1. PRC has a very clear national security interest in Taiwan not being ruled by an unpredictable regime that may host American weapon systems pointed at the mainland. See Cuban/Soviet Missile Crisis. Coincidentally, similar situation going on with Russia and Ukraine right now.
2. If/when the DPP regime falls and is replaced by a more "independent" government, that government will naturally be favorable to joining the PRC as an autonomous province. Because the economic incentives are there and there is no real ethnic/cultural barrier to reunification (there is already massive brain drain from TW to mainland). This is the outcome that Beijing is clearly planning for and they won't have to fire a single shot to get it.
Uyghurs:
1. Xinjiang is a pathway to Central Asia and critical to the Belt and Road initiative. It's also a relatively undeveloped region that shares a small border with Afghanistan, with a history of widespread poverty and separatism/terrorism.
2. In the mid 2010s, Beijing was busy implementing two important policies in Xinjiang. A deradicalization campaign and an anti-poverty campaign. These are serious, fast-moving policies that involved a lot of heavy-handed action. Like getting millions of people enrolled in vocational training, Mandarin classes, and distant employment. Basically, Beijing wouldn't tolerate Xinjiang becoming Afghanistan 2.0, as much as Washington would love that. So they aggressively developed the region. Ürümqi in 2021 is probably unrecognizable to Ürümqi in 2009, when over a hundred civilians were butchered by ETIM-linked terrorists.
3. In response, Washington, through proxies like Adrian Zenz and WUC, launched a vicious propaganda campaign. Ordinary prisons for violent extremists and other criminals became "concentration camps for Uyghurs". Schools became "reeducation facilities". Vocational training and just having a job became "forced labor". Mandarin lessons became "cultural genocide". Women being lifted out of poverty became "genocide through birthrate suppression". And so on and so forth.
4. The hypocrisy from Washington is mind-blowing. On the "forced labor" front, Washington implemented sanctions against any company that uses "Uyghur labor", in other words, virtually any company that employs Uyghurs. The goal is obvious: to push Uyghurs back into poverty and therefore destabilize the critical region. Because Washington does not care about the lives of distant Muslims; the last three decades make this abundantly clear.
Sounds like you've swallowed some propaganda yourself.
"The mean old world is just lying about China." Kind of incredible that literally the whole world is conspiring against the truly good natured China because... Reasons.
Please substantively challenge any of the facts I laid out.
> "The mean old world is just lying about China."
It is a literally a core theme of modernity. Opium Wars, Yellow Peril, anticommunist crusades in SEA... Chinese civilization is a historical threat to narratives of Anglo racial/cultural supremacy like nothing else.
Thanks for taking the time to write this out. Two questions, followed by a response to one of your comments:
1) On the Uyghur issue. If what you say is true, why is it difficult to get CSPAN footage in Xinjiang?
2) Is there a hypothetical future event or evidence that would shift your viewpoint to believe the "western narrative"? If so, what is it?
> Women being lifted out of poverty became "genocide through birthrate suppression".
It can simultaneously be true that the heavy-handed actions (as you put it) successfully lifted women out of poverty, and also violated their individual human rights. The words we use to describe these actions aren't mutually exclusive truths.
> Is there a hypothetical future event or evidence that would shift your viewpoint to believe the "western narrative"? If so, what is it?
A good start would be a motive for why Beijing would do a Holocaust against peoples within China.
Hitler had a motive, you can read all about it in Mein Kampf. It was out in the open. There is nothing even remotely resembling such a policy by Beijing.
On the other hand, there is a very clear motive for why Washington would spread misinformation about Beijing. So to believe Washington's story is to put on my blinders towards Washington's interests and simultaneously accept that Xi Jinping is a comic book villain. Sorry, but that is ridiculous.
When I ask pro-CCP people the question "what might change your mind", I often hear a variant of what you just said - "consider the motives (of the American hegemony), it explains our observations".
