Usually in relation to Uighur camps, the argument is “since you’re in America you can’t change whether they’re concentration camps or education facilities, so you should just concentrate on the concentration camps within your own borders instead.”
Like, motherfucker, I can have an opinion on the actions in another country and still work on changing things I can change.
I guess my question is, is this concentrate on what you can change part of some theory or strategy I haven’t read or is it just bad and lazy?
In particular for China it’s essentially conceding to the people who thinks there are millions of Uighurs being murdered, rather than attempt to engage and show that there is no evidence of that, and just what abouting.
Can we shut up already with China? It’s getting seriously tiring.
Btw to all the people people that still believe what Western media says about Uighurs and other things: just come to China.
Don’t believe Western media, don’t believe Chinese media either; come here (to China), experience the country, find things out, and develop your own opinion. China is an open country that everyone is free to visit at any time (well, except now because of COVID), engaging in this continuous mental masturbation about it helps no one.
Your truly, someone that lives in China.
Yes, and actually I didn’t mean this to be specifically about China, just about the idea of ignoring what’s happening internationally since you can’t change it from afar. Which is an argument that I’ve heard more frequently these days in relation to Americans discussing China.
Just come to China
Here is a comment from the deleted sub by someone who did just that.
They make it clear in the comment that they can’t speak to what’s going on in the camps, but I found what they had to share to be fairly interesting.
So, I actually lived in Urumqi for a while, so this is one of the few areas where I can claim expertise. Here’s what it’s like:
During Ramadan, people put up dark curtains so that the police can’t see them eating before/after sunlight hours. There have been several purges of public servants for observing the holidays or wearing hijab.
If you have facial hair/look like a Weizu, police will stop you on the street and ask for your identification. Your gate guards interrogate you at the entrance to your apartment. The guards at your workplace will stop you and ask, not for your name or what office you work in, but what your ethnicity is.
If you look like a Uyghur, expect to be pulled over on the road, followed around in stores, and extensively questioned as to what you’re doing there. Sound familiar?
Despite a constitutional requirement for Uyghur representation, the party heads in Xinjiang are all Han Chinese. There are also constitutional protections for the Uyghur language, but the regional government is making sustained efforts to replace it with Mandarin. I was not around when they started the latest re-education efforts, so I can’t speak to that.
There are also a lot of fucked up things in the minority communities - like domestic violence and alcoholism and the usual problems that happen when one ethnic group feels squeezed out by another. But putting the blame on supposed “leaders” who live two continents away, whose influence is extremely curtailed by rigid internet controls, is idiotic at best and sycophantic at worst.
What a bunch of BS in that comment.
Especially:
During Ramadan, people put up dark curtains so that the police can’t see them eating before/after sunlight hours. There have been several purges of public servants for observing the holidays or wearing hijab.
I haven’t been in Xinjiang yet, but I highly doubt this. In China, I have been in many restaurants run by Uighur families, and I have seen the women of the family wearing the hijab, and celebrating Ramadan freely.
Not to mention that in 西安 (XiAn) — one of the cities with most Muslims in China — you can also see girls wearing the hijab, hear the mosque’s calls for prayer, etc.
regional government is making sustained efforts to replace it with Mandarin. I was not around when they started the latest re-education efforts, so I can’t speak to that.
Replaced? We can talk about mandarin gaining more importance due to obvious reasons (I mean, mandarin is gaining importance in Laos, and Laos is not a Chinese province), but replaced? Absolutely not; you can check it yourself by going to the Chinese TikTok (抖音), and seeing the Uighur community there (people speaking and writing in the Uighur language, news in their language, etc). I can share videos if someone is interested.
