Sean R. Roberts on China’s War on the Uyghurs

If one asks Beijing why more than a million Uyghurs have been forced into “re-education” camps in Xinjiang, the answer would likely call attention to the alleged “terrorist” threat posed by Uyghurs and the need to purge the community of extremism. As Sean R. Roberts, an associate professor of the practice of international affairs and director of the International Development Studies Program at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, explores in his new book, China’s leaders have seized upon the language of the Global War on Terror to frame their policies in Xinjiang. 

But “The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority” goes deeper, examining the history of settler colonialism in Xinjiang, the shaping of a “terrorism” narrative around the Uyghurs, and the devastating consequences, which amount to nothing short of cultural genocide. In an interview with The Diplomat’s Catherine Putz, Roberts explains the “war” on Uyghurs, how China has packaged and implement its policies, and what it would take for the global community to change China’s calculus on its Xinjiang policy.

Your book is titled “The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority.” When did this “war” start, who are the opposing sides, and what’s its root cause?

First, this is not a war in the traditional sense with two opposing sides. The title of the book is a play on words evocative of the “war on terror,” itself a very non-traditional one-sided “war” which has helped facilitate the fate of the Uyghurs in China. However, one could say that what is happening to Uyghurs inside China today is akin to Michel Foucault’s articulation of a modern “biopolitical” war, where the state (the Chinese Communist Party) is essentially waging a war against a portion of its own population (the Uyghur people), not as an “enemy,” but as a “threat” to society at large. That war between the Chinese state and Uyghurs most visibly began in 2017 when the state began arbitrarily and extrajudicially interning large swaths of the Uyghur population under the pretense of combatting alleged “terrorism” and “extremism.” 

While this mass internment appeared to happen suddenly, one of the arguments of my book is that it was the outcome of tension that had been building for some time between the state and the Uyghur people over the question of self-determination in a region that Uyghurs consider their homeland. This tension has long existed to different degrees between Uyghurs and modern Chinese states since at least the late 19th century when the region first became a province of the Qing Dynasty, but it has been particularly pronounced and has escalated since the 1990s when the PRC began earnestly trying to integrate the Uyghurs and their homeland more solidly into a consolidating and more powerful Chinese polity. These attempts at “integration” since the 1990s have involved progressively violent suppression of any indications of Uyghur disloyalty to the state, but it was only in 2017 that these efforts began targeting all Uyghurs as embodying a threat to the PRC, or at least to its colonial aims in the Uyghur homeland. 

What is happening to the Uyghurs, therefore, has little to do with an alleged “terrorist threat” and is much more like other historical examples of indigenous people being decimated, marginalized, and displaced by a settler colonial power when they resist complete capitulation and assimilation. In this sense, the “war on the Uyghurs” is not really a war in the traditional sense, but a process of conquest, occupation, and ultimately displacement and ethnically profiled marginalization.

In what ways has the “Global War on Terror” – a campaign rooted in the United States and sparked by the 9/11 attacks – influenced China’s policies regarding its Muslim minorities? How has the overarching language of security and terrorism impacted responses on the part of the West?

In my book, I make the case that the “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) has been instrumental to facilitating what is happening to the Uyghurs today. However, this assertion should not be confused with acknowledging that China faces a significant “terrorist threat,” either real or perceived, from its Uyghur population. 

Indeed, the official position of the PRC is that all measures presently being taken against Uyghurs are meant to subdue an existential “terrorist” and “extremist” threat from within the Uyghur population, but my research suggests that such a threat has never really existed, especially inside China. Rather the Chinese state has conveniently utilized the narrative of an alleged Uyghur “terrorist threat” as a justification for its increased colonization of the Uyghur homeland and its escalating suppression of Uyghur voices with international impunity. The use of this “terrorism” justification has deflected criticism from the West about human rights abuses against Uyghurs precisely because the West, and the U.S. in particular, has also excessively violated human rights in the name of GWOT. More recently, this has also proven to be an effective justification for China in explaining its actions against Uyghurs to those in the Muslim world, where people already associate the U.S. and the EU with the excesses of GWOT and see any criticism of China for such excesses by Western states as disingenuous. 

I would also argue that beyond its use as justification for the Uyghur cultural genocide, the GWOT has informed the Chinese state’s approach to its repression of Uyghurs. The PRC has borrowed aspects of Western “countering violent extremism” programs to explain its mass internment and forced assimilationist policies towards Uyghurs. By identifying Uyghur “culture” as a manifestation of “extremism,” the PRC has been able to attack that culture directly and justify these actions as a part of preserving national security and, thus, warranting the suspension of human rights. Similarly, while particularly extreme in its implementation, China’s mass ethnically profiled surveillance of Uyghurs can be seen as a warped evolution of Patriot Act surveillance in the United States, and, while far more pervasive and violent, the PRC’s mass internment camps can be seen as a more violent and all-encompassing form of the extralegal internment of alleged “terrorists” in Guantanamo Bay. 

