Will the ‘Xinjiang Model’ Go Global?

In August 2018, the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) held its regular review of China, the first since 2009. During that process, the committee raised serious concerns about the treatment of Uyghurs, a largely Muslim ethnic minority, in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

At the start of the review, CERD vice chair Gay McDougall expressed deep concern over “numerous and credible reports” that China “has changed the Uyghur Autonomous Region into something that resembles a massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy.” McDougall said the UN body had received credible reports that 1 or even 2 million Uyghurs were being held in secretive re-education camps in Xinjiang.

Those reports had been making the rounds for months in media outlets, based on interviews with local officials and former prisoners in the camps as well as satellite imagery analysis. However, unlike the media reports, the concerns raised at the UN CERD review forced China’s government to respond officially to the accusation of mass detention in Xinjiang.

In a statement issued on August 14, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang insisted that “Xinjiang enjoys social stability, economic growth, and harmonious coexistence of ethnic groups. People of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang cherish their peaceful and prosperous life. Any rumor and slander will turn out to be futile.”

Lu also complained that “[c]ertain anti-China forces have made unwarranted charges against China for political purposes” – without specifying what those “unwarranted charges” were.

Hu Lianhe, a member of China’s CERD delegation, was more direct in his denial of the reports. According to China Daily, he told the UN committee, “There are no such things as ‘re-education centers’ or ‘counter-extremism training centers’ in Xinjiang.”

However, Hu did admit that people “involved only in minor offenses” would be assigned to “vocational education and employment training centers… with a view to assisting their rehabilitation and reintegration.” As Jeremy Daum pointed out for China Law Translate, “vocational or education training centers” is actually a more literal translation of the official term in Chinese that is usually translated by English-language media as “re-education centers.” As Daum put it, Hu’s statement thus “appears to be an admission that some citizens are in fact being held in ‘education centers[.]’”

Importantly, Daum noted, Chinese citizens can be held in this way only for conduct that “doesn’t rise to the level of a ‘crime’” – including, in Xinjiang specifically, possessing (vaguely defined) “extremist” material or encouraging children to go to a mosque. But even then, the detention is, by Chinese law, meant to be capped at 15 days – a far cry from the months or even years of “re-education” for Uyghurs reportedly underway at the camps.

While, as noted above, Chinese officials have mostly responded by denying that the mass detentions are occurring at all, a Global Times editorial took a far more disturbing approach. Without bothering to deny the mass detentions (though not admitting to them either), the paper argued that such policies were entirely justified in the name of fighting terrorism. Admitting, at least, that “[p]olice and security posts can be seen everywhere in Xinjiang,” the Global Times defended the security crackdown as necessary: “Through the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China, the national strength of the country, and the contribution of local officials, Xinjiang has been salvaged from the verge of massive turmoil. It has avoided the fate of becoming ‘China's Syria’ or ‘China's Libya.’”

“Peace and stability must come above all else,” the editorial continued. “With this as the goal, all measures can be tried. We must hold onto our belief that keeping turmoil away from Xinjiang is the greatest human right.”

The Global Times is a very imperfect proxy for an official Chinese government stance. The paper is notoriously hardline and nationalistic and its more extreme articles (like the one cited above) should be properly viewed as clickbait rather than missives from Beijing. However, the editorial echoes a mindset that demonstrably exists within China’s government: Stability is the number one goal, to be maintained at all costs. The loss of individual liberty barely registers as a concern in that equation.

Perhaps most worrying, the Global Times actually bragged about the success of China’s Xinjiang policy – turning the police state there into a point of pride. Terrorism has “destroyed numerous countries and regions,” the editorial said, but “[w]hen the same evil influence was spreading in Xinjiang, it was decisively curbed.”

This attitude is especially problematic because it hints that China might seek to export its approach to other countries in danger of being “destroyed” by terrorism. After all, Chinese companies are already literally exporting the technological underpinnings of that approach: surveillance and facial recognition technologies.

In previous years, Beijing had been wary of promoting a “China model” of development, instead insisting on the uniqueness of China as a country and a culture. However, under Xi Jinping, the government is now actively seeking to hold itself up as an economic and even political model for other countries to follow. Should China seek to similarly export its anti-terrorism approach – the Xinjiang model, so to speak – as part of its developmental blueprint, it could have serious consequences for already marginalized communities around the world.

China has already been criticized for aiding in the persecution of Pakistan’s Baloch ethnic minority. Baloch rights activists Naela Quadri Baloch accused China of supporting Pakistan’s atrocities against her people: “With the help of China now, Pakistan is trying to finish us. They are killing us; abductions, rapes and disappearances are common; they stopped water and electricity for Baloch people.”

Balochistan, the traditional homeland of the Baloch, also happens to be the site of the Chinese-operated Gwadar port, and thus an essential part of the multibillion dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Yet the province has long been uneasy, plagued by militancy, separatism, and terrorism. Chinese concerns about the security of its nationals and their investments in Pakistan, especially Balochistan, have been a weak point in CPEC since the beginning. According to Quadri, Pakistan has thus cracked down hard on the Baloch people, with China’s full support.

If the goal is to prevent violence targeting Chinese nationals in Balochistan, Pakistan and China’s methods aren’t working. On August 11, a suicide attack in the Chaghi district of Balochistan injured six (including three Chinese nationals). The bombing targeted a Chinese convoy that was transporting employees of a Chinese mining project in the district.

Afterward, the Baloch Liberation Army claimed the attack, saying: “We have time and again warned that plundering Baloch resources is a moral and legal crime because Baloch nation is currently a victim of exploitation. Our attacks for the protection of our natural resources and restoration of a secular Baloch nation state will further intensify.”

The Chinese embassy in Pakistan issues a statement “strongly condemn[ing]” the attack and urging the Pakistani government to “take further effective measures to ensure the security of the Chinese institutions and citizens in Pakistan.” With Chinese blood at stake, Beijing may be tempted to help Pakistan “decisively curb” (as Global Times might put it) Balochistan’s terrorism problem by adopting the Xinjiang model.

China is also stepping up its anti-terror activities in regions where Uyghur militants are believed to be operating abroad. The Chinese ambassador to Syria recently said that Beijing is considering military involvement in the long-standing Syrian civil war. The Chinese “military is willing to participate in some way alongside the Syrian army that’s fighting the terrorists in Idlib and in any other part of Syria,” the ambassador told Syrian media. The motivation, on China’s part, is the reported presence of Uyghur militants in Idlib specifically and Syria at large. But China is also concerned more generally with stability in the Middle East – and, closer to home, in Afghanistan, where Uyghur militants are also believed to be collaborating with international terrorist groups.

If Beijing truly believes that its combination of mass detention and ubiquitous surveillance has stopped terrorism in its tracks, there’s a distinct possibility that the Xinjiang model will become part of the larger “China model” the government shops abroad. Given the number of oppressed minority groups that also flirt with terrorism and extremism, there’s a lengthy list of potential targets: the Balochs in Pakistan, the Kurds in Turkey, the Rohingya in Myanmar. India might even want to take its heavy-handed security approach in Kashmir to the next level.

In other words, what happens in Xinjiang may not stay in Xinjiang.