On 3/15/2021 4:57 AM, Andrew Stewart wrote:
...
https://youtu.be/Hjurb61SZgk <https://youtu.be/Hjurb61SZgk>
As always, it's a matter of what journalism and analysis you can trust,
isn't it. /MintPress/ /News/, like /Grayzone/, publishes some good
writing. I see some of it from time to time on /Popular Resistance
/daily reports from various fronts (here's the Cohen transcript
<https://popularresistance.org/is-china-committing-genocide/> they
provided to my inbox this morning).
But for those fighting for social, economic and environmental justice in
countries whose rulers are seen to be hostile to Western powers, it
seems quite unreliable: allying with authoritarians mainly because these
regimes have sometimes learned to spout anti-imperial phrases, often to
prop up their own repressive systems. The phrase that some of use in
this neighborhood to capture this phenomenon, so well understood by
Fanon in his "Pitfalls of National Consciousness
<https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/fanon/pitfalls-national.htm>"
framing, is Talk Left, Walk Right
<https://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/files/BondTalkLeftWalkRight2ndedn.pdf>.
I can't vouch for every signatory to another Open Letter below - and am
awaiting with baited breath a Ben Nortonesque connecting of the dots to
their "Trotskyite" distant cousins - but I know a half-dozen of the
comrades and have joined in at one of the Critical China Scholars'
webinars (regarding Chinese capitalist expansion in Africa)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO6-erfho0U&t=1755s>. That was last
November, about a month after the group penned the open letter below
(which like the one we were reviewing yesterday about the Ecuadorian
left-left's challenge to re-ascendant Keynesian Third Worldism there, is
directed at /MR Online/ - the source of extremely good daily information
that I treasure enormously).
Just by way of personal reflection, the closest I've been to that scene
was a long way away in Chengdu about nine years ago (hosted
quasi-officially through Samir Amin's network), so I have no personal
knowledge or research capacity to offer in this debate. That's why we
need to develop networks of analytical trust.
Again, personally, I rely on four such networks in China, with their
varying - sometimes diametrically opposed - political ideologies and
degrees of freedom of speech. They range from state-sanctioned Marxism
(the World Association for Political Economy
<https://wapescholar.pure.elsevier.com/> whose annual conference we
hosted in Joburg
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/26/world-political-economy-meets-south-africas-many-marxisms/>
six years ago) to the neo-Maoism associated with the very impressive
Global University of Sustainability
<https://our-global-u.org/oguorg/about-us/>, to the Borderless Hong Kong
<https://borderless-hk.com/category/eng/> comrades (and associated
left-internationalist NGOs and labor support movements there, which
hosted an excellent BRICS-from-below conference
<https://borderless-hk.com/2017/09/05/a-peoples-forum-on-obor-and-brics-meets-in-hong-kong/>
in 2017) to Critical China Scholars <https://criticalchinascholars.org/>.
Monthly Review Volume 68, Number 8 (January 2017)Though I wish there
were more climate-crisis scholar activism in these circuits, we can
value them all for different perspectives, treating the information on a
case by case basis. And we should appreciate that in the January 2017
<https://monthlyreview.org/2017/01/01/mr-068-08-2017-01_0/>/Monthly
Review <https://monthlyreview.org/2017/01/01/mr-068-08-2017-01_0/>, /the
key allies I have in the first two of these networks got a chance to
make full article-length inputs. Anyhow, they're all fantastic allies
and friends, but have varying strengths depending on the issue.
Oh, and I see that David Harvey has just provided a couple of new
podcasts over the last couple of weeks, and his way of thinking remains
my most enduring bias:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzZ2N6stTE4>
Anti-Capitalist Chronicles: China's Economic Rise - Part 1
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzZ2N6stTE4>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CEkvjzDtz4>
Anti-Capitalist Chronicles: China's Economic Rise - Part 2
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CEkvjzDtz4>
And yes, as /MintNews/ argues, it's regrettable that in 2019, /Democracy
Now! /had as a guest the rightwing Christian fundamentalist Adrian Zenz.
/DN! /is a truly superb daily news show, but under that sort of
pressure, if Amy and Nermeen make a mistake with a source like Zenz once
in a while, that's not the end of the world. It's certainly not worth
the delegitimization - allegedly playing useful-idiot-to-imperialism
status /- /that /MintNews /is trying to bestow/.
/
And although I'll learn lots from Qiao Collective's newsletter
<https://qiaocollective.substack.com/p/march-newsletter?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzkxNzczLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozMzUxNTI3NCwiXyI6ImhPeDU1IiwiaWF0IjoxNjE1ODE4MDI3LCJleHAiOjE2MTU4MjE2MjcsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0yNjIwMTIiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.7PwBbku1MdqCoghpOUXYaN_McqSSoW8LSP7VjXMAF0U>,
it's apparent that neither they nor /MintNews /can cite (much less
engage and rebut) the kinds of arguments from Critical China Scholars
below, or investigate China's Xinjiang politics in a balanced way.
