On Sunday, Chinese authorities announced their plan to Sinicize Islam through a five-year plan. According to a report published in the state-run Global Times newspaper, on January 4, representatives of Islamic associations from eight Chinese provinces participated in a Beijing seminar and discussed the outline for how to align Islam with Chinese norms. A government official said it was important for China's Muslim community to "improve their political stance and follow the [Communist] Party's lead."
The announcement came just days after police reportedly raided three unregistered mosques in the southwestern Yunnan province, injuring dozens of worshippers and arresting more than 40 people.
[...]
officials in regions with sizable Muslim populations are "learning" from the Xinjiang experience
The mere offering of halal services is taken as a sign of imminent threat; when one delivery app included it as an option, Muslims faced a wave of online hate.
Not unheard of in the UK either.
I think in the end they may get a Uighur Judah Maccabee.
Let's see if this thread attracts another minder.
Someone showed up in a previous China thread who had clearly never read anything on the blog.
This person? I couldn't remember if I'd seen the handle before.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that turd.
Yeah, it was weird. I would've thought Unfogged is too small and obscure to attract that kind of attention, so I'm probably wrong. Could just be a freelance troll or a deeply weird lurker. (More than half of us.)
12: Yes. I'm also thinking that bob was not an agent provocateur.
|| Article yesterday about Rushan. |>
13: Well, of course. He's never at the meetings.
Anyway, despite him setting off my spidey sense, I didn't want to engage in the blog comment McCarthyism so I just called him a Nazi and let it go.
I would've thought Unfogged is too small and obscure to attract that kind of attention
Good. Go on thinking that.
It's also spread beyond the Muslim population, Christians too are being similarly repressed.
I set up a bunch of alerts. There's a torrent of stuff about Xinjiang and Hui, a sprinkling about Christians (and even some Buddhists and Taoists).
I had lunch with an American scholar here the other day who specializes in Xinjiang, he speaks fluent Uyghur, Mandarin, Tibetan, and a couple of other languages. Last time he was there he was traveling on a tourist visa and got detained for almost a full day. He admitted it probably wasn't too smart to be doing research on a tourist visa but that used to be fairly common. He's having second thoughts about a return trip and said he'll probably go to Taiwan instead.
They're totally choking off access to foreign researchers, and putting binders on their own. I'm worried they will start permanently destroying all evidence that doesn't fit the narrative. And narrative changes by the week.
Dude knows Manchu and Japanese too.
Late Imperial China (1368-1912) and Inner Asia, wrote a book about the Qing dynasty and Tibet.
Ironic thought: he would probably be safer in Kazakhstan, asking people who cross the border.
If only China had some kind of barrier on its northern border.
They could call it the Big, Beautiful Wall of China.
"My guess is that the Chinese have a list of people from different countries and if they have a problem with one country they will just arrest the citizens [of that country] who are on that list."
That they can continue to get away with it is yet another consequence of Trump's fundamental weakness.
And the people working with him understand that very well.
Any other administration would be responding more effectively, but, I think the PRC would actually be behaving the same way regardless. The one credit I'll give this administration is that it isn't pretending China really just wants to be friends.
I think it's worse than that. It isn't just (or even mainly) about the direct response to China. The deliberate fracturing of NATO by the U.S. is exactly what China (or Russia) want to enable them to expand their power.
"They have come to see the political potential of Christianity as a force for change," said Lian. "What really makes the government nervous is Christianity's claim to universal rights and values."Boring scholars:
Along these lines, the government has banned academic research and coursework on seven 'Western' topics: universal values, civil society, citizens' rights, freedom of the press, benefits of capitalism, the independence of the judiciary, and mistakes made by the CCP
4, 10: your handling of that case reflected poorly on you. This is an extremely White space, and your responses are what can be expected of Whites poisoned by mob-like online habits. Compare the response to me (not white) there vs. the response to analogous comments to White people, such as here: http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_13553.html
You mistakenly thought I was one thing (CCP apparatchik) and launched a friendly fire attack. I was another thing (non-White non-Han person trying to figure out how to prevent the trauma visited on my community from being replicated), and you as a group went in guns ablazing, bullying a marginalized person who already has a lived experience of that shit.
My question was trying to get at whether it's maybe ethically ambiguous for English to have replaced the Cornish language, or whether it's OK that the US educational system fails to keep the languages of most immigrants alive through the second and third generation.
So this non-White person is "a turd"? Is it a coincidence turds are usually brown? Shame on you.
