Wednesday, October 30, 2024

recording of "Fighting Uyghur Forced Labor: Government, Researchers, Industry, and Civil Society"

Laura Murphy's powerful lecture on Uyghur forced labor, at Cornell U on Sep 30, 2024; recording now available on Global Cornell's YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8KV2b6Bk_0

Fighting Uyghur Forced Labor: Government, Researchers, Industry, and Civil Society.

Laura T. Murphy, Policy Advisor, Department of Homeland Security, US; and Professor of Human Rights, Sheffield Hallam University, UK.

Laura Murphy discussed the current situation for Uyghurs in forced labor in China, as well as the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the landmark forced labor legislation that prohibits goods made in the Uyghur Region of China from import into the United States -- including the effects of the law after two years of implementation.

The event was hosted by the East Asia Program at Cornell University, and co-sponsored by the Department of Asian Studies, Contemporary Muslim Societies Program, Critical Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Studies Program, the Department of Global Labor and Work (ILR), and the Global Labor Institute (ILR), the Department of Government, as well as the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.

Thursday, October 24, 2024

genocide lives on in west China

[from google group on Xinjiang killing of culture and people, day by day: October 2024]

...https://thebulletin.org/2024/10/how-modern-slavery-in-china-and-elsewhere-undermines-the-fight-against-existential-threats/

Separately, f y i, I wrote a piece on the recent online chat confessions from Chinese soldiers that took part in massacres of Uyghur civilians. It's in Swedish only: https://kinamedia.se/2024/10/09/soldaters-dodande-av-civila-i-xinjiang-lacker-ut-pa-kinas-sociala-medier/

I have not seen many other media take this up. Meanwhile, the New York Times [NYT] just had a big piece on how many Chinese people are now upset about how a Japanese boy was recently murdered outside his school in Guangzhou -- but even the NYT doesn't mention how the Uyghur genocide is proceeding while very few Chinese protest it.

Taking Uyghur property in west China

...article about China's expropriation and dispossession of Uyghur land, wealth, and people, as part of their "broader plan to undermine Uyghur existence, erode their economic base, and reshape the region for Han Chinese settler domination."

https://bitterwinter.org/from-orchards-to-auctions-the-chinese-robbery-of-uyghur-wealth-part-i/

From Orchards to Auctions: The Chinese Robbery of Uyghur Wealth. Part I. How confiscation of Uyghur wealth by China is pushing Uyghurs to poverty.

Abdulhakim Idris. Bitter Winter, 10/23/2024.

Thursday, September 12, 2024

film on genocide in west China, "All Static and Noise"

...Amnesty UK screenings of 'All Static and Noise'. We will have the film's producer Janice Englehart with us alongside (visas willing) Abduweli Ayup for a Q&A.

All Static & Noise is a groundbreaking documentary about atrocities committed against the Uyghur and Kazakh peoples in China. Weaving together photography, animation, dance, poetry, an original music score and personal testimony, All Static & Noise stimulates all senses and reminds us that in the darkest of times, we are strongest together.

SUNDAY 22ND SEPTEMBER 2024: 3:00PM-7:00PM

London Screening and panel event: Amnesty International, 25 New Inn Yard, London, EC2A 3EA

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/amnestyinternational/1383689

Saturday, August 10, 2024

student viewpont on genocide in China

  crossposting: Powerful speech by Uyghur student Z. Mamat @Cornell TEDxCornell, on China's ongoing genocide against her people -- new,  July 29, 2024:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqPxlnuOVRU

Saturday, July 20, 2024

Killing Uyghurs and more ethnic nationalities in XUAR

Two publications in July 2024:

Mass Detention and Forced Assimilation of Uyghur Children in China.

By Magnus Fiskesjö and Rukiye Turdush.

Just released at the CETNI homepage, July 19, 2024: https://cetni.org/?p=7053

and (open access)

"Ancient DNA and the Politics of Ethnicity in Neo-Nationalist China." In Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA, eds. Daniel Strand & Anna Källén, & Charlotte Mulcore. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, July 2024, 145-166. Open access = chapter 7, https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/5800/Critical-Perspectives-on-Ancient-DNA

Friday, July 5, 2024

Discussing PRC international crimes, July 8 to 12, 2024 at The Hague

Forthcoming meeting of minds in the Netherlands (via Twitter).