the party heads in Xinjiang are all Han Chinese
出生于1953年8月的少数民族高干雪克来提·扎克尔。作为维吾尔族，雪克来提·扎克尔曾长期在新疆工作，曾有近5年乌鲁木齐市长的任职经历，2008年，任全国人大民族委员会委员并兼任新疆生产建设兵团党委常委、副政委，2011年后任职副部长级全国人大民族委员会副主任委员，并不再兼任所有在疆职位。2年后重返新疆，晋升为正部级新疆维吾尔自治区人大常委会主任。
I’m too tired to translate so here it’s Google:
Born in August 1953, the ethnic minority Gao Gan Xueklaiti Zaker. As a Uyghur nationality, Xuekeliti Zakr has worked in Xinjiang for a long time. He has served as the mayor of Urumqi for nearly 5 years. In 2008, he served as a member of the National People’s Congress Committee of the National People’s Congress and concurrently served as a member of the Standing Committee and Deputy Political Commissar of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. After 2011, he served as the deputy ministerial-level deputy chairman of the National People’s Congress National Committee, and no longer concurrently holds all positions in Xinjiang. He returned to Xinjiang two years later and was promoted to minister-level director of the Standing Committee of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region People’s Congress.
- 区人大主任：肖开提·依明 (شەۋكەت ئىمىن)
- 区政府主席：雪克来提·扎克尔 (شۆھرەت زاكىر)
- 区政协主席：努尔兰·阿不都满金 (نۇرلان ٴابىلماجىن ۇلى)
Google again:
- Director of the District People’s Congress: Xiao Kaiti Yiming
- Chairman of the District Government: Sheklaiti Zakr
- Chairman of the District Political Consultative Conference: Nurlan Abdumanjin
If you look like a Uyghur, expect to be pulled over on the road, followed around in stores, and extensively questioned as to what you’re doing there.
Because of my Arab origin I look like an Uighur, and that has not been my experience in China at all. More than one time I have been asked if I was an Uighur, the people who asked me were always friendly, and curious. And no, I haven’t been followed by police. When I go to Xinjiang I will share my experience there.
There are also a lot of fucked up things in the minority communities - like domestic violence and alcoholism and the usual problems that happen when one ethnic group feels squeezed out by another.
I always find funny how white people (especially Americans) project, and apply what happens in their countries to the rest of the world. I’m talking about the myth of “Han supremacy”. Look, in order to create some kind supremacist movement, first you need to create a narrative. This narrative is usually based on the discrimination of other groups because of their physical features. See, there are three things about China:
(1) No such narrative exist, nor I has been created of promoted. (Not the case of truly supremacist states like America)
(2) Most — if not all — ethnic groups in China are Asian or have Asian features (there are Asian looking Uighurs too), you can’t tell apart a 回 from a 汉.
(3) When people from two different ethnicities marry and have a kid, the parents most of the time choose that their kids belong to the ethnic minority. Why is this important? This is directly related with the point (2). There are so many mixes between people from different ethnic groups in China that the concept of ethnicity becomes something about culture and not race.
Chinese don’t care about ethnicities, they see all of them as Chinese. (At the end that’s what they are)
So, is there alcoholism or other problems? I’m sure, but I would say that it has more to do with material conditions (that are improving because of the Chinese government btw) than anything else.
/—/
To conclude, I will say the same I said in my original comment: don’t believe me if you don’t want, but don’t believe others either. Want to know the truth? Feel free to visit China.
Thanks for sharing. That comment was from a while back, but it’s still good to hear your view point, even if you haven’t actually been to Xinjiang.
Where’s the line? I posted something someone posted sincerely (I contacted them later to follow up and they confirmed everything they said was true, or at the very least that they stood by it as the truth) and you transparently posted a lie to make a point. That’s not how this works. You need to address the claims as they are instead of attacking the medium or the source. I welcome you to provide evidence against the claims made in this comment.
Eh. He’s a writer, lots of writers go to China to teach English, I’m not looking to kink shame the guy. Just thought what he said was interesting.
is this concentrate on what you can change part of some theory or strategy I haven’t read or is it just bad and lazy
it’s lazy internationalism, read Lenin.
Why would you spread imperialist bourgeois propaganda that turns workers into false consciousness national warriors, when you could make your own narratives by blowing the whistle on local corruption that your comrades in other nations don’t have knowledge of?
So are you saying we should only focus locally, or that discussing things internationally is good?
