üyelerinden eserleri bölgede Çinli olmayan kültürel kimlikleri ayakta tutan aydın ve sanatçılara ve aşırı dindarlık belirtisi gösterenlere kadar değişiyor. Bu dönemde Müslüman Uygurlar arkadaşlarını dini vaciplerini yerine getirmeye teşvik etmek gibi küçük suçlardan hapse atılırken Sincan kamplara alımlarda büyük bir artış gördü. Bu arada bazıları Sincan’ın kırsal nüfusunda fabrika disiplini yaratmak için tasarlanmış zorunlu çalışma programları kapsamında Çin’in iç kısımlarına gönderildi. Bazı durumlarda bu işçiler batılı şirketlerin tedarik zincirine dahil fabrikalara alındı.
Sincan’da aileler parçalandı. Okul çağındaki çocukların %40’ı şu an yatılı okullara kayıtlı ve pek çoğu devlet yetiştirme yurtlarında. Çin dışındaki Uygurlar, Kazaklar ve diğerleri akrabalarının akıbetini bilmemenin travmasını yaşıyor.
Bu politikaların unsurları Çin’in geçmişteki ideolojik kampanyalarını hatırlatsa da, bugün bölgede yaşananlar Sincan’ı Orta Asya’nın ekonomik merkezi haline getirmeyi hedefleyen hızlı kapitalist gelişmenin yeni koşulları içinde gerçekleşiyor. Kapitalist gelişme ile yerli toplulukların baskılanması arasındaki ilişki solun yakından tanıdığı bir durum. Bu dinamikleri Sincan özelinde görmemek ve eleştirmemek bir tür kasıtlı körlüktür.
Qiao kolektifinin siyaseti, enternasyonalist bir solun temeli olması gereken prensipleri pek çok açıdan dışarıda bırakıyor, fakat biz özellikle bir konuyu vurgulamak istiyoruz: terörizm karşıtlığı konusunu ele alma biçimleri.
Qiao kolektifi bizlerin Çin Halk Cumhuriyeti’nin “radikalleşme karşıtı” kampanyasının Amerika’nın Terörle Savaş politikalarının tam karşıtı olduğuna inanmamızı isterlerdi. Oysa tam tersine Çin’in radikalizm karşıtı söylemi batının terörle mücadele uygulamalarının bilinçli bir özümsenmesini temsil ediyor. Çin başkanı Xi Jinping (Şi Cinping) bile konuşmalarında devlet adamlarını 11 Eylül’den bu yana batı liderliğindeki Terörle Mücadele politikalarını kullanmaları konusunda cesaretlendirdi.
Raporun yazarları, batı politikalarını radikalleşme tehlikesi altında olanları tespit etmek ve onlara müdahale etmek için referans gösterdiklerine göre bu emsallerin farkındalar. İngiltere’nin kötü şöhretli Önleme Stratejisi kapsamındaki Durdurma ve Uzaklaştırma Programı gibi Fransa’nın radikalleşme karşıtı müdahaleci politikalarını not düşüyorlar. (Bu listeye elbette ABD, Avustralya ve başka yerlerdeki terör karşıtı emniyet uygulamalarının sebep olduğu ihlalleri de ekleyebiliriz). Fakat şaşırtıcı bir şekilde bu polis tekniklerini, eleştirmek için değil batıyı çifte standartlı olmakla suçlamak için kullanıyorlar: Çin’in Avrupa ülkelerinin maruz kalmadığı bir eleştiriye maruz kalmasından şikayet ediyorlar.
Bu tam anlamıyla kolektifin kendilerinin de sıkça örnek verdiği Çin devlet medyasının yön saptırmasına denk bir samimiyetsizlik. Müslüman hak savunucusu gruplarla birlikte sol uzun zamandır İslami inanç ve/veya anti-emperyalist görüşlerin toplum karşıtı terör eğilimiyle düzmece bir özdeşleştirmesine dayanan İslamafobik politikalara son verme çağrısı yapıyor. Qiao kolektifi Çin’in aynı derecede bir eleştiriye ve aynı çağrılara maruz kalmasından mutlu olur mu?