Monday, June 17, 2024

Why Kazakh officials are not publicly concerned with concentration camps of west China

New research published by Gaziza Shakhanova (Jan Masaryk Center for International Studies, Prague, Czech Republic) on why the Kazakhstani authorities ignored the numerous cases of detention of ethnic Kazakhs (including Kazakhstani citizens) in the Xinjiang re-education camps.

Normative Power China: Why Kazakhstan is Ignoring the 'Re-education' Camps in Xinjiang

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09668136.2024.2336511

Monday, May 27, 2024

Xi's Han-centric nation-building (article)

New Textbook Reveals Xi Jinping's Doctrine of Han-centric Nation-Building

[May 24,2024] Publication: China Brief Volume: 24 Issue: 11

Executive Summary:

Another cultural revolution is in full swing in the People's Republic of China (PRC). This is not the purported class revolution Mao advocated in the past, but rather a wave of Han cultural and racial nationalism.
Xi's new approach to ethnic minority policy repudiates the Party's past promise to allow minority nationalities to exercise political and cultural autonomy, becoming "masters of their own house."
Following more than ten years of incremental change, a new textbook from scholar-officials articulates the discourse, ideology, and policies associated with a new Han-centric narrative of China's past and future.
In this conception, the sovereignties and homelands of the Tibetan, Uyghur, Mongol, and other indigenous minorities are erased and replaced with a seamless teleology of the Han colonial and racial becoming.

source, https://jamestown.org/program/new-textbook-reveals-xi-jinpings-doctrine-of-han-centric-nation-building/

Monday, April 22, 2024

crisis in XUAR continues, April 2024

Posting from the April 22 edition of the Google Group for the Xinjiang Crisis Response.

Friday, March 1, 2024

event - Mongolness at the China-Tibet border

crossposting for the March 6, 2024 online event

=-=-=-=-=

漢藏邊界蒙古性的重新發明

The Re-invention of Mongolness at the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands

日期Date：3/6/2024

時間Time：4:30-6:30pm

地點Venue：HC103, HSS Building 3, Guangfu Campus, NYCU 陽明交大光復校區人社三院HC103教室

Zoom Link 會議：https://us02web.zoom.us/j/8653...

　　　Meeting ID 會議ID: 865 3118 7307

　　　Password 密碼: 437907

Speaker 講者：Ute Wallenböck博士（Assistant professor, Department of Chinese Studies, Masaryk University 捷克馬薩里克大學中國研究系助理教授）

Host 主持人：Allen Chun 陳奕麟（Research Fellow, International Center for Cultural Studies, NYCU 國立陽明交通大學文化研究國際中心專任研究員）

Abstract 講座內容：

Contemporary Henan Mongol autonomous county in Qinghai province is a small Mongol enclave located within the Tibetan cultural area of Amdo at the Sino-Tibetan borderlands. The arrival of the first Mongol settlers was in the 13th century, and with the establishment of the Khoshut authority over the Kokonor region under Gushri Khan, the Mongols gained power all over the region until 1723. By then, the Kokonor region came under the administration of the Qing court but under the power of local Tibetan rulers – except the area of the Hequ grassland which remained in the hands of the Mongols until the incorporation into the modern Chinese state in 1954.

Due to the long-term mutual contacts between Tibetans and Mongols - a milieu was created in which unique local customs, language patterns, and social communities have emerged; the origins of which lie in encounters between Tibetan and Mongol culture that share certain features to form a new distinct culture. With the twentieth century, the underlying Mongolness was no longer assumed but began to be reaffirmed, so hyphenation began to emerge among groups in order to emphasize their Mongolness to others. Since the 1980s, the Henan Mongols are beneficiaries of the party state's civilising projects to retain their distinct identity by re-inventing their "Mongolness." Hence, the speaker is pursuing the question of the identity construction of the people of contemporary Henan County by looking at the multiple factors influencing their Mongolness. The findings are based on information she has collected during various long-term stays and research trips in Henan County since the late 1990s, which were supplemented by cross-checking printed sources, such as official records, local history materials and inner-party materials in Tibetan and Chinese.

