For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) consolidation of power is the number one priority. It's why they just passed the UK to be the most surveilled nation on earth. It's why they've introduced a rather dystopian social credit system. And it's why they're sending the Uighurs to 're-education centres,' which more closely resemble labour camps.
The Han are one of the oldest people to survive to this day, named after the first dynasty to unite China. A vast majority of the population in China are Han, speaking Mandarin & making up the government. These are the people who Beijing wants to be its sole citizens. This is due to something Shan so graciously touched on before; that the Han people share many commonalities. Therefore the CCP is able to easily manipulate Han culture so that its interests line up with that of the government. The immense historic culture of this age old land is being slowly chiselled and remodelled into something the CCP can control and use as a weapon against its own people to keep them being good, obedient citizens. This is where the Uighurs have become an issue for the Chinese government, they don't share the same culture as the Han people, and follow a different religion, which is out of the CCPs control; if China left Xinjiang with a vast Uighur majority it would've been a threat to the unity of the region. Amnesty International made a report stating that cultural gatherings and peaceful events were labelled as 'illegal religious' and 'seperatist activities.' This blatant oppression hasn't been taken down by the Uighurs, many riots have taken place in Urumqi (The capital of Xinjiang) with a death toll in the hundreds. Even though I may personally disagree with violent protests, I can understand why in this case it is essential for their survival. When facing the genocide of your people, it's a death sentence to stay quiet.
However, the government can't just let the region fall into anarchy, the short term response of the CCP was to flood the area with troops and sending the Uighurs to be brainwashed into believing their culture is detrimental to the society in which they belong. However this isn't sustainable, so the government is doing what they've already succeeded in in places like Tibet; giving away cheap homes and land to the Han Chinese and subsidising their jobs to encourage them to move into the area, drowning out the Uighurs. This ties into the huge accomplishments of Chinese infrastructure, which has accumulated the largest high speed rail network in the world, by allowing people to easily & quickly visit family back in the heartland whilst workers flock to the frontier of Xi Jinping’s reach. Additionally, the social credit system disallows those who have maybe protested against government action from travelling on this network; locking them Into their local area and keeping their whispers within a small area. These sinister undertones are hard to see behind what's becoming the eighth wonder of the world, but they are still there nonetheless.
Unfortunately, this isn't enough for the complete, unopposed control of the area which is still the black sheep of the provinces (discounting Taiwan, but are they seriously still telling the International community that it’s part of the People’s Republic of China). In some ways China resembles the countries from Orwell's 1984, as the government has rallied the people against a common enemy, some weeks it's the West & the US, others it's the Uighurs and someday it may even be you. The incessant hatred of the Uighurs has even led to the government forcing Uighur women to take birth control, as is also mandatory for other minorities. Sky news has found credible evidence that Uighur children were going missing, and though this isn't happening on a large scale, it still ticks down the clock for when the Uighurs will become just a story of the past. This is why it's a genocide. Beijing isn't executing vast numbers of people, they're executing the culture, and the future of these people. This generation of Uighur people, if the CCP gets its way, will be the last.
This worries me on a personal level, but I'm happy that my government here in the UK has offered 3 million Hong Kongers British passports and residence permits. But for the Uighurs, there is no way out, some are fleeing to Turkey or other Central Asian Muslim countries, but these are in too small a number for their culture to live on beyond this century. As I said before, the government needs an enemy for the people to hate, to make them work harder for their country & their pride, so once the Uighurs are gone, who's next?
Matt Minnis 28/07/20
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