Yes, the commenters on this blog are heavily skewed white. No, not everyone who posted on that thread objecting to your comments is white. There's no "friendly fire" about objecting to someone who euphemistically refers to forced cultural assimilation as "heavy-handed education of children" and wonders if maybe that's the best of all possible policies.* You have to actually have some common ground to be "friendly."
I'm sorry that the trauma you've suffered has left you apparently incapable of imagining a society where meaningful diversity could coexist with peace, and where the available choices aren't limited to a spectrum that ranges only from forced assimilation via "education" to outright physical violence.
Despite claiming to be open-minded, all of your comments in that thread tended towards despair that anything but forced assimilation could be possible and left the impression that your goal was to test out just how much force a given commenter would be willing to condone. Nothing about your conduct in that thread suggests good faith, and nothing about your comment in this thread suggests there's any point in responding further.
*You can keep your tax breaks too, if that's the cost of receiving them.
To save you all the trouble, 38.1 links to an entire thread wrt the Russian seizure of Crimea, and doesn't support FB/FeeBee's claims at all. The closest you get is bob being bob, which is to say mostly ranting against the US invading people. I don't see anyone advocating cultural assimilation of anyone, forcibly or otherwise.
In short, 2nd 39.
The deliberate fracturing of NATO by the U.S. is exactly what China (or Russia) want to enable them to expand their power.
Their strategic aims are different, though. Russia wants more - it wants its sphere of influence in eastern Europe and central Asia back, partly because of lovingly nurtured national paranoia and partly because it wants to be taken seriously as a superpower again. China just wants to keep what it has: the enormous territorial empire in Asia acquired under the Qing, Tibet etc. (Exception, as always, for Taiwan.) As long as other nations are suitably indebted to and respectful of China, they can stay independent. China isn't harbouring dreams of its armies sweeping into eastern Siberia or south-east Asia; they tried that in the 60s and 70s and got their heads in their hands to play with. So their attention is aimed at internal threats, and a lot of these are historically informed: independent religion (Christian or Muslim) looks bad because, apart from anything else, the Taiping. Uncontrollable peasant unrest has toppled a lot of dynasties.
41:
Taiwan is a really big exception. I think the PRC would accept any amount of Russian influence in Central Asia, for instance, (any amount of almost anything, really) if that was the price of Taiwan.
Broadly, I'm not sure Russian and Chinese ambitions are that different. The PRC's new desired world order is "Great Power Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics". I haven't done the reading to know what that really means, but on the face of it it sounds compatible with Putin's Munich doctrine - spheres of influence, inviolability of domestic affairs, sovereignty above international law (for great powers only, of course). Their spheres would only overlap in Central Asia, and I see no reason in principle they couldn't reach a modus vivendi.
I also wouldn't discount the possibility of Chinese aggression in general. People do stupid things all the time.
Also, I think fear of domestic revolt is the primary motivator for Putin as well.
Two points: I don't think China has ambitions of a sphere of influence in SE Asia - an area where the governments are nominally independent but in fact do what Beijing says. That is what Russia wants; basically the old Warsaw Pact. And I am very sceptical that Putin is afraid of domestic revolt, in the sense of an actual rising against him, except possibly in some very small border areas like Chechnya. China is sincerely worried about this happening in Xinjiang (and elsewhere nearby).
Though I agree that Russia and China would see eye to eye on the rest.
I think it is quite telling that a lot of people who hate the international order are effusively pro-Russian and either don't talk about China much (eg Le Pen or the AfD) or see it as an enemy (eg Trump), while the people who are keenest on being friendly with China are usually centrist/Davos types.
(The excluded middle here is the left - on one hand they fear the consequences of unleashing economic nationalism, on the other hand they are sceptical of globalization, and on whatever third appendage we're using, they would like to link economic integration to the human rights agenda. You can look at this as being either conflicted, or else as being nuanced.)
43: As a proportion of population, there are more Chechens than Uighurs (0.9% and 0.7%) and more non-Russians than non-Han (22.9%, 8.4%). But that's beside the point: I don't think Putin is worried about Chechens, I think he most fears a color revolution in Moscow, and I think the CCP most fears something similar. Neither regime is mortally threatened by their minorities.
Spheres: I think China wants acknowledged veto power over matters it considers important (like Russia - superpower dreaming, as you say); and for Chinese commerce to be free to operate under Chinese rules, and I think they actually want that worldwide, not just regionally (ultimately perhaps incompatible with Russia, yes). I don't think they want something that looks like the Warsaw Pact, but I certainly think they want enough power that other countries will reliably do what they want, and for some countries that could amount really to satellite status; people are saying this is true already in Cambodia and Laos.
