“Wash Brains, Cleanse Hearts”: Evidence from Chinese Government Documents about the Nature and Extent of Xinjiang’s Extrajudicial Internment Campaign

Posted on November 24, 2019 by Adrian Zenz

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 11, November 2019

Adrian Zenz, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow in China Studies
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation

A cartoon depiction of women seated in a row in a room behind bars.

Women undergoing “reeducation” in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR, China) were kept in their classroom behind a gated metal fence. See Figure 16, below. Source: anonymous informant.

In the wake of growing international criticism, the Chinese government has sought to counter human rights accusations over its re-education and internment campaign in Xinjiang through an elaborate propaganda campaign. This campaign portrays the region’s network of so-called “Vocational Skills Education Training Centers” (zhiye jineng jiaoyu peixun zhongxin 职业技能教育培训中心) as benign training institutions that offer persons who committed minor offenses an alternative to formal prosecution. Since late 2018, the state has invited media and official representatives from other nations and even from the western media to participate in official and closely-chaperoned tours of a select number of “showcase” centers.[1]

Drawing on the government’s own statements, this article seeks decisively to refute these propaganda claims. Overall, the author analyzed three types of data sources, all of which are mutually consistent and confirm the growing body of first-hand witness accounts. The first type consisted of official government documents and related media reports that are publicly accessible but not designed for international audiences. The second source consists of local government data in the form of detailed tables and spreadsheets that list the fates of thousands of minority individuals. The third source is a confidential, classified Chinese policy document issued by the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’s Party Political and Legal Affairs Committee. This highly significant document details how Xinjiang’s so-called “vocational training centers” are supposed to be run.

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Nasif Ahmed: Hong Kong Independence

Posted on September 5, 2019 by admin

The cartoon depicts a man in a construction helmet, alongside others, running from a green blast title "independence".

“Hong Kong Independence”, by Nasif Ahmed.

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Genocide as Nation Building: China’s Historically Evolving Policy in East Turkistan

Posted on August 29, 2019 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 8, August 2019

China’s President Xi Jinping. China has enforced a massive security crackdown in Kashgar, East Turkistan (called “Xinjiang” by China), where between one and three million ethnic Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities are estimated to be held in a network of internment camps that Beijing describes as “vocational education centres”. They are aimed at erasing non-Han and non-CCP identity under the guise of steering people away from religious extremism. Source: Etan Liam via Flickr.

Rukiye Turdush
Uyhgur Research Institute

At Nankai University in 2003, Chinese professor Ai Yue Jing said, “Our great culture can assimilate any other nation or culture, we can change and absorb good one torture and kill bad one”. These words ushered in the new era of China’s “nation building” project in East Turkistan. [1]

Three million Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslims in East Turkistan (“Xinjiang”) are incarcerated in Chinese concentration camps and face the prospect of being killed and deported to China’s secret inland prisons as a part of the country’s ongoing genocide.[2] According to the report Genocide in East Turkistan published by the Uyghur Research Institute this year, China’s ethnic policy in East Turkistan falls into at least four of the five acts defined as genocide by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. [3] Eye-witness accounts, media reports, and testimonials of relatives of the victims have verified claims of the existence of torture and death in concentration camps,[4] as well as China’s policy of objectifying Uyghurs through experimentation in high–tech mass surveillance systems that make use of QR codes, biometrics, artificial intelligence, phone spyware, and big data.[5] China’s policies towards the Uyghurs have created horror and demoralization, destroying their belief in a world of right and wrong. Consequently, the deteriorated mental health of Uyghurs in East Turkistan has indirectly impacted on their relatives in the Uyghur diaspora. Many of them have already reported constant crying, appetite loss, sleep deprivation, loss of concentration, depression, and frequent nightmares.[6] Continue reading →

Legislatures Elected by Evaluative Proportional Representation (EPR): An Algorithm

Posted on August 5, 2019 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 8, August 2019

Stephen Bosworth, Anders Corr and Stevan Leonard¹

Abstract

A series of cartoon hands are pictured side-by-side against a white background. They are cartoon hands in blue, red, purple, yellow, orange, and green.

Source: Pixabay

Unlike any existing voting method for a representative democracy, this article describes a new method that gives every voter every appropriate reason to be pleased with the results. It is called Evaluative Proportional Representation (EPR). EPR guarantees that each citizen’s vote will continue to count proportionately in the deliberations of a legislative body, such as a city council. After assessing the ideal qualities needed by the office, citizens grade each candidate as either Excellent (ideal), Very Good, Good, Acceptable, Poor, or “Reject” (completely unsuitable). Each voter can give the same grade to more than one candidate. Each candidate not graded is automatically counted as a “Reject” by that voter. These grades can be counted by anyone who can add and subtract whole numbers or by the algorithm provided. Each EPR citizen’s vote adds proportionately to the voting power in the legislature of a winner. Initially, EPR’s count provisionally determines the number of highest grades (votes) each candidate has exclusively received from all the voters. However, no winner is allowed to retain enough votes to dictate to the legislature. Therefore, our simulated election limits the percent of votes any winner can retain to 20%. This ensures that at least three members of the legislature will have to agree for any majority decision to be made. We call a candidate who has received such a percentage super popular. Any non-super-popular candidate is eligible to receive at least one of the extra votes initially held by a super-popular candidate. Each extra vote is transferred to the remaining eligible candidate on this voter’s ballot who has been awarded the highest remaining grade of at least Acceptable. If such a candidate is absent, this ballot becomes a proxy vote that must be publicly transferred to an eligible winner judged most fit for office by this super-popular candidate. Similarly, all the votes provisionally held by an unelected candidate must be transferred to an eligible winner. The final number of votes received by each winner is the weighted vote each will use during the deliberations of the legislature. No vote is needlessly wasted. Each citizen is given every appropriate reason to be pleased.

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Democratizing China Should Be The U.S. Priority

Posted on July 10, 2019 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 7, July 2019

A very large crowd is depicted from above, flanked by trees. Skyscrapers are visible in the background.

Hong Kong protest, June 2019. Source: Flickr.

Anders Corr, Ph.D.
Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

U.S. goals in relation to China, our biggest national security threat, tend to array along three main axes: military, diplomatic, and economic. But in deference to the failed strategy of engagement, we don’t use the significant normative and ideological power of democratization as a multiplier on these battlefields, nor does the prospect of democratizing China factor sufficiently in our cost-benefit analyses.

Militarily, we prioritize defense from China, but other than ongoing military support to Taiwan and the Tibet campaign of 1957-72,^[1] we have not used our substantial military resources to promote democracy in China, for example in the rebellious zones of Xinjiang or Hong Kong. Economically, we prioritize U.S. market share in China, IP protection, and beating China’s GDP, technology and industrial strength. But we don’t condition our China trade on our lowest priorities, human rights and democracy.

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