Amidst criticism of the Chinese state’s actions in Xinjiang, how has Beijing responded? Denial, gaslighting, whataboutism . . . the list is impressively long.
One component to their strategy has been to create propaganda accounts singing the praises of how Beijing rules places such as Xinjiang and Tibet—and then trying to amplify such sweet stories through social media platforms in the west. More and more of these accounts have been called into question, analyzed, and critiqued—and in some cases shut down. The thread below is a great example of forensic critical work to better understand what Beijing is up to here. It’s a great read.
I feel the same about watching the forced dances - completely devoid of enjoyment, passion, any sense of meaning. You know the ones where the CCP bring reporters into class and are like “look we let them write in Chinese and their local language, now watch them dance on command”.
China’s new method of propaganda. Acknowledging the view point of the rest of the world, and then proceeds to claim that view point is wrong. Of course, it can only be in English, and this is certainly banned inside China. Mao forbids the average Chinese citizens landing their peepers on this kind of content, but this stuff is designed for non-Chinese with bad history.
After giving a excellent summary of what most of the world and the Uyghurs themselves see the current situation in East Turkestan, her counter factual campaign starts by claiming that applying the notion of nation state to China is Euro-centric and wrong. She then backs up her claim by citing Zhonghua Minzhu (the Chinese ethnicity) is not limited to the Han peoples, just like Americans aren’t a monolithic group of people.
Huh? I mean Chinese propaganda loves to conflate ethnicity with nationality, especially in English, that’s old news. Although Zhonghua Minzhu is an artificial construct created in the 20th century expressly for the purpose of creating a nation state in the fashion of European countries. It was coined by Liang Qichao in 1902. So using a modern term created with the idea of creating a nation state in mind to argue that the notion of nation state didn’t apply to historical China, therefore shouldn’t apply to modern China is plain ridiculous.
She of course also did the obligatory “has historically been an inseparable part of China” bit. However, despite having a long history of contact with city states in around the Tarim Basin and along the silk road, periods of actual control of the region by ethnic Han political entities had been extremely brief. Western Han controlled the region for less than 161 years, and the Tang dynasty controlled the region for less than 150 years. For the past 3000 years, from the time of Spring and Autumn to the present, Han dominant China has had actual control over the region for 10% of the time. Even if you want to count the periods of non-Han dominant states that you claim to be China, the time of control is sadly very short. The Mongol Yuan dynasty didn’t control the region, that region belonged to the Chagatai Khanate. The Manchu had very loose control over the region, and repeatedly lost the entire region to rebellions. By the time they officially annexed East Turkestan as a province in 1881, that only took 30 more years until the fall of the Qing dynasty and local warlords resumed actual control. So… 11% of the time for the last 3000 years?
