After finishing the data analyses using Xinjiang Statistics Yearbooks, I have kept telling /reminding myself that data analyses can only do so much. Many things in real life may not be reflected in statistics, and we have to go beyond numbers and charts to understand the whole truth. I am keen on learning from objective, neutral, independent and constructive reports and opinions that can help to solve — or at least to better understand — the problems we face in Xinjiang. I pay special attention to people who are willing and capable of transcending personal gains or losses, who raised meaningful questions and offered some answers, no matter how preliminary they may be.
It is in this spirit that I have forced myself into deep thinking and carefully checking with the facts to come up with a more comprehensive, fair and objective assessment. It explains why it took me so long this time to write. In the end, I am feeling overwhelmed by so many facts and aspects of the topic that I really need to sort them out. Below are the key points came to my mind. They will serve as a memo to myself and will be discussed in more details in other blog(s).
Overall Lessons Learned
- China is largely lost in this “hot war of words” (HWW) by being forced to take defense with the US and allies doing the offense.
- One effective way fighting or preventing bad publicity in the era of global social media is to proactively flood or feed the media with diverse facts and interpretations to make the bad news unnewsworthy.
- The US is best at leveraging this preemptive strategy, oftentimes with little extra effort given its diverse preferences among agents, all protected by the same law on freedom of expression.
- Keeping secrets costs more than ever today and is self-defeating in the HWW. This is the most threatening weakness China faces today and in the future unless changes are on the way.
- Politicians and scholars all think or talk about installing democracy in China, the real priority is to have rule of law, which provides the guardrail for efficient and stable democracy.
- The US founding fathers were not crazy about democracy, but they all contributed to a thoughtful design of the best legal system in the world.
- Globally, regardless of political system, there are always more people staying with their existing or previous positions than people willing to switch in light of new facts /evidences, as the latter costs more than the former.
- Exactly because of their scarcity, those willing to speak out against their previous positions or causes (think of Colin Powell but not Condoleezza Rice) deserve respects.
- Just like the inflation, a genocide accusation can be self-fulfilling through mutual referencing and repeating one sided facts & opinions consistently.
- Propagandists (think of Adrian Zenz) often take things out of contexts to promote their predetermined conclusions. We must bring the contexts back to help identify factual and logical holes.
- For me, the new report by the Newlines Institute did the opposite of what its authors wanted us to believe. I was only suspecting genocide after reading the Zenz report, but am now far more certain that there is no genocide in Xinjiang and the charge has been blowing out of proportion — given the worst verifiable evidences have been presented in the latest report.
- Encouraging relocation of surplus labors out of Xinjiang makes perfect economic and geological sense and is driven by higher wages and more job opportunities. It is one of the open and documented policies in China.
- Xinjiang does not have forced labor and does not produce the “blood cotton” as alleged.
- In general, searching governmental documents for genocide evidences is barking up the wrong tree, because in China, governments lead not just by coercive power and resources but by being a moral model for the society.
- Mao, Zedong once told the left-leaning American journalist Edgar Snow in 1970 that out of his four titles of “Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great Supreme Commander and Great Helmsman,” he only cared about being a “Great Teacher.”
- Physical destruction of human beings has not been the “Chinese character.” Mao repeatedly told the party to follow the tradition from the Yan’an period (1935-1947) and during all campaigns against “anti-revolutionists,” “no one is to be killed, and most should stay out of prisons” (一个不杀，大部不抓).
- This is of course not to say Mao was kind and merciful, as more people died of hunger under his watch during his “Great leap forward” campaign than the number of executions by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. It is just saying that indoctrination and mind transformation were Mao’s favorite approach, something carried on in Xinjiang under Xi, Jinping.
- The best name for the programs in Xinjiang should then be “Centers for Indoctrination and Career Training/Preparation.”
- The real problems in Xinjiang are racial profiling and racial discrimination, accompanied by low transparency of decision making, lack of freedom of expression and lack of rule of law.
- These are all long term problems and we should not expect changes overnight.
- But the US should definitely keep pushing China for changes, because pressure from the US still works better than anyone else and because China’s political reform will benefit the world.