Genocide or No Genocide, There Are Many Questions Part III

Introducing The Zenz Report

Now we come to the key documented evidences for the genocide charge. The official title of the Zenz Report is “Sterilizations, Forced Abortions and Mandatory Birth Control” with a subtitle of “The CCP’s Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birthrates in Xinjiang” by Dr. Adrian Zenz and published by the Jamestown Foundation (June 2020, Washington D.C.). Notice the title did not say genocide, although in the texts it was clearly claimed: “These findings provide the strongest evidence yet that Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang meet one of the genocide criteria cited in the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide namely that of Section D of Article II: “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the [targeted] group” (United Nations, December 9, 1948).

I must admit that I learned about Zenz only after reading the NYT report on January 19, 2021 and also the report on the Xinjiang Papers. I then downloaded the full report from this website. At the beginning of the report is the Editor’s note:

“Dr. Adrian Zenz is one of the world’s leading scholars on People’s Republic of China (PRC) government policies towards the country’s western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang.” and “Dr. Zenz has also testified before the U.S. Congress about state exploitation of the labor of incarcerated Uyghur persons.” The editor then highlighted the report in these words: “Dr. Zenz presents detailed analysis of another troubling aspect of state policy in Xinjiang: measures to forcibly suppress birthrates among ethnic Uyghur communities, to include the mass application of mandatory birth control and sterilizations. This policy, directed by the authorities of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is intended to reduce the Uyghur population in Xinjiang relative to the numbers of ethnic Han Chinese—and thereby to promote more rapid Uyghur assimilation into the ‘Chinese Nation-Race’ (中华民族).“

The Chinese on the other hand have labeled Zenz an “anti-Chinese scholar” (反华学者) and called his findings lies. I believe this is lame and deserve little attention, as labels do little to help reach the truth. It is my strong belief that China is still growing and developing and should always welcome — or at least keep itself open — to anyone raising questions, criticisms, suggestions and doubts, especially those speaking with numbers and facts. China itself has been bad with providing counter-numbers to help the world see the facts. For example, it kept denying the “million plus inmates” figure in Xinjiang re-education camps, but never provided its own statistics to facilitate a meaningful debate.

Anyway, the basic findings of the Zenz report are summarized into six. Let me begin with the first and most important one.

Xinjiang Natural Population Growth Rates

In its original words of the Zenz report, “Natural population growth in Xinjiang has declined dramatically; growth rates fell by 84 percent in the two largest Uyghur prefectures between 2015 and 2018, and declined further in 2019. For 2020, one Uyghur region set an unprecedented near-zero population growth target: a mere 1.05 per mille, compared to an already low 11.45 per mille in 2018. This was intended to be achieved through “family planning work”.

Before I go into the details, it is worth pointing out that it helps little for — even to the detriment of — a genocide case by focusing on the natural population growth rate for the entire Xinjiang, where multiple ethnicities live. Proving a significantly lower RNI (i.e., Rate of Natural Increase) in Xinjiang says nothing about China singling out or targeting the Uyghurs to suppress their growth only. At the core of genocide charge is targeting a specific ethnic or other based group. Without special targeting the evidences would only point to the opposite direction to weaken the case.

Of course, Zenz is smarter than that so his main goal was to show that only the Uyghurs — living in two particular prefectures of Kashgar & Hotan filled with more than 90% Uyghurs — who had a dramatic downturn of RNI since 2015, reversing a long term trend of higher RNI among the Uyghurs than the Hans.

With that being the case, let’s delve into the evidences now.

Demography Related to Xinjiang RNI

Zenz has several graphs related to the Xinjiang natural population growth or, using my favorite term (so I don’t have to spell out the long words), the Rate of Natural Increase (RNI). In demography, RNI is the difference between the number of “crude” live births and deaths in the population in a year (the name “crude” came from ignoring the age structure of the population and does not care who were able to given birth). Crude birth rate and death rate are expressed per 1,000 people in the mid year population, as we do not have that many people dying or giving birth in each year, so they always show as per mille (written as “‰” rather than “%”).

Note that even though the birth and death rates are in ‰, it is a common practice to express RNI as a percentage (%). One thing I have noticed in reading the Xinjiang Statistical Yearbooks is that they always kept the RNI (Natural Growth Rate 自然增长率) as per mille, just like the birth and death rates. I had to check the PDF version of the Yearbooks (for their notes) to make sure that was not a typo, because some years they marked the unit of RNI as %, other years with ‰.