But that doesn't answer my question (2). Would you please answer it directly? Either there is some hypothetical evidence that would change your mind, or there is no hypothetical that could change your mind. Providing the affirmative to one or the other would help us understand whether you are open to changing your perspective at all.
For what it's worth, I'm happy to volunteer a hypothetical that would convince me to believe more in the narratives that you provided.
If you insist: how about the Uyghur population decreasing instead of increasing? That would be a good indicator that a genocide is actually taking place.
Anyways, please don't dismiss my comment. What is Beijing's supposed motive here?
> Anyways, please don't dismiss my comment. What is Beijing's supposed motive here?
Oh yes, I'll gladly dismiss it: You introduced it with a carefully weasel-worded "a good start would be"... So even if you got an iron-clad motive in reply, you'd just go on quibbling, because it was, after all, "just a start". So: Dismissed!
> On the other hand, there is a very clear motive for why Washington would spread misinformation about Beijing.
And the rest of the world? Why is the free press of the entire world conspiring against China? Or the free press in the US? Does Washington own that?
Anyway, we can only speculate on the motive. Ethnic cleansing? Perceived threat of religious beliefs? Who knows. You're gonna have to do better than "I don't think those are strong motives" to dismiss mountains of evidence.
Your long list if irrelevant facts is very impressive, there's no doubt you are well read on your history. The consistency with which you present these facts any time China's atrocities are mentioned is also impressive.
Do you even consider the possibility that you are being tricked by the same warmongers who tricked you into thinking Saddam Hussein was about to use WMDs against the West?
I don't know where you were twenty years ago -- maybe too young to really follow the news? -- but pretty much nobody outside far-right cults like evangelical fundamentalists bought that bullshit line even at the time.
So fuck knows who this "you" (who was tricked by that) that you think (or pretend to think) you're talking to might be
1. PRC has a very clear national security interest in Taiwan not being ruled by an unpredictable regime that may host American weapon systems pointed at the mainland. See Cuban/Soviet Missile Crisis. Coincidentally, similar situation going on with Russia and Ukraine right now.
2. If/when the DPP regime falls and is replaced by a more "independent" government, that government will naturally be favorable to joining the PRC as an autonomous province. Because the economic incentives are there and there is no real ethnic/cultural barrier to reunification (there is already massive brain drain from TW to mainland). This is the outcome that Beijing is clearly planning for and they won't have to fire a single shot to get it.
Uyghurs:
1. Xinjiang is a pathway to Central Asia and critical to the Belt and Road initiative. It's also a relatively undeveloped region that shares a small border with Afghanistan, with a history of widespread poverty and separatism/terrorism.
2. In the mid 2010s, Beijing was busy implementing two important policies in Xinjiang. A deradicalization campaign and an anti-poverty campaign. These are serious, fast-moving policies that involved a lot of heavy-handed action. Like getting millions of people enrolled in vocational training, Mandarin classes, and distant employment. Basically, Beijing wouldn't tolerate Xinjiang becoming Afghanistan 2.0, as much as Washington would love that. So they aggressively developed the region. Ürümqi in 2021 is probably unrecognizable to Ürümqi in 2009, when over a hundred civilians were butchered by ETIM-linked terrorists.
3. In response, Washington, through proxies like Adrian Zenz and WUC, launched a vicious propaganda campaign. Ordinary prisons for violent extremists and other criminals became "concentration camps for Uyghurs". Schools became "reeducation facilities". Vocational training and just having a job became "forced labor". Mandarin lessons became "cultural genocide". Women being lifted out of poverty became "genocide through birthrate suppression". And so on and so forth.
4. The hypocrisy from Washington is mind-blowing. On the "forced labor" front, Washington implemented sanctions against any company that uses "Uyghur labor", in other words, virtually any company that employs Uyghurs. The goal is obvious: to push Uyghurs back into poverty and therefore destabilize the critical region. Because Washington does not care about the lives of distant Muslims; the last three decades make this abundantly clear.