－

青海省的今日河南蒙古自治縣是位於青藏邊境地帶安多藏區內的一個小型蒙古飛地。第一批蒙古定居者於13世紀抵達，隨著固始汗在國土區域內控制高原地區的確立，蒙古人在該地區獲得了權力。直至1723年，高原地區受清朝政府管理，但由當地藏族統治者掌控，除了河曲草原地區一直保持在蒙古人手中，直到1954年並入現代中國國家。

長期以來藏族和蒙古族之間的交往創造了一個獨特的地方習俗、語言模式和社會群體的環境；其起源在於藏族和蒙古文化之間的相遇，共享某些特徵以形成新的獨特文化。隨著二十世紀到來，蒙古性的基礎性假設不再被認為理所當然，而是開始被重申。因此，為了向他人強調他們的蒙古性，連字符開始出現。自1980年代以來，河南蒙古人成為黨國文明項目的受益者，通過重新塑造他們的「蒙古性」來保持他們的獨特身份。因此，講者通過考察影響當代河南縣人民蒙古性的多種因素來追求對當地人民身份建構的問題。這些發現基於其自20世紀90年代末以來在河南縣的各種長期逗留和研究旅行中收集的信息，這些信息得到了印刷資料的交叉核實，如官方記錄、地方史料和藏漢黨內資料。

－

中文論文：https://drive.google.com/file/...

教育部高等教育深耕計畫---特色領域研究中心經費補助「衝突、正義、解殖：21世紀轉型中的亞洲」計畫
MOE-SPROUT 2.0, Conflict, Justice, Decolonization: Asia in Transition in the 21st Century

中心主任兼總計畫主持人劉紀蕙
ICCS Director and Principal Investigator: Joyce C.H. Liu

所屬子計畫Research Cluster｜
子計畫一〔大中國體系中社會區域間的地緣政治和文化經濟〕
Sub-project 1: The Geopolitics and Cultural Economy of Societal Relations in a New GreaterChina

計畫主持人Principal Investigator｜
陳奕麟Allen Chun

International Center for Cultural Studies

Transit Asia Research Network

R103, HA2, 1001 University Road,
East District, Hsinchu, TAIWAN(R.O.C.)

Monday, February 26, 2024

Symposium recording, October 2023 - Concentration Camps in west China

Symposium hosted at Cornell in October 2023 about confiscated Uyghur children, see

https://www.cornell.edu/video/uyghur-children-symposium-2023

Saturday, November 25, 2023

old and new - Japan views from drone-flying friend

These examples come from DJI Mini camera drone: Up goes the drone and 360 degrees later there is a panorama to add to Google Maps.

One is the prehistorical burial mounts in Sabae-city in Fukui-prefecture.

The other is the new bullet-train station at Tsuruga (port visible in the distance on the Japan Sea).

Service begins March 2024.

王山古墳群 [Ozan Kofun group]

https://maps.app.goo.gl/GJbQ51U2oZ6JSHSo8

敦賀駅 [Shinkansen station at Tsuruga for the Hokuriku line]

https://maps.app.goo.gl/dEJnWq2dBcfJVi3p7

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Yongle dadian (永樂大典) now digital version [Library of Congress]

Library Completes Digitization of Yongle Encyclopedia, Largest Reference Work of Pre-Modern Era

The Library of Congress has completed a yearslong effort to digitize the Yongle Encyclopedia (Yongle dadian 永樂大典), the largest reference work created in pre-modern China, and possibly the world. Digital publication of the 41 volumes held in the Library's collections provides open access to one of the most extensive attempts in world history to capture the entirety of human knowledge in book form.

Learn more.

Wednesday, October 5, 2022

The art of protest in Hong Kong

Two photos from recent cycles of the annual Art-Prize held in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Click the image itself for a full-size view of the file, or use the bottom right corner Download button to appreciate the artist detail.

One by E. Park (2021), https://flickr.com/photos/anthroview/51514537811/

and from this past week in 2022 by J. Chan, https://flickr.com/photos/anthroview/52367693076/

Thinking about the connections between art and protest, there are several dimensions that come to mind to begin with.

Maybe readers have these and more experiences to add, too.

<>art as protest (instrumental) medium to get a response; also as outlet for aspiration, frustration, suffering, and so on

<>art as protest (representational) recording or mirror to show self and others what is taking place

<>art as irony or means of inverting meanings (taking powerholders' art and using it for protestor purposes)

<>art as emblem or badge for those who protest (asserting identity of the group/community)

Thursday, September 8, 2022

Recent publications on Xinjiang genocide

"Forum: The Uighur Population in China and R2P: Pursuing Accountability and Protection for the Uighur and Muslim Minorities in China." By Jacob, Cecilia; Adrian Gallagher, and Charles T. Hunt. _Global Responsibility to Protect_ 13 (2021), 5-8. https://brill.com/view/journals/gr2p/13/1/gr2p.13.issue-1.xml

This forum contains seven more articles, as below. -some PDFs are open access, some require login.