Anyway, this is not a big deal and does not affect the calculation results. Rather it is a conceptual issue. For example in the 2018 Yearbook (for the Year 2017), there was one RNI of 37.07 in the Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture in the South Xinjiang. One should immediately tell that figure meant to say that the population size had grown by 37.07 out of every 1,000 people (imagine 37.07 new babies in one year for every 100 people! That would be too many babies). What we do is to divide 37.07 by 10 to put RNI on a percentage basis, and now 3.707 babies per 100 people, or 50 couples, excluding artificial inseminations, are more reasonable.

What I Liked About Zenz Graphs

I liked Zenz’s first three figures, which always put the Hans and Uyghurs next to each other to get a clear and easy comparison of the two ethnic groups in total population (Figure 1), annual population change rates (Figure 2), and annualized effective population growth (Figure 3). Figure 4 is especially nice, showing not just the population figures based on the household registration system or 户口, but also those recently immigrated (presumably most Han Chinese) to Xinjiang under various campaigns to attract people from other parts of China.

I liked Figures 1, 2, 4 also because they offer the complete and historical demographic background. For example, Figures 1 & 2 clearly show one thing: The affirmative action in population control — in favor of the Uyghurs — has worked in Xinjiang. As a result, the Uyghur population has been increasing at a faster and steady pace than the Hans, even after 2015 and all the way to 2018 — the crucial period Zenz focused on. Figure 1 shows, as he put it, “Between 2015 and 2018, Xinjiang’s Han population declined by 754,000, while “the Uyghur population surged.”

Figure 5 is the key graph for Zenz to support the claim of a dramatic decline of RNI in Xinjiang and in the two largest Uyghur prefectures, Hotan and Kashgar. Before I address whether he has found himself a strong case, I would raise a few technical issues to get them out of the way.

Some Technical Comments

Figure 4 in Zenz report uses two labels: “Household registered population” versus “Permanent resident population.” I want to point out that those so called “Permanent residents” by Zenz actually have a different name in China: the moving or temporary population 流动人口. This in a way is more accurate, because only people with local household registrations can live in a place permanently. Just look at millions of migrant workers in China: They can work anywhere the jobs are but their medical insurances, their children’s educations, all are tied to where their household registrations are. Assuming not all migrants would or could move their household registrations 户口 to Xinjiang, their stays in Xinjiang are temporary and they may pack up and leave on short notices unless their household registrations are updated. This is a minor issue and it doesn’t affect the value of Figure 4 at all, unlike the issues I will raise below.

Figure 3 has a title of “Hans and Uyghur Annualized Effective Population Growth Rate in ‰.” The “annualized” part is easy, we get the difference between the starting population size and the ending population size, dividing the difference by the starting size to get the grow rate and then by the number of years in between (in Figure 3 of Zenz the intervals were 10 years apart) to get the annualized growth rate. The “effective” part is not clear. It most likely means the population of childbearing aged individuals 育龄人口, which is much smaller than the census population. It would be nice — even essential — for Zenz to provide a note to clarify, as this Wikipedia page has pointed out, “The same population may have multiple effective population sizes, for different properties of interest.” More generally, in addition to figures, I also wish Zenz had provided tables of data behind the figures so readers can check and verify.

For Figure 5, the key figure that Zenz used to prove the dramatic RNI downturn for the Uyghurs, the title noted that “Combined Han and minority counties growth rates are weighted by population.” I am not sure what was meant by “Combined Han and Minority counties,” although he specified “Minority counties” as having at least 50% minority population. Perhaps “Han counties average” and “Minority counties average?” Strictly speaking, not a single county in Xinjiang has 100% of Uyghurs (or any other ethnicity for that matter). From Table 3-7 of the Statistical Yearbook 2019, even in Kashgar and Hotan, the Uyghurs only accounted for 97% and 93% respectively in 2018.

Before Figure 5, the report says “A detailed examination of Xinjiang’s natural population growth shows that rates across all minority counties began to decline in 2015” but not much detail has been presented in the text or appendices.

It reminds me of one popular saying among the analytics that two things in the world you don’t want to see them being made: Sausages and statistical (or econometrics) models. That says how common it is for some to treat the model-building process as a “black box.” Still, to make a bold accusation against a country, the audience really deserves more thoughtfully presented and transparent details. It is good to excise prudence. I mean just look at the Marcia Clark team in the failed O. J. Simpson trial in 1995. Decades later the prosecutor told us that “I don’t think the pain of that trial is ever going to leave me.”

Perhaps Zenz was concerned not to lose the non-technical audience with too many technical details, but that is what notes and/or appendices are design for to make audience of both worlds happy and satisfied.

