I’m also curious if you’d apply those comments to Science articles about what’s happening in Xinjiang? For example, do you have an opinion about this validity of the following article?

“Mass detentions in Xinjiang province are unconscionable, regardless of who’s affected. But by targeting academics and intellectuals, authorities are robbing Uyghur—and Chinese—society of an important part of its future, she says. “If you remove from your functioning society all of the future scholars, the current scholars, the scientists,” Robinson says, “You’re losing an entire generation of individuals who could contribute to the production of knowledge.”
See: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/there-s-no-hope-rest-us-uyghur-scientists-swept-china-s-massive-detentions

Tim,

Thanks for your comments. Sorry for not being able to respond sooner, as I have been extremely busy.

From what we know about the western media’s reporting about the events happening in Hong Kong, I suggest that we have to be extremely careful with such reporting, because the message conveyed is almost always an inaccurate message, in the sense that it is biased, reports only part of what is happening, carefully reports only the part that supports the biased message and frequently creates outright lies, and doesn’t report on the essence of what happened, and why those things are happening.

For many years, the U.S.’s policy toward China has always been one that tries to isolate, surround, and weaken China. The U.S. policy in Hong Kong is just part of that policy, and it has been trying to do that for many years in Hong Kong. Relatively speaking, Hong Kong is much less important than Xinjiang, Tibet, or Taiwan. If the U.S. is working so hard in Hong Kong to destabilize the Hong Kong government and weaken China, how much harder would they be working in Xinjiang, where there are differences in culture and language between the Uighurs and Han Chinese. If I were in charge of the government in Xinjiang, I would also take the necessary measures to keep the domestic and foreign instigators from destabilizing my government. One should pay more attention to whether the livelihoods of the people in Xinjiang has improved significantly during the last 70 years.

By the way, what the U.S. is doing to China is similar with what they have been doing to many other countries around the world in the last half century. Just look at how many countries they have worked to undermine or overthrow the government in power. It is especially important to look at whether the people in those countries have had their lives improved as the result of the U.S. actions.

Don

Thanks for your analysis here!!! It gave me a much needed new understanding of this part of China. In case it’s useful, here’s a story from today’s news about China’s recent decisions about controlling its Uighur population…

“China footage reveals hundreds of blindfolded and shackled prisoners”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/23/china-footage-reveals-hundreds-of-blindfolded-and-shackled-prisoners-uighur

Rich,

Thanks again for your comments. I apologized for the delayed response, as I have been away in California until last night.

Regarding your question “what is the status of the relationship between the government and the Muslims in this province?”, the answer is complex as I tried to explain in the article that the political history and government structure in Xinjiang are complex. Since the 13th century A.D., Islam has become the dominant religion in Xinjiang, so most of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang are Muslims, although many other religions also exist in Xinjiang (and Buddhism was the dominant religion in Xinjiang for about 1,000 years starting with the 1st century B.C.).

The government respects the Uyghur people as one of the ethnic groups living in Xinjiang, as well as their religion of Islam. Until recently the Uyghur was the dominant ethnic group in Xinjiang, which has now been surpassed by the Han ethnic group. As in other parts of China, the government provides special considerations to ethnic groups besides the majority Han ethnic group. So in Xinjiang, the Uyghur people also receive special considerations such as exemption from the one child policy, more relaxed standards for college admission, etc. However, since governance in China is dominated by the Communist Party, the Uyghur people and other Muslims in China are not necessarily well represented in the top governance structure of China. That is why I wrote that one of the two ingredients necessary to solve the dilemma of more and more Han people moving into Xinjiang is that the system must allow the Uyghur and other ethnic minorities to reach the upper decision making positions in industries and government (the other necessary condition is that the livelihood of the Xinjiang people, including the Uyghur and other ethnic groups, must be raised substantially and quickly).

Don

Thank you for sharing your experience with us. I enjoyed it immensely. I’m forwarding your article to my relatives with the hopes that it will inspire a trip to Xianjiang too.

Corinne

A wonderful introduction, to me at least, to this area and its people. Your descriptions are informative and lively; I’ve learned a lot about a culture I hadn’t known much about.

Thank you!

Linda

I really enjoy reading this article, especially with your detail analysis and observation on overall culture, livelihood, religion, and government. The location of XinJiang with all those hostile neighbor and its resources will present a focus point in the coming years.

Marjorie

As usual I enjoyed reading your articles. I found the third one of particular interest. One question: What is the status of the relationship between the government and the Muslims in this province?

Thank you

Rich