Settler Colonialism and the Path toward Cultural Genocide in Xinjiang
Author: Michael Clarke
Global Responsibility to Protect 13 (2021), 9–19
Online Publication Date: 16 Feb 2021
+
Atrocity Crimes in Xinjiang: Moving beyond Legal Labels
Author: Sophie Ryan
Global Responsibility to Protect 13 (2021), 20–23
Online Publication Date: 16 Feb 2021
+
China and the Uighurs: Options for Legal Accountability
Author: Andrew Garwood-Gowers
Global Responsibility to Protect 13 (2021), 24–28
Online Publication Date: 16 Feb 2021
+
R2P Sidelined: The International Response to China's Repression of Muslim Minorities in Xinjiang
Author: Rosemary Foot
Global Responsibility to Protect 13 (2021), 29–32
Online Publication Date: 16 Feb 2021
+
United Nations' Response to Mass Atrocities in China
Author: Nadira Kourt
Global Responsibility to Protect 13 (2021), 33–36
Online Publication Date: 16 Feb 2021
+
Rescuing Humanitarian Intervention from Liberal Hegemony
Author: Thomas Peak
Global Responsibility to Protect 13 (2021), 37–59
Online Publication Date: 30 Nov 2020
+
R2P and Prevention: The International Community and Its Role in the Determinants of Mass Atrocity
Authors: Alexandra Bohm and Garrett Wallace Brown
Global Responsibility to Protect 13 (2021), 60–95
Online Publication Date: 08 Dec 2020

--[see also this] review of Mamtimin Ala's book Worse Than Death, mentioning a few other books on the genocide also written by Uyghurs or Kazakhs, appeared yesterday in the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet, https://www.svd.se/a/a75x6a/ett-pagaende-folkmord-som-hela-kina-appladerar [in Swedish, but amenable to translate.google.com].

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

writing on Xinjiang lately

Just published (Feb 2022, with D. Mahmut): 'Corrective "re-education" as (cultural) genocide: a content analysis of the Uyghur primary school textbook Til-Ädäbiyat. In The Xinjiang Emergency. Manchester University Press.

Book chapter (Nov 2021): '"Turning Sheep into Tigers": State Securitization of Islam, Societal Insecurity and Conflict in Xinjiang, China.' In The Politics of Muslim Identities in Asia. Edinburgh University Press.

Reflection in Journal of Genocide Research (2020): 'Why Scholars and Activists Increasingly Fear a Uyghur Genocide in Xinjiang'.

Article in Space & Society (2020, with O.Klimes): 'China's Neo-Totalitarian Turn and Genocide in Xinjiang'.

Guest-edited Special Issue of Central Asian Survey (2019): 'Securitization, Insecurity and Conflict in Contemporary Xinjiang'.

Brill monograph (2013): The Art of Symbolic Resistance: Uyghur Identities and Uyghur-Han Relations in Contemporary Xinjiang.

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

new book - changing funeral traditions, urban China

Hong Kong-based anthropologist author publishes - $29 in paperback or free as ebook (choice of PDF, Epub, or mobi - for Kindle & other reading devices).

https://luminosoa.org/site/books/m/10.1525/luminos.105/

The Funeral of Mr. Wang

Life, Death, and Ghosts in Urbanizing China

by Andrew B. Kipnis

In rural China funerals are conducted locally, on village land by village elders. But in urban areas, people have neither land for burials nor elder relatives to conduct funerals. Chinese urbanization, which has increased drastically in recent decades, involves the creation of cemeteries, state-run funeral homes, and small private funerary businesses. The Funeral of Mr. Wang examines social change in urbanizing China through the lens of funerals, the funerary industry, and practices of memorialization. It analyzes changes in family life, patterns of urban sociality, transformations in economic relations, the politics of memorialization, and the echoes of these changes in beliefs about the dead and ghosts.

"This book is highly original and addresses a topic of central importance to understanding Chinese family life and the limits of a party-state's regulatory power over the society and individual citizens. Original and systematic fieldwork is expertly used to illustrate core arguments. To my knowledge there is no competing ethnography." — Deborah Davis, Professor Emerita of Sociology, Yale University

"The Funeral of Mr. Wang is a vivid portrait of how the transition from life to death is negotiated in the midst of a rapidly transforming urban Chinese society. Showing how death in contemporary China generates interconnected processes of cultural recombination among family members, funeral service providers, bureaucratic regulators, strangers, and ghosts, this book will be critical reading for all students of China and of death in contemporary societies." — David A. Palmer, coauthor of The Religious Question in Modern China

Thursday, July 22, 2021

Friday, July 16, 2021

Documentary lens on Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region since 2017

=-=-=-= Documenting the Undocumentable: China's Re-Education Camps. BY YI CHEN.

