Brainwashing, Police Guards and Coercive Internment: Evidence from Chinese Government Documents about the Nature and Extent of Xinjiang’s “Vocational Training Internment Camps”

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

Women dressed in green uniforms sit in rows behind bars. The cartoon is depicted from behind, and their faces are not visible.

The women were kept in their classroom behind a gated metal fence. From Figure 6, below. Source: anonymous informant.

Adrian Zenz
Independent Researcher

Introduction

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 a gracious and beneficial 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]

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Geopolitics and the Western Pacific: An Interview with Leszek Buszynski

The photograph depicts the front cover a book titled "Geopolitics and the Western Pacific: China, Japan and the US" by Leszek Buszynski. An abstract, water-colour image is in the background.

The book cover of Geopolitics and the Western Pacific: China, Japan and the US, by Dr. Leszek Buszynski. Routledge, 2019.

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2019

This interview with Dr. Leszek Buszynski, author of Geopolitics and the Western Pacific: China, Japan and the U.S. (Routledge, 2019), took place by email with Dr. Anders Corr between May 31 and June 12.

Anders: What are some of your recommendations in the book?

Leszek: The recommendations are in the final chapter and have been written from the perspective of Australia as a a middle power and ally of the US.  Basically, the U.S. relies excessively on military power to counter China but this is creating the fear of a US-China clash in the region from which China benefits, particularly within ASEAN.  Scuttling the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was a mistake because it is a way of bringing together the states of the region into cooperation with the U.S., Japan and Australia in a way which would offset Chinese influence.

Anders: Don’t you think that China is also creating fear with its military buildup? Wouldn’t countries like Japan and South Korea be even more fearful if they did not have the U.S. military there to protect them?

Leszek: This is not the issue, the answer is of course. But without a broader US presence in the region, one that is not just military based, regional countries such as those in ASEAN would feel the pressure to gravitate to China.  China has a way of undermining the U.S. presence and its alliance system by playing on regional fears of conflict and instability, the Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte is a case in point. America has to counteract that. Continue reading

Trade Wars, Sanctions and Business Appeasement

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2019 

Chinese President Xi Jinping is photographed in the center, addresses a U.S.-China business roundtable, comprised of U.S. and Chinese CEOs on September 23, 2015, in Seattle, Washington.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, center, addresses a U.S.-China business roundtable, comprised of U.S. and Chinese CEOs on September 23, 2015, in Seattle, Washington. The Paulson Institute, in partnership with the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, co-hosted the event. Source: Governor Jay & First Lady Trudi Inslee via Flickr.

William R. Hawkins
International Economics and National Security Consultant

In his book Appeasing Bankers, Jonathan Kirshner, the Stephen and Barbara Friedman Professor of International Political Economy at Cornell, argues that “Bankers dread war. More precisely, financial communities within states favor cautious national security strategies and are acutely averse to war and to policies that risk war.” He finds this to be a “universal” trait (at least within capitalist societies) evident throughout modern history. This should be kept in mind when watching the large swings in the stock market in response to reports about the progress, or lack of, in U.S.-China trade talks, Iranian threats and turmoil at the Mexican border. While Kirshner focuses on “stability” with an emphasis on inflation and debt accumulation, he notes the “breathtaking financial globalization” that took place in the post-Cold War period. This has made markets even more sensitive to the dynamics of a contentious international system. Fortunately, the stock market rapidly recovers from panics generated by headlines thanks to the fundamental strength of the U.S. economy.

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China’s Concentration Camps Are A Test For The International Community

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 5, May 2019 

The photograph depicts barbed wire close-up in black and white.

Barbed wire sky. Source: Darigold Bokeh via Flickr.

Nijat Turghun
Stockholm University

It’s now no secret that in East Turkistan, the oppression has reached a the boiling point.  Since China’s occupation in 1949, an entire people are going through an unimaginably cruel process, in which Uyghurs and other groups are being pared from their original identity. Their culture, language, values, tradition and religion have been regarded as a poisonous barrier for China’s new project: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). To fulfill the final mission China set up of concentration camps in East Turkistan, where people are being tortured, indoctrinated, abused and brainwashed again and  again because they barely belong to what Beijing considers risky groups, including simple communities of faith or people with family abroad. People outside the camps are not free, and every 100 meters people must be checked by Chinese policemen. Video cameras on the street continuously report one’s movement and at home people are obliged to welcome Han Chinese guests who have been sent by the Chinese government for ‘’good intention’’. They impose themselves into Uyghur homes, where they eat and live together with Uyghur families. If any religious or other “risky” things or behaviors are discovered they will be placed in concentration camps.

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Block China With An Independent East Turkistan

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 5, May 2019 

A Uyghur protest in Berlin. Protestors are photographed waving blue and white flags against the background of an old building.

Uyghur protest Berlin, July 2009. Source: Claudia Himmelreich via Wikimedia Commons.

Rukiye Turdush
Uyghur Research Institute

People of East Turkistan, called Xinjiang by the Chinese Communist Party, have endured the long and oppressive colonisation of China for many years. Although China did not round up people of East Turkistan and shoot them with machine guns in front of the world, they have locked them up and are eliminating them one by one in concentration camps. [1]

Every Uyghur living outside China is searching and asking for the location of their disappeared family members.  Uyghur girls are forced to marry Han Chinese as a part of their gene washing policy. Uyghur children are forcibly removed from their families as Chinese officials with genocidal intention proclaim, “cut the lineage, cut the roots, cut the connection.” [2]

Around three million Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslims are currently locked up in concentration camps and are being subjected to torture and death.[3] The religion, culture and identity of Muslims in East Turkistan are now entirely banned. The world has remained silent in its moral obligation to do something about this tragedy.

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