China resists the Xinjiang narrative

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  China resists the Xinjiang narrative

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Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

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1. Attacking the critics: Before the Beijing Olympics of 2008, the Chinese government had carried out a vicious crackdown on demonstrations in Tibet. Foreign media drew attention to it, and people outside China held protests. Then, a Chinese academic popularised the idea of “three afflictions”: two that China had faced in the past (“being beaten” by foreign powers and “being starved” by poverty) and a third that it faces now: “being scolded” by the rest of the world. 
2. Jinping used that idea: Later, President Xi Jinping adopted the concept, arguing that China faces a “fight for international discourse”.
3. Xinjiang horrors: China has been scolded on Xinjiang strongly, where it has interned some 1 million Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic group, for such things as being too pious or talking to relatives overseas. The Communist Party is now pushing back against western media's reporting of it, in an effort to break what it calls the “discourse hegemony” of the West. To treat the “third affliction” it has marshalled vast resources.
4. Attack, attack, attack: A feature of recent propaganda about Xinjiang is the relentless attack on China’s critics. In March the government imposed sanctions, such as bans on visiting or doing business with China, on elected officials, researchers and think-tanks in Europe and North America that had caused offence. Chinese officials also stirred up online nationalist boycotts of Western firms that had acknowledged the possibility of Uyghur forced labour in Xinjiang’s cotton industry. Authorities forced Uyghurs in China make videos begging their dissident relatives overseas to shut up.
5. Personalised attacks: In the past, when the party was accused of specific abuses, its propagandists would issue general denials. They would also try to recast repressive policies as examples of the party’s wisdom and munificence, producing what a vice-president of Xinhua once called “fairy tales”. And they have long tried to change the subject by playing up human-rights abuses in America. Now, at almost any critical mention of Xinjiang, China pushes back hard. Western experts say this verbal ferocity is partly aimed at a nationalist audience within China, which likes to hear the motherland robustly defended (as does Mr Xi). That helps explain a blustery performance by Yang Jiechi, China’s top diplomat, at a summit in Alaska in March 2021 with America’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken. After Mr Blinken raised the subject of Xinjiang, among other concerns, Mr Yang unleashed an 18-minute tirade about the virtues of “Chinese-style democracy” and the effrontery of those who try to “smear” it.
6. Summary: The propaganda push does not appear to have won hearts and minds in rich democracies. But bullying critics leads to future silence. Many firms were quiet in the wake of the online boycott in China. The Better Cotton Initiative, a global apparel-industry consortium, took down an online statement of concern about Xinjiang cotton. In 2019, after an executive of a National Basketball Association team tweeted in support of protests in Hong Kong, China’s main broadcaster stopped showing NBA games. Since then, players and executives have been almost completely silent on China. 

Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

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