Documentary magazine, AUGUST 18, 2020.

https://www.documentary.org/feature/documenting-undocumentable-chinas-re-education-camps

=-=-=-= Summer 2021 The Uyghur Chronicles, https://www.theatlantic.com/the-uyghur-chronicles/

=-=-=-= Different subject: Uyghur poets. These sessions are connected to the people included in the dragnet pulling so many lives into confinement of body and mind:

The Uyghur Poets. Heart and Soul. BBC Radio, Fri 16 July 2021. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct2gj2
+ Joshua L. Freeman thread on the poetry of Tahir Hamut Izgil: https://twitter.com/jlfreeman6/status/1415646458926313472

=-=-=-= Reference list (live document updated regularly): Online bibliography on the genocide in the Uyghur region (East Turkestan): https://uhrp.org/bibliography/

Friday, July 9, 2021

This month marks 100 years of the CCP

Feature story on July 9, 2021 at National Public Radio's morning show, Morning Edition, {about 6 minutes playing time)

A few hours after broadcast many of the radio stories are put into transcript form to share or copy/paste.

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/09/1014512220/a-look-at-chinas-red-tourism-industry-as-the-communist-party-turns-100

Sunday, May 30, 2021

article, "Dossier: Uyghur Women in China’s Genocide"

Creative-commons (open access) announced May 30, 2021. See also Fiskesjö' cumulative listing of related writings by others

Dossier: Uyghur Women in China's Genocide

Rukiye Turdush, Uyghur Research Institute - Follow
Magnus Fiskesjö, Cornell University - Follow

Abstract

In genocide, both women and men suffer. However, their suffering has always been different; with men mostly subjected to torture and killings, and women mostly subjected to torture and mutilation. These differences stem primarily from the perpetrators' ideology and intention to exterminate the targeted people. Many patriarchal societies link men with blood lineage and the group's continuation, while women embody the group's reproductivity and dignity. In the ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in East Turkistan, the ideology of Chinese colonialism is a root cause. It motivates the targeting of women as the means through which to destroy the reproductivity and the dignity of the people as a whole. It is a common misunderstanding to associate genocide with only mass killings, and the current lack of evidence for massacres has led some to prematurely conclude there is no genocide. But this overlooks the targeting of women, which is also a prominent part of the definition of genocide laid out in the Genocide Convention. State policy in China intentionally targets Uyghur and other Turkic women in multiple ways. This dossier is focused on analyzing China's targeted policies against Uyghur women and their "punishment," as rooted in part in ancient Chinese legalist philosophy. In doing so, this dossier contributes toward further exposing Chinese colonialism and the genocidal intent now in evidence.

Recommended Citation

Turdush, Rukiye and Fiskesjö, Magnus (2021) "Dossier: Uyghur Women in China's Genocide," Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: Vol. 15: Iss. 1: 22–43.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1834

Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol15/iss1/6

Friday, April 2, 2021

Hong Kong professor, "why I stay here"

Blog article (Op/Ed) late March 2021 by Dr. Gordon Matthews at CUHK, https://hongkongfp.com/2021/02/21/academic-gordon-mathews-why-i-am-staying-in-hong-kong-for-now/ to discuss what is gained and what is lost by teaching and researching at the university campus, even while free speech and thinking is threatened by Mainland controlling forces.

Wednesday, March 31, 2021

When scholars describe Chinese governance

with a critical voice and eye, then central government reactions can be harsh. The March 2021 statement issued by the Association for Asian Studies points this out, https://www.asianstudies.org/aas-statement-on-chinese-government-sanctions/

Statement by the AAS Board of Directors
March 29, 2021

The Association for Asian Studies (AAS), a scholarly, non-political, non-profit professional association with approximately 6,500 members worldwide, wishes to express its solidarity and support for our esteemed colleague and member, Professor Joanne Smith Finley of the University of Newcastle, UK, who is one of nine people sanctioned on March 26, 2021, by the Chinese Foreign Ministry for ostensibly "maliciously spread[ing] lies and disinformation."