It is good when it opposes the imperial power you live under. It is bad when it aligns with them because you do not influence the enemies of your empire, and are only aiding the imperial narrative at home. The easy example for the United States that most already grasp is Iran. Iran is a reactionary theocracy, but you do not choose the politics of Iran. What your work can do is counter or aid the imperial narrative. Calling Ayatollah Khamenei the mean names will not make him go away, but it will slip into the US effort to create sentiment against Iran, which will help imperialist actions.
Your international outlook should always be first anti-imperialist, because imperialism is the contradiction of international politics.
It not only helps the imperialist actions (hurting the government), sentiments like OPs have hurt the Iranian people. If Iran wasn’t seen as such a threat (which it is only to Isreal), the government couldn’t impose sanctions that easily. And these sanctions hurt the iranian people, not the government. All OPs doing is making the life of struggling people even harder. Fuck OP
No, we should focus on things that exsist. All you do is spread imperialism. Why can’t so many western leftist get rid of their brainworms. Your western education is nothing but imperialist propaganda.
Plus, when you live in the worst place on earth, you should probably concentrate on changing stuff there. You’re not the world police. This has nothing to do with being lazy, you just don’t know shit about anything outside the US, so why do you think your oppinion on them matters?
So what is the best action when there is a group of people parroting State department propaganda on China in a public forum and spreading imperialist propaganda?
Is it just to suggest that they fix their own inhumane immigrant abductions, or is it provide a counterpoint by looking at what is true about the Xinjiang education facilities and workforce training, or is it to do nothing and let that propaganda sit there with nobody questioning it?
I think you may also be misinterpreting my position. I think we’re on the same page, but I didn’t do a good job asking my stupid question anyway.
Despite half the people now thinking I support state dept propaganda due to my rambling question, I actually gained some really good insight in this thread.
Anti-imperialist critiques are the way to go overall, and not to indulge in speculation.
Why stop at xinjiang? Why not talk about Kashmir? Why not Myanmar? The narrative has nothing to do with the welfare of the Uyghurs & everything to do with Western propaganda strategy. Rather than concern yourself with the injustices of the nation-states we are stuck living under, which is really just one in a continuum of oppression that is endemic to this social and historical context we are in, the easily manipulated fall into the state’s psychological trap of constantly projecting evil outwards onto whichever enemy they need to vilify. This is a tale as old as time, it has been used to divide people regionally and internationally since what, the beginning of organized society likely?
The projection outwards is the true laziness. Concerning yourself with the political context that your own being exists is, and committing yourself dutifully to learning how you can affect change individually and in cooperation with others is the true commitment. Until there is a workers state here in the US, or maybe one day in Europe, we as so-called socialists will never be able to affect change on global scale as would be necessary to influence something like what may be happening in xinjiang or elsewhere. Western socialists and communists have tried to play that game from ww2 thru the Cold War, and look what it got us. Projecting outwards is self-defeating & only serves our own oppressors.
Why stop at xinjiang? Why not talk about Kashmir? Why not Myanmar? The narrative has nothing to do with the welfare of the Uyghurs & everything to do with Western propaganda strategy.
This is how I need to start phrasing this to lib friends. Every single week pretty much there’s political protests or systematic repression or regional instability in some country. The State Dept could spend all day listing the world’s atrocities, but they don’t obviously. Why isn’t the admin talking about Chilean protests? Or Indian protests? Biden right now is backing the undemocratic leader of Haiti when the whole country is in protest over him being an American puppet, that’s not even news.
Every single time the US State Dept, DoD, or any sort of leadership is mentioning another country’s problems, it is always targetted at America’s enemies. And most of these international news reporters take these government officials at their word and print their statements verbatim without any criticism. So you should always, always be critical of whatever narrative the US government is saying about another country, especially if it’s China.
I don’t think it’s dogmatic stoicism or anything. There is a propaganda effort, and one of its goals is to dupe you into focusing on China instead of your own situation. This should be countered because it is against our interests and the interests of humanity as a whole.
You can have an opinion on the situation with Uighurs, but remember that you are not immune to propaganda.