47: I would reach for the jar of nuance I put on the table in 46 here. I think they value the international institutions, as long as they don't bother the PRC internally. OTOH Russia, and to be honest, the President of the United States, actively wants them gone.
48: They value their UNSC veto and their MFN status. If they valued international institutions in general they wouldn't be occupying thousands of km2 of other countries' EEZs or holding a dozen Canadians hostage.
I was going to send this in to a FPP, but since we're all here: Chinese ambassador to Burma straight-up threatens locals and publicly lies about it. Background.
I think it is quite telling that a lot of people who hate the international order are effusively pro-Russian and either don't talk about China much (eg Le Pen or the AfD) or see it as an enemy (eg Trump), while the people who are keenest on being friendly with China are usually centrist/Davos types.
Because China doesn't really have an exportable ideology. If you hate gays and Jews and immigrants and international institutions, and want a traditional setup with great powers dealing with each other bilaterally and small countries treated as spoils, Russia is here for you. But China's approach to things doesn't really have anything to offer anyone else.
I don't think Putin is worried about Chechens, I think he most fears a color revolution in Moscow
Hmm, maybe. I see your point. I don't think he's right to fear one, but you may be right that he does.
39: where did I advocate force? And where has a minority population lived for several generations without being on the receiving end of trauma?
40: that thread was an example of people jumping from a traumatic post topic to abstract theoretical / tangential questions. At worst, my comment in the previous thread was a bad launching point for a more abstract question. Sure, it would be in incredibly poor taste to segue from a holocaust survivor giving an in-person account of their experiences, to asking how starvation really does affect a human body. This blog, however, is not that situation, and we've never had pretensions of having the social norms the US Senate fancies itself to have.
Re 48, I'll highlight the second link: barefaced, 100%, alternate-reality lying from the embassy itself. It's Leninist behavior. They ultimately value nothing but their own power.
Really interesting links - thanks Mossy.
48. It seems that China wants their citizens to be immune from foreign prosecution, as well. Shades of 19th century colonialism and "extraterritoriality." (This in reference to sentencing a Canadian citizen to the death penalty in an effort to get back Huawei magnate Meng Wangzhou, who was arrested in Canada.)
On the Russian side, various publications report that Putin would like to annex Belarus and has been putting pressure on Lukashenko via threatening to cut off gas supplies.
They've taken over the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota on a 99-year lease for non-payment of ludicrous BRI debt. It would be so great if Sri Lanka denounced this as an Unequal Treaty.
57: Which Malaysia has basically done with its BRI projects. They hadn't been built yet though.
China doesn't really have an exportable ideology
I disagree! It does - authoritarian engineers getting stuff done, plus globalization - just it's not one with popular appeal as opposed to elite appeal.
Making the world safe for autocracy, to coin a phrase.
The links in 50 give some idea what China getting its way might look like*: lawless Chinese commercial behavior, and state power enforcing local acquiescence; and also how PRC expansion/aggression might develop. From 50.3:
Operate in areas that have REALLY been out of government control for decades, such as the United Wa State Army (UWSA) areas in NE Shan State. These areas run by a notorious drug-trafficking army have been pretty much annexed by China. RMB is the preferred currency, Chinese banks and mobile systems are used, and there are few if any border controls. It's my understanding that the Chinese Communist Party's International Liaison Department is responsible for maintaining the relationship with UWSA, which could be a vestige of past relations when the UWSA was still the Burmese Communist Party. Christians and missionaries are repressed in these annexed areas.If the Burmese start torching Chinese businesses, what will China do? Maybe send the PLA to protect its citizens in those border areas? Maybe they decide they need to stay long term? Maybe decide to annex those areas outright? Based on tributary relations in the 18th C they could make a claim to those territories, actually less absurd than their Nine-Dash Line claims.
Speaking of Leninist behavior.
China has also managed to outmaneuver other foreign interlocutors and emerge as the main broker in Myanmar's staggering peace process, which is a major reason why Hong is opposed to Western diplomats visiting Myanmar's war-torn north that borders on China.
[...]
At the same time, huge shipments of Chinese weapons have been moved across the border to select rebel outfits, putting even more pressure on the Myanmar government and military. The 20,000-strong United Wa State Army (UWSA) is now equipped with new, sophisticated Chinese weapons which it has shared with ethnic Kokang, Palaung, Shan and Rakhine rebels, with much smaller quantities also being given to the KIA.
60. Exactly right. China is showing (and promoting as an alternative model of policy) that you can be an advanced, productive, powerful country and still be autocratic. Lots of would-be authoritarians have taken notice. You don't have to be a democracy! You don't have to be nice to the West! This is a big attraction.