Professor Smith Finley is a respected scholar and an elected member of the China and Inner Asia Council of the AAS. She organized two valuable panel sessions at the recently concluded 2021 AAS Annual Conference that examined Chinese state policies in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Her research, like that of other AAS members, manifests scholarly scruples, analytical forthrightness, and a balanced but critical approach. It highlights the obligation of scholarship to examine and acknowledge significant social issues. The sanctioning of Prof. Smith Finley and members of her immediate family represents a reprehensible blow to academic freedom under the terms of UNESCO's 1997 Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel, which calls upon all UN member states to protect the freedom of thought, expression, and movement of higher education teaching personnel and, in particular, the right to disseminate freely the results of their research.

As a community of scholars, the AAS regrets the levying of sanctions by the Chinese Foreign Ministry against individual researchers and scholarly organizations. These actions quell the production of knowledge and hinder the capacity of researchers to provide national and international publics, policy makers, and academe well-informed analyses of Chinese society, politics, and culture.

=-=-=-=-=-= Documenter of Xinjiang genocide gives (listserv) rejoinder,

...strange that this AAS statement does not include by name the two other 'sanctioned' scholars as well, Björn Jerdén, the Swedish political scientist and China scholar, and Adrian Zenz, the German anthropologist who has done more than most of us to research and valiantly expose the atrocities in China. Zenz in particular has already been very viciously attacked by the Chinese propaganda machine, Jerdén also...

And the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) institute is not even hinted at by the AAS ... even though the targeting of an independent institute, too, is a new low from Chinese regime. It's the largest European China-focused such institute. A group of 32 research institute and think tank directors have put their feet down: https://statement-china-sanctions.vercel.app

Friday, January 29, 2021

Shanghai frozen in time, 360 degrees

Stitching many digital pictures together yields 195 Gigapixel panoramic portrait of the city at this time,

https://www.dpreview.com/news/1645435845/chinese-company-captures-incredibly-detailed-195-gigapixel-360-degree-panorama-of-shanghai

Saturday, January 23, 2021

article 1/2021, Racism with Chinese Characteristics

https://chinachannel.org/2021/01/22/chinese-racism/

Racism with Chinese Characteristics (7 min read) -January 22, 2021 by Magnus Fiskesjö

How China's imperial legacy underpins state racism and violence in Xinjiang

-----[opening paragraph; excerpt]

Due to incidents last year in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, where Africans were evicted and forced to sleep on the street simply because they are African, there is a growing realization around the world that Chinese racism exists. Despite the government's denials, racism against Africans in China is often blatant. In one widely circulated clip, one can see a white and a black woman both trying to enter a shopping mall: only the white woman is permitted, and both leave in disgust. Just as in the West's past, in China contempt for Africans is also often mixed up with patronizing exoticization. Chinese comedians wear blackface on state TV. In Shenzhen's Windows on the World theme park, dark-skinned ethnic minority people are choreographed to perform either as primitive Africans, or as primitive themselves.

... ... truncation

-----[concluding paragraph]

Before the Communists took power, their declared ideology was "internationalist" and anti-imperialist, even promising to restore independence to all peoples conquered by the Chinese empire, including the Tibetans, Uyghurs, Hmong, and so on. But after 1949, official Communist mythology reclaimed all these groups as genetically "Chinese" peoples who cannot split away from the fatherland. Today, the erstwhile ideal of equality between indigenous nationalities in what was once the Chinese empire is being shed altogether. In Xinjiang it has been replaced with a Nazi-style purification of the nation, intended as a final solution that will obliterate China's ethnic and cultural diversity inherited from the Qing empire. Unfortunately, this state racism is not likely to go away until it is broadly recognized and rejected – including by the Chinese people.

---See also, Magnus Fiskesjo: Online bibliography (periodically updated) on the genocide in the Uyghur region (East Turkestan):

https://uhrp.org/featured-articles/chinas-re-education-concentration-camps-xinjiang

Monday, December 21, 2020

new book (2019), Japan & China interrelations of 15 centuries

excerpt from December 2020 obituary for Dr. Ezra Vogel (90), published by the Japan Times online.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/12/21/national/ezra-f-vogel-obituary/

At the age of 89, he published "China and Japan: Facing History" (2019), which reviews the history of political and cultural ties between the two nations over 1,500 years. Vogel hoped that the book would offer an accurate portrayal of how the two countries learned from each other over the centuries, but also serve to encourage the Chinese and Japanese leaders to forge a more constructive relationship going forward.

Sinic Snippets