Videos From Urumqi, Xinjiang
This video, or more accurately a series of videos published on YouTube, were interesting as the vlogger known as “numuves” (an Chinese Canadian according to his own video) travelled to Xinjiang last April. He made at least seven relatively short videos (around 20 minutes) from his trip, which started on April 26, 2020. They were made like you could see Xinjiang through his eyes or camera, which is exactly what I wanted. The only weakness is that he stayed in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, not where most Uyghurs live.
The vlogger edited his vlog to mix what he saw in Xinjiang and what the western media had claimed about Xinjiang, with some footage from the terrorist attack in previous years. The important information in his Part 2 of his Vlog was to flashback to the clip in 2018 in which an American military commander described how the Eastern Turkistan Independence Movement (ETIM) had operations in China, which explains why China has been so sensitive or nervous about the Xinjiang situation, and why this professor at Georgetown university was not making much sense when he stated that “They didn’t realize Xinjiang was so connected to the world economy and it would pull on threads of the world economy.” as mentioned in the letter of Serwer. Beijing knew all along that Xinjiang was crucial not only in terms of producing 80% of high quality cotton in China but also the starting cite for its Belt & Road project. In other words, in the leaders minds, Xinjiang was more connected to the world economy than anywhere else.
In his Part 3 we heard and saw the subway audio announcements and signs were all in Mandarin, Uyghur and English.
I had big hope for his Part 4 because he planned to visit another city of Altay outside Urumqi. Unfortunately in China everyone had to quarantine again every time going to a different city of place, so he decided to return to Urumqi.
Learning From Danial Dumbrill
If Cyrus Janssen is the best resource in understanding China at large, Danial Dumbrill would be the best source for understanding the stories in Xinjiang. Like Janssen, Dumbrill has very sharp eyes and mind, an eloquent speaker and a convincing debater. I wish I had his thinking and speaking power!
Unlike Janssen, Dumbrill is more balanced and middle grounded in his stance on China and Xinjiang issues. This actually has helped strengthen his reasoning, because having an open mind and a balanced view grant you more thinking power and your views are more likely to be right over time. For example, Janssen was right that China is changing toward the positive direction, but it can also go backward at times. Something also may never change over time. Beijing has never been very tolerant toward criticisms, even from long time ago. With the movie Nomadland Chloe Zhao “became the first Asian woman to win a Best Director nod for her film Nomadland, which also won Best Picture.” However, “the awards were not broadcast in China, or even Hong Kong, reportedly because of a ban ordered by the Chinese Communist Party’s Publicity Department,” all because Zhao in “the interview in Filmmaker Magazine in which she said, ‘it goes back to when I was a teenager in China, being in a place where there are lies everywhere.'”
Like I said before, Beijing was not smart enough to understand people always have different opinions on almost everything. It is best to let them express their views, something the US does totally right!
Quoting Witty Words From Dumbrill
In an interview with Guancha (in both Chinese & English), Dumbrill found an excellent way to summarize a common situation surrounding the western propaganda: “I’ve found a lot of people have been so bombarded with this story, that they’ve come to a lazy compromise and say things like “well, even if only 10% of it is true, we still have a big problem here”. I believe many goodwilled and goodhearted citizens in the west do think that way.
The other comments Dumbrill said is also totally true: “In the short term though, it seems that story telling abilities are just as important as actual action, and in that regard, China has very poor story telling abilities. This is something it should find away to improve.”
An overview of the Xinjiang stories offered by Dumbrill: “I don’t believe the West’s story on Xinjiang. I’ll be honest with you here, I don’t believe China’s story either, at least in terms of the media’s English content making it look like it’s a perfect paradise where people dance, laugh and play in harmony all day long. I do believe that the truth about what’s going on is far closer to China’s version of the story, but I do not believe there is a perfect way to fight terrorism where people’s lives aren’t going to be affected.”
Dumbrill Exposed China’s Failures & Weaknesses
Another story Dumbrill revealed about Tibet: “Based on my experience speaking in private with a Tibetan friend for example, he never knew that the Dalai Lama’s brother wrote in his book that the biggest regret of his life was cooperating with the CIA and that he realizes he was just being used, writing ‘There is no doubt that today, if it were not for the great strength and power of the Chinese Government, the entire continent would have already become the blood-soaked purgatory as has happened to the Middle Eastern countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria as well as Africa’. This gave my friend a bit of perspective on the situation in Tibet and gave him an ability to empathize with the government a bit more than he did before. There needs to be sufficient opportunity for people to learn about this context.”
This brought me back to the open letter of Serwer, “the Chinese government, which at first denied the existence of detention camps, but later acknowledged them as “re-education camps” (that old phrase) is not necessarily to be trusted about anything here.”
This definitely made an impression that the Chinese government had shifted its story in Xinjiang, when providing a consistent story is the key to gain trust and win believability. But Dumbrill has already points out that China is poor in holding “coordinated propaganda campaigns” like the western media and government have been doing. It is hard to believe — but true — that a country of 1.4 billion people had to wait for a few western citizens living or lived in China to provide the best defense for the country.
But this is the perfect example illustrating two big problems with China all along: (1) the government takes everything in its own hand while effectively treats its citizens like children and does not want them to grow up, to experience, to interact or to fight with the external world; (2) the total failure of its education system that hardly ever teaches students to be critical thinkers and to analyze open ended questions. The result is that they cannot carry meaningful conversations with others in the world. These are fundamentally why I said China is more of a “paper tiger” than the US, and why China has little to offer when it comes to global leadership that can match the US.