Back to the figures, I am also not sure how local “Social & Economic Development Reports”, the other source Zenz used to create Figure 5, would help. If Zenz had doubts on the Xinjiang Statistical Yearbooks and want to modify the figures with the assistance of local reports, then as a responsible scholar he should have informed the readers for that effect.

Finally, the Zenz report constantly highlights the Kashgar and Hotan prefectures, while the Chinese constantly talked about four southern prefectures — Kashgar, Hotan, Aksu and Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture. I have checked Table 3-8 of the Statistical Yearbook 2019, and found that Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture had 94% of minorities, exactly like the Kashgar prefecture, although slightly lower than Hotan’s 97%. The Aksu prefecture also had 81% minorities.

Zenz might have wanted to focus on regions with high concentration of Uyghurs, and indeed although Kizilsu Kirgiz had 94% minorities, only 66% were Uyghurs based on the same Table 3-8 cited above. On the other hand, Aksu prefecture did have 80% of Uyghurs out of a total of 81% of minorities in its total population, a very high concentration of the Uyghurs. Again, my earlier complaint of lacking data and technical transparencies applies here.

This is the only place I would agree with the Chinese side and believe Zenz report can do better by consistently reporting all the four Southern Xinjiang prefectures, especially if the Chinese white paper was right that all four regions “religious extremism has had a long and widespread presence, suffered badly from frequent acts of terrorism.”

Points of Debate About The RNI Dips

I have checked Table 3-2 in the Xinjiang Statistical Yearbook 2019 (It lists RNIs in all previous years from 1978 onward) and found that there was indeed a big dip in RNI for entire Xinjiang, from 11.06‰ in 2015 to 6.13‰ in 2018, decreased by 44.6%, or an annualized rate of 14.86% (from dividing 44.6% by 3). It is clear that the largest drop came in 2018, because in 2016 the Xinjiang RNI (11.08‰) actually increased from 2015. The same held true in 2017 at 11.40‰.

Articles and studies from China tend to cite population figures, not RNI, from 2010 to 2018, while Zenz focused on 2015-2018 and more specifically on RNI, as his goal was to show China had systematically and recently suppressed the birth of Uyghurs, even though the existing population of the Uyghur were still larger than Hans.

Putting the recent RNI drop in its national context should help. I checked Table 2-2 of China Statistical Yearbook 2019, and find that the national RNI was 4.96‰ in 2015, but 3.81‰ in 2018, down by 23.2% or 7.7% per year. Zenz was right to alarm us, as the Xinjiang drop of RNI (from 11.06‰ to 6.13‰) was almost twice the national drop. This report in Chinese rejected the notion of a “dramatic” RNI drop and called it a lie, but the numbers speak for themselves.

On the other hand, I do want to point out that even at 6.13‰, Xinjiang RNI in 2018 was still way higher than the national RNI of 3.81‰ in that year. Zenz report did not or would not deny that, as his focus was on the significantly lower birth rate than before.

Once the facts are clear, the big challenge is how to explain the facts. Here I will raise several reasonable doubts on the Zenz’s thesis linking the RNI drop with the governmental and scholarly discussions since 2015. This part of the blog will focus on the policy related doubt and in the future I will present data related doubts.

Policy Related Doubts of Genocide Case

Zenz is certainly entitled to be suspicious of the recent change in the birth rates, in response to the wide spreading re-education camps since 2017. However, the Zenz report cited one particular article in 2017 by one particular scholar, Li Xiaoxia, director of the Institute of Sociology at the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences, for the need of controlling excessive population growth of minorities in Xinjiang, for reducing spatial ethnic segregation that may hinder national identity, social stability and identification of the Chinese nation – race.

Zenz did cite governmental directives, like “religious extremism begets re-marriages and illegal extra births”, and that “de-extremification is an opportunity to eliminate the influence and interference of religion on family planning.” The Xinjiang White Paper, published by Beijing, also “mandates that ‘religion must not be used to interfere in…family planning policies'”.

I am not impressed by these documents as strong evidences that China launched its campaign against ethnic minorities to preserve national identity, security and identification with the Chinese nation race, charges that are all directly related to genocide.

First of all, Chinese scholars, just like Zenz himself, are entitled to personal opinions. Numerous academic papers are published every year, we can’t cite them as evidences of what the government will do with its policies. In Part I of this blog, I indicated that the system works in China is strictly top-down, with little room for bottom up flow of information.

To the extent that Xi, Jinping demanded not to eliminate the Uyghurs and not to exaggerate cultural conflicts between the Hans and Uyghurs in 2014 as revealed by the leaked Xinjiang Papers, any policy debate on how to handle the Uyghur, if there were any, would be literally over as the course of actions was determined, not even the lower rank party government could — nor they would — change it, let alone scholars.