In this sense, the situation of the Uyghurs today is demonstrative of the evolving corrosive nature of the GWOT over the last two decades around the world. At the core of this war’s corrosive attributes is the arbitrariness of its proclaimed enemy. The fact that no international consensus exists on the definition of “terrorism” allows states to use claims of a “terrorist threat” as a flexible political tool to attack perceived enemies domestically and internationally with impunity, especially if they are Muslim.

As you note in the book, “the Chinese state has launched a campaign to destroy Uyghur identity as we know it.” What is so threatening to Beijing about Uyghur identity? Why do you think it’s important to use the phrase “cultural genocide” in reference to what’s happened in Xinjiang?

I believe there are multiple reasons that the PRC views Uyghur identity itself as a threat. First and foremost, the Chinese state wants to make the Uyghur homeland a cohesive part of a unified and mostly homogeneous China, something it has only partially achieved since 1949. Over the decades, the PRC has sought to accomplish this through incentivizing assimilation and punishing dissent, but Uyghurs have largely proven themselves resistant to voluntary assimilation and resilient to repression. As a result, the state has resorted to seeking the wholesale destruction of Uyghur collective identity as a means for achieving its goals in the region. This includes breaking down Uyghurs’ existing social capital as well as subjecting them to forced assimilation measures, displacement, and marginalization in their own homeland. This is not a unique strategy, but has a long history in the context of settler colonialism that has dealt similar fates to other indigenous peoples around the world. The Uyghur example stands out for its use of 21st  century technologies. 

While I believe that colonial intentions are the driving force in the Uyghurs’ cultural genocide, the state has likely gone to such extremes because Xi Jinping’s government has a particular obsession with creating homogeneity in its citizenry. There are signs, for example, that the PRC under Xi may be in the early stages of trying to forcibly erase the concept of ethnic diversity entirely, and the Uyghur example may be a test case for future policies to be undertaken against other ethnic groups within the PRC. 

I believe that it is important to use the term genocide in describing these processes to accurately describe the gravity of what is taking place. Raphael Lemkin, who is credited with first defining “genocide,” had always suggested that the term was meant to describe the destruction of collective identity rather than the mass physical extermination of people on the basis of their identity. However, in popular usage since the Holocaust, the word has become increasingly associated with mass physical extermination. Thus, I choose to use the term “cultural genocide” to avoid confusion and suggestions of direct comparisons to the Holocaust. Additionally, it is noteworthy that “cultural genocide” has more generally become associated with the fates of indigenous people in the face of settler colonialism worldwide, direct parallels to what is happening to the Uyghurs today.

Chen Quanguo, the Communist Party secretary for Xinjiang since August 2016, is at the head of Beijing’s repressive policies in the region. Previously, he had served in the same role in Tibet. Are there similarities between past repressive drives in Tibet and Xinjiang? What’s different about contemporary actions in Xinjiang?

Chen Quanguo was likely given his position in Xinjiang due to his apparent success in quelling open dissent in Tibet, and he certainly built on his experience in Tibet when he began to govern in Xinjiang. In particular, Chen brought from Tibet his model for the mobilization of police throughout urban areas. He called this system “grid-style social management,” and it involved the mass mobilization of police at satellite stations throughout cities to conduct surveillance and control social behavior. However, in Xinjiang Chen’s system of enhanced policing benefited from a pre-existing sophisticated electronic surveillance system that produced quickly accessible profiles on virtually every individual Uyghur outlining their actions, relationships, and perceived loyalties. Furthermore, evidence suggests that the construction of mass internment camps in Xinjiang, like the mass surveillance system, predates Chen’s tenure running the region’s Communist Party. Given that much of the infrastructure in the region for Beijing’s actions against the Uyghurs predates his arrival, I do not view Chen Quanguo as the architect of the Uyghur cultural genocide, but as its implementer. 

While the situation in Tibet is also very grave, and the state’s intentions appear to be similar to those in Xinjiang, state policies in Xinjiang are far more violent, extreme, and all-encompassing. In general, PRC policies in Tibet, while also draconian, appear to target selected actors rather than the whole ethnic group, at least in the way that this being done in Xinjiang. For example, there are programs of “re-education” in Tibet for certain Tibetans, but, as of yet at least, they don’t appear to have led to the mass internment of large swaths of the population. Similarly, the PRC continues to try to control Tibetan Buddhism, most notably by trying to name the Dali Lama’s successor, but it is not yet trying to eradicate the practice of the religion entirely as is the case with Islam in Xinjiang. 

There are likely multiple reasons for the PRC’s relatively softer attempts to control, assimilate, and marginalize Tibetans. First, there are fewer Tibetans in China than there are Uyghurs, and the state may believe it does not need to resort to the extremes it is undertaking with regards to Uyghurs in order to achieve similar results with Tibetans. Second, and probably more importantly, the PRC would have a more difficult time justifying such policies against the Tibetans because they are not easily portrayed as “terrorists” to an international community that increasingly associates that moniker exclusively with Muslims.