Rapora bakarsak olmazlar. Çünkü raporlarının hedefi “radikalizm karşıtlığı” ve “aşırılık karşıtlığı” gibi zararlı paradigmaları bir devletin Müslüman vatandaşlarıyla ilişkilenmesinin kabul edilebilir temeli olarak normalleştirmek.
Şurası açık ki Qiao kolektifi “çoğunluğu Müslüman ülkelerin ya da kendi sınırlarında aşırılık karşıtı kampanyalar düzenleyen ülkelerin” Birleşmiş Milletlerde Çin’in yanında saf tutmasından etkilenmiş. Biz o kadar etkilenmedik. Aşırılık karşıtı bu yerel kampanyalar Amerika’nın Terörle Savaşı sırasındaki en kötü hak ihlallerini tekrar ettiği gibi bunu da genelde onunla işbirliği halinde yaptı.
Qiao’nun verdiği örneklerden biri terör karşıtı Birleşik Görev Gücü, Uluslararası Af Örgütü’nün 2011 yılında “yargısız infaz, yaygın tutuklama, keyfi ve kanunsuz gözaltı, kaçırma ve korkutma” suçlamaları yönelttiği Nijerya. Bir diğeri zamanında Amerika’nın Afganistan’daki başkomutanının “terörle mücadelede harika bir müttefik” diye övdüğü, hava ve kara kuvvetlerinin sivillere dönük ihlallerinden sorumlu Pakistan.
Qiao’nun örnek verdiği sıradan Çin vatandaşlarına dönük şiddet vakaları elbette görmezden gelinemez: terörizme karışanları eleştirmeliyiz ama aynı zamanda terörizmi yaratan sosyal koşulları tanımlayıp bunların politik çözümü için duyulan ihtiyacı da dile getirmeliyiz.
Qiao ise tersine bizleri 20 yıldır süren Terörle Küresel Savaş ile simbiyotik biçimde yükselen ve devlet şiddetinin meşruluğunu sağlayan “terör izleme” uzmanlığının karanlık dünyasına yönlendiriyor. Sincan’da terörle mücadelede referans gösterdikleri otoritelerden biri, Rohan Gunaratna, 2000’li yıllarda Amerika ve müttefiklerini Müslüman nüfusu yoğun ülkelere saldırmaya ve ülkelerinde baskıcı güvenlik kanunları uygulamaya teşvik etmiş itibarsız biri. Eğer Gunaratna ve onun gibiler bizim arkadaşımızsa, solun başka düşmana ihtiyacı yok demektir.
Çin’in “terörizm sorunu”nu eleştirmeden tartışmak ve Pekin’in bu konuya yaklaşımındaki sertliği azımsamak dünyanın her yerinde Müslüman topluluklara dönük tehditlere yol açan küresel terör karşıtlığı söylemine soldan bir cephe ekliyor. Müslüman-karşıtı ırkçılıkla ve halen devam etmekte olan Terörle Savaşın yıkıcı etkileriyle mücadele enternasyonaldir ve bizim bu mücadeledeki dayanışmamız bu sürecin Çin’deki kurbanlarına uzanmalıdır.
Bu sebeplerle, Qiao kolektifinin “rapor ve kaynak derlemesi”ni geniş kitlelerin önüne koymayı tercih etmiş olmanızdan üzüntü duyuyoruz. Solda başka bakış açılarının da mevcut olduğu gerçeğinden hareketle ve bir tartışma ortamının yaratılması adına bu mektubu yayınlayacağınızı umut ediyoruz.
Çin ve Amerika-Çin ilişkilerine dair eleştirel sol analizler konusunda iş birliği yapmaya hazır olduğumuzu belirtiyor, yardımcı olabileceğimiz her konuda bizimle irtibat kuracağınızı umuyoruz. Critical China Scholars ve etkinliklerimiz hakkında daha fazla bilgi için, önceki etkinliklerimizin video kayıtlarını da içeren internet sitemizi lütfen ziyaret ediniz.
Dayanışmayla, Critical China Scholars (EMK)