The Quasi-Legal Means Is Actually A Good Idea

I have found myself paying much attention lately to Xinjiang like never before, and felt learning a lot from this endeavor. To begin, the western press is filled with criticisms of the Xinjiang actions by Beijing, some comparing China’s Re-education schools as Hitler’s concentration camp. Given China’s authoritarian regime, this analogy seems to make natural sense.

Except it does not. Making cross country accusations is easy, getting the facts right is much harder. Let’s get the easiest fact out first: At the end of concentration camp was massive deaths of the Jews, while at the end of Re-education schools (I will use this name unless future evidences proved me wrong) is freedom and higher employability. Locking up certain group of people based on nothing but ethnicity or religion, like Hitler had done, was cruel and totally illegal; while sending a selected group of people — based on their past behaviors and tendencies for certain behaviors — to a central facility for a period of time is a means of quasi-legal nature.

Although some may call me crazy to ever make such a comparison, I do believe Xinjiang’s re-education schools are similar to Biden’s excellent idea of not locking up drug users but treating them. If the government white paper on Xinjiang was telling us the truth, that the trainees were of three groups:

(1) “People who were incited, coerced or induced into participating in terrorist or extremist activities, or people who participated in terrorist or extremist activities in circumstances that were not serious enough to constitute a crime”;

(2) “People who were incited, coerced or induced into participating in terrorist or extremist activities, or people who participated in terrorist or extremist activities that posed a real danger but did not cause actual harm, whose subjective culpability was not deep, who acknowledged their offences and were contrite about their past actions and thus do not need to be sentenced to or can be exempted from punishment, and who have demonstrated the willingness to receive training”; and

(3) “People who were convicted and received prison sentence for terrorist or extremist crimes and after serving their sentences, have been assessed as still posing a potential threat to society, and who have been ordered by people’s courts in accordance with the law to receive education at the centers.”

“In accordance with Articles 29 and 30 of the Counter-terrorism Law, people in the first and third categories will be given assistance and education or receive job-related education at the centers. With regard to people in the second category, a small number of them should be punished severely, while the majority should be rehabilitated in accordance with the policy of balancing compassion and severity. Confession, repentance, and willingness to receive training are preconditions for leniency, and these people will receive education to help reform their ways after they have been exempted from prosecution in accordance with the law.”

Given these circumstances and conditions, one may say the Chinese program is similar, at least in spirit if not in exact procedures, to the First Offender Diversion programs one can find in this country, like this one in California.

Based on this similarity, I believe the Chinese way may even have set an example for other countries if they want to pre-emptively defeat terrorism and secession efforts, in line of the United Nations plan of action to prevent violent extremism — if their domestic environment permits such a decisive move.

The Devil Is In The Details

But alas, a good idea needs to be implemented right, otherwise it may end up as a disaster. It is certainly possible to do it right so that no laws, no human rights are violated; but it is equally possible for things to screw up badly. This is the area where I am not sure and why I will only argue for reasonable doubts, not categorical rejection of the genocide charge.

Other than the seeming success of the program in terms of seeing no newly erupted violence and terrorist attacks in Xinjiang for the past several years, we do not really know the answers to so many questions, thanks to the opacity for most, if not all, things from China. For example, how the Re-education camps exactly worked or are working? How do they recruit the trainees? By what criterion or criteria? With how many in a camp? For how long or the expected average length? What they learn and do inside the camp? Do they get paid for work conducted while in the schools? How many chose to learn the mandarin? What discipline measures are in place for violation of rules? Are the above three groups separated in the school? Perhaps most importantly, whether the system had the trainees’ consents for getting in (it would be great if they could show visitors the registration papers with the inmates’ own signatures and dates signed, perhaps with a witness or a family member)?

I loathe violation of human rights just like others do, and I hate obscurity, but I also believe leaders sometimes have to take decisive steps to get things done and changes made quickly. The tradeoff has to be left by domestic leaders, while external pressure, no matter how high it can get at times, tends to have little impact, especially for large countries like China.

China’s Xi: Penny Smart, Pound Foolish

I have long wished Xi, Jinping to be a future oriented political reformer to lead China to democracy slowly but surely. I also wish he had the vision to recognize that his way of cracking down on corruption from the top, his picking up arsenals from Mao’s tool box, and his approach of party-led “rule by law” are all bound to fail in the long run. His judgments that China is on the right side of history, that the US has passed its prime time of the day are also wrong. The biggest two strengths of the US (1) its long term political and institutional stabilities and (2) its continuous and endless capabilities in innovations and improvements, still hold firmly today — at the cost of low short term efficiencies from time to time.