The COVID-19 pandemic took over news cycles around the world in 2020. In some ways, it seemed to dampen what had been growing attention on the Uyghur issue. How has the pandemic impacted the situation in Xinjiang? Has it changed Beijing’s approach to the Uyghurs?

I was asked by the publishers of the book to write a preface addressing this issue in May, and I generally stand by what I wrote at that time. The worst-case scenario of COVID-19 rapidly spreading in the prisons and internment camps in the Uyghur region does not yet appear to have come to fruition, but this could change in the near future as the Uyghur homeland is now the epicenter of the pandemic inside the PRC. If this does occur, it is also likely that we may never know the extent of damage to human life because there presently is so little reliable information available from the region. 

However, it is more likely that the PRC will use the pandemic as an opportunity to normalize what it is doing to the Uyghurs. For example, there is evidence that the PRC has been gradually re-purposing the mass internment camps in the region as it finds more insidious ways to funnel Uyghurs into coerced residential labor programs, many of which are in inner China. There is also evidence that many former internees are being given prison terms and moved into prisons. All of these changes do not alter Beijing’s overall ambitions to destroy Uyghur identity, displace large swaths of the Uyghur population, and marginalize those who remain in their homeland. But such moves would deflect criticism by transforming the internment camps and erasing the history of their use before any substantive international investigation of them could be done. In this sense, I would not be surprised if the PRC succeeded in using the period of global pandemic to both further its goals vis-à-vis the Uyghurs and, at least partially to erase much of the evidence of how it had accomplished these goals.  

In July, the United States announced new sanctions on several Chinese officials (including Chen) for their roles in human rights abuses in Xinjiang. What did you make of this move? What would it take for the global community to change China’s calculus on its Xinjiang policy?

I support the adoption of the Uyghur Human Rights Protection Act (UHRPA), which initiated these sanctions, but I was also disappointed that this law was adopted at a time when the Trump administration was beginning to assert a variety of pressures on the PRC related to other issues. This timing has helped serve one of Beijing’s primary disinformation responses to accusations that Uyghurs are experiencing a cultural genocide. In response to such accusations, the Chinese state has frequently suggested that stories of the grave human rights abuses carried out against Uyghurs are merely Western propaganda aimed at discrediting a peaceful and rising China. This is a persuasive argument internationally when many people have lost trust in claims from the U.S. government, especially after its justification for the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses. However, it is all the more persuasive at a time when the Trump administration is becoming more aggressive toward the PRC on a variety of issues from its human intelligence gathering in the U.S., the potential national security of using Huawei technology in local communications networks, and China’s role in the global spread of COVID-19. While all of these issues are substantive and important to address, the Trump administration’s sudden aggressiveness on all of them simultaneously is fueling not illegitimate concerns that the U.S. and China are headed toward a geopolitical conflict where disinformation could potentially be wielded on both sides. It is unfortunate that the UHRPA has been swept up in this emerging geopolitical conflict precisely because the Uyghur issue should legitimately be an international humanitarian issue, not a political issue between two rival states. 

In addition to being tainted by the timing of its adoption, I am also somewhat skeptical of this bill’s ability to actually change Beijing’s behavior. While Magnitsky-inspired sanctions on government officials can be effective when the officials in question have substantial assets in the U.S., it is unclear that this is the case with the officials in Xi’s government given its anti-corruption purges. Furthermore, in today’s geopolitical context, it is difficult to imagine pressure from any given state altering the PRC’s domestic policies. On the issue of its treatment of Uyghurs, the PRC has already showed that it is adept at deflecting criticism from the U.S. and the EU by garnering support for its policies from other states. Furthermore, the PRC has become extremely powerful in the U.N., and it is unlikely that U.N. member states could come to a consensus on punishing Beijing for its treatment of Uyghurs.

In this context, I feel it is important that the fate of the Uyghurs inside the PRC be first and foremost addressed by international advocacy without ties to specific states and their interests. This will be the only way to truly change Beijing’s behavior. There needs to be a grassroots movement globally that both shames the PRC for what it is doing to its Uyghur population and extracts real economic pain through consumer boycotts and divestment campaigns. In light of the many coerced residential labor programs to which Uyghurs are being subjected, there is evidence that global supply chains are increasingly implicated in the Uyghur cultural genocide. As this is carefully documented, there are opportunities for activists globally to put pressure on many global brands to distance themselves from these supply chains and to push institutional investors to divest from Chinese companies employing Uyghur coerced labor. Such pressure, especially if it had the scope and enthusiasm of the 1980s anti-apartheid movement, could begin to change state behavior at the bequest of powerful business people in the PRC. While such an approach would require much work and dedication, it is the only way I can envision there being a transformation in Beijing’s attitudes toward and actions against the Uyghur people.