To go back to the Tibet case that Dumbrill was talking about, China simply blocks any publication by Dalai Lama and his associates, but it also unplugged all the best opportunities to educate its citizens. Imagine how many people would be like Dumbrill’s friend who after reading the book by Dalai Lama’s brother, came to the “epiphany” that working with the CIA would be a mistake.
Now look at how the US did it and take the example of the 2007 documentary No End in Sight on the Iraq war. Frankly I was shocked by how terrible a leader or leaders like the Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and VP Dick Chaney were. It’s a total mess and total disaster the way the US occupied Iraq and turned the country upside down. The grave mistakes made by Paul Bremer, the head of the CPA (The Coalition Provisional Authority) included “(s)topping preparations for the formation of an interim Iraqi government,” “disbanding all of Iraq’s military entities, which went against the advice of the U.S. military and made 500,000 young men unemployed” and finally, “implementing “De-Ba’athification” in the early stages of the occupation, as he considered members disloyal.” As a result, there was a “rapid deterioration of occupied Iraq into chaos, as the collapse of the government bureaucracy and army resulted in a lack of authority and order. It was the Islamic fundamentalists that moved to fill this void.”
Still, the US government never banned the movie, and it won several awards or nominations. But if you ask the average American whether they had seen or heard of it, I bet most would say no. The lesson is clear: Banning something is the best promotion for it. Not banning anything, letting plenty of things compete for people’s attention, most would stop being newsworthy.
The final comments I want to cite from Dumbrill is his observation how things work in China: “In China, it seems like objectives get amplified the further it travels down, by people who really want to contribute towards their country and society. As one of my friends in China says, the central government says “cut the hair”, then the local government walks off and says, ok, “cut the head”… I of course mean this metaphorically, which is worth mentioning to foreign readers who have a unusually skewed and dark image of China in their minds.”
A powerful metaphor but how could a message of “cutting the hair” change to “cutting the head?” Like I said last time, the Chinese are the “people of document spirit.” When a central document came down with mostly cookie cutter terms, people naturally look for things that can help them get a quick and easy handle. In so doing they may get carried away by — or misinterpreted in — a wrong handle of flashy slogans.
The other reason is the shared responsibilities between Beijing and province leaders. Because Beijing controls who should be promoted and who not, the province leaders are like departmental directors while Beijing like the CEO or Chairman of the board. The former must work hard to get attention and appreciation of the latter. By working with a small group of leaders, the leadership efficiency will be high but social efficiency will be low, because citizens are left out of the decision making process and did not have the chance to improve decisions.
An Interview of An Imam In Kashgar
This video by Danial Dumbrill cuts deeper than sightseeing videos from Urumqi like those made by numuves, which however did help me a lot to see the real way of life in Xinjiang. Dumbrill gets to the more sensitive areas like religious freedom for the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The interview was in Kashgar, the right city for getting information on the topic.
As I pointed out above, Dumbrill is an independent thinker and observer, unlike numuves who sees everything beautiful in Urumqi. I respect that independency and the healthy dosage of doubt and uncertainty. Interestingly, after the interview Dumbrill was leaning more toward believing in the story told by China, although some unspecified “dishonesties” remained from the Beijing side.
In his own words from the video, “there are real issues that exist, but they are so superficial when you compare them to what the west is saying is going on” and believes that “if people were willing to engage with China in a constructive, honest way, there is a possibility to collaborate to make changes for the good.” The problem however is that “any of the western media are not here to really help. They are here for the headlines.” Similar comment applies to the human right activists, who are not finding problems to solve overseas, but rather problems to explore. Part of the reason Dumbrill says is who is backing up the human right activists. They are backed by governments wanting to crash China.
One interesting — or the most important — finding from his interview was that western media outlets like BBC were not doing journalism in Xinjiang, as they missed or ignored the most relevant people, like this Imam in Kashgar whose father, also an Imam, was killed by the terrorists, to interview, only because the interview will lead to the inconvenient finding that the Uyghur terrorists attacked and murdered not just the Han Chinese but Uyghurs as well.
The interview went with Dumbrill hiring an Uyghur tour guide who understands and speaks some English, otherwise it would be impossible as the Imam, who lived in Kashgar since he was 6 year old, does not speak English at all.
Below I pull out other key findings from the Imam said (no repeated contents with points already discussed above):
- Some bad people used burka to do bad things. Men wear burka to pretend as women and then steal things or attack people;
- Every year the government will fly Muslims of different ethnicities like Uyghurs, Huis and Kazakhs to Mecca for pilgrimage;
- The Imam’s father was murdered by terrorists only because he was strongly against extremism. As a result, the current Imam believes the steps taken by Xinjiang government are all justifiable;
- There were Uyghurs killed by the terrorists. In fact, if you are Uyghur but not Muslim, your life would be in danger, and if you are Muslim but not support them, your life would also be in danger;
- Not only the Uyghurs can choose between being a Muslim or not now, Han Chinese or anyone else can choose too in Xinjiang.
Will stop here before it gets too long! I know I have not covered the forced labor yet, but these blogs provide useful background to warm up for what is coming next time.
Also read the MIT finding that if you are outside, the chance to be infected by Covid is virtually zero but if you are inside, it all depends on how many people and the ventilation. 6 feet or 60 feet matter little. Maybe we should all remove the mask outside!