Exactly the opposites are true for China. The country has yet to find a way to maintain social and power transition stabilities without suppressing diversity, freedom of express and human rights. More accurately, the right way is already there, long proven by the US: To develop detailed and sound laws and punish anyone and anything in violation and allow anything within the legal framework. The problem is whether China is willing to take it.

Xi apparently is not willing to take the American way, which he believes slows down economic growth and gets time wasted from endless arguing and debating. Instead he prefers to put the party above the law, when numerous efforts toward that direction failed already in the past. I can understand Xi’s concerns about waste and slowdown, but putting law above people is the only efficient way out in the long run. At the minimum, Xi should not go back to Mao but rather to cultivate and train the citizens for democracy.

It is too bad Xi does not have the vision to see the long future of the country, because China holds short term advantages over the US (except on the number of original innovations per capita, where China lags long behind and most likely never would reach the US level), and would have lowered the costs of pro-democracy transition by a big margin — if China starts doing it now.

Considering that Xi is a good strategic thinker in economic affairs, under his leadership China is likely to continue with an upper hand in the short term (economic) gains but without installing and cultivating democracy, China’s long term stabilities remain unsecured. In that sense, Xi is likely to go down in China and the world history as someone who is “penny smart but pound foolish.” Such a leader still deserves respect and baseline trust as long as he is trying to maximize his country’s interests as Biden is for ours. We should treat each other with respects and do not think each other as evil or the worst enemy in the world, even if he wants to beat the US, which is only a normal goal in competition.

Obscurity For A Good Cause?

I do want to point out that sometimes the Chinese may do things that looked evil but may not have an evil intent. I found this piece from NYT Chinese site, written by a Chinese student in the US based on his personal (and believable) experiences.

On July 5, 2009, large scale riots broke out in the capital city of Xinjiang, Urumqi, where “At least 1,000 rioters clashed with the police on Sunday in a regional capital in western China after days of rising tensions between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese.” So this Chinese student named Peck Zang, who came to the US shortly after the riots, decided in September 2009 to upload to his personal accounts in Facebook, Twitter and YouTube a total of 197 highly graphic photos he obtained from his friends in China, showing mostly dead Han Chinese on the streets, as well as videos how Han Chinese pedestrians were randomly attacked and beaten by the Uyghur rioters all the way to deaths.

Within three days, these pictures had attracted more than 100,000 views on Facebook alone. Not surprisingly, some of these pictures flowed back to China and appeared on domestic websites. For many Chinese these were the only pictures they had ever seen, as the government only urged people to stay calm and not to believe, nor spread, the “rumors.”

Shortly after the pictures were published, Peck Zang found himself — and especially his parents — in some trouble: Police in Urumqi visited his home and took away his old laptop and questioned his parents seriously, until finally they were assured that his parents never passed the pictures to Peck in the US. His computer was returned and everything appeared to be back to the normal.

Now, guess why the Chinese police were so nervous about the leaked pictures? Unlike the George Floyd case in which the cops were the culprit, in the Urumqi riots one police officer was killed by the Uyghur rioters. Also the pictures were totally legitimate as they were taken by the police in the aftermath of the riots as evidences for the court records. Finally the dead bodies were all Hans, not a single Uyghur. So really, nothing is to be worried and no reason to inquire his parents at all, right?

It turned out that the police were nervous because they (or more accurately leaders in Beijing) were afraid of those pictures spreading further hatred among Hans, who then would seek revenge against the Uyghurs, leading to escalated hate crimes and violence further down the road. This I must say is a legitimate or even a noble cause.

How often do incidences like this one happen in China? No one really knows. One thing is fore sure, though: Lacking civil, nonprofit organizations in China, plus a citizenry that mostly only care about individual’s material gains, left the government as the only entity to deal with everything in a large scale, which is perhaps what the government wants. Unfortunately, this also means anyone from outside China would only hear one voice — by the government. This partly explains why the outsider constantly have some misunderstandings of China. Worse still, misunderstandings accumulate over time and one thing leads to another, making them harder to go away.

Are the western media biased and hypocritical? Of course. Hypocrisy is convenient and incurs low cost, especially in international affairs. On the other hand, China has itself to blame. After all, a country is not much different from a person, and we all must prove our virtues and establish our reputations over time. What China can do to make hypocrisy harder is to increase its transparency and to have multiple voices, especially voices from the society. It also helps to present more numbers and figures to make the case more believable. Most importantly, do not over-react to international criticism and maintain a “victim” mindset — as if everyone else is trying to smash or bully China.