***
*OPEN LETTER TO MONTHLY REVIEW ON XINJIANG AND THE QIAO COLLECTIVE*
A Turkish <https://criticalchinascholars.org/interventions/#Turkish>
translation of this letter is available below and has been published on
Bianet
<https://m.bianet.org/bianet/insan-haklari/233547-monthly-review-dergisine-acik-mektup>.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
19 October 2020
Dear friends at Monthly Review,
As scholars and activists committed to charting a course for an
anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist left in the midst of rising
US-China tensions, we write in response to your recentrepublication
<https://mronline.org/2020/10/10/xinjiang-a-report-and-resource-compilation/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=xinjiang-a-report-and-resource-compilation>of
a “report and resource compilation” by theQiao Collective
<https://www.qiaocollective.com/>on Xinjiang.
We fully acknowledge the need for a critique of America’s cynical and
self-interested attacks on China’s domestic policies. We are committed
to that task.
<https://criticalchinascholars.org/statement-of-principles/> But the
left must draw a line at apologia for the campaign of harsh Islamophobic
repression now taking place in Xinjiang.
Qiao’s “report” is written in a style that is sadly all too common in
leftist discussions of China today. While the report “recognize[s] that
there are aspects of PRC policy in Xinjiang to critique,” it finds no
room for any such critique in its 15,000 words. Eschewing serious
analysis, it compiles select political and biographical facts to
suggestively point at, but not articulate, the intended conclusion –
that claims of serious repression in Xinjiang can be dismissed.
We wish it were the case that talk of internment camps was a myth,
fabricated by the National Endowment for Democracy and the CIA. But it
is not. Problematic links do exist between individual activists and
organisations and the American security state, and there have been
errors and misattributions in reporting on Xinjiang. The applicability
of terms such as “genocide” and “slavery” can be debated. But none of
this should permit agnosticism, let alone denialism, towards what is
clearly a shocking infringement on the rights of Xinjiang’s native peoples.
Since 2016, Xinjiang has seen a massive expansion of its security
infrastructure, featuring a network of camps that mete out a punishing
program of political indoctrination, compulsory language drills, and
workhouse-style “vocational” training. Internees range from party
members deemed disloyal, intellectuals and artists whose work has
sustained the distinct non-Chinese cultural identities of the region,
through to those thought to display signs of excessive piety. In the
same period Xinjiang has seen a surge in incarcerations
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/31/world/asia/xinjiang-china-uighurs-prisons.html>,
with Muslim Uyghurs imprisoned for as a little as encouraging their
peers to observe their faith
<https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-cables/read-the-china-cables-documents/>.
Others, meanwhile, have been sent to the Chinese interior, as part of
non-voluntary labor programs designed to instill factory discipline into
Xinjiang’s rural population. In some cases, these workers have been sent
to factories linked to the supply chains of Western corporations
<https://www.glossy.co/fashion/lacoste-and-adidas-pledge-to-cut-forced-uighur-labor-from-supply-chain>.
Families inside Xinjiang have been torn apart, with some 40% of
school-age children now enrolled in boarding schools
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/28/world/asia/china-xinjiang-children-boarding-schools.html>,
and many growing up in state orphanages
<https://www.ft.com/content/f0d3223a-7f4d-11e8-bc55-50daf11b720d>.
Outside China, Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and others live with the trauma of not
knowing the fate of their relatives.
While elements of these policies call to mind the excesses of past
ideological campaigns in China, they occur today in new conditions of
rapid capitalist development in Xinjiang, intended to turn the region
into an economic hub of Central Asia. The link here between capitalist
expansion and the oppression of indigenous communities is one the left
has long been familiar with. To fail to recognise and critique these
dynamics in this case is a form of wilful blindness.
There are various ways in which the politics of the Qiao Collective
abandons what should be key principles of an internationalist left
today, but we wish to highlight one in particular: their treatment of
the issue of “counterterrorism.”
Qiao would have us believe that the PRC’s “deradicalization” campaign
stands in “stark contrast” to American policies in the War on Terror. On
the contrary, China’s deradicalization discourse represents a deliberate
appropriation of Western counterterror practices. In his speeches,
China’s President Xi Jinping himself encouraged officials
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html>to
adapt elements of the Western-led War on Terror since 9/11.
The authors of the report are aware of these precedents, citing Western
policies to preemptively identify those “at risk” of radicalization and
intervene. They make note of France’s highly intrusive deradicalisation
policies, as well as Britain’s Desistance and Disengagement Programme,
part of the notorious Prevent Strategy. (To this list we could of course
add the abuses of counterterror policing in the US, Australia, and
elsewhere). Astonishingly, though, they cite these policing techniques
not to criticize them, but simply to accuse the West of double
standards: China, they complain, has received a level of criticism that
these European governments have not.
This is entirely disingenuous on Qiao’s part, a deflection worthy of the
Chinese state media that they frequently cite. The left, along with
Muslim advocacy groups, have long called for an end to these
Islamophobic policies, resting as they do on a bogus association of
Islamic piety and/or anti-imperialist views with a proclivity to
anti-social violence (see here
<https://www.tni.org/en/publication/leaving-the-war-on-terror>for a
recent example of such a call). Would Qiao then be happy for China to
receive only the samelevel of criticism, and face these samecalls?
Judging from their report, they would not. The entire thrust of their
report is instead to normalize harmful paradigms of “deradicalisation”
and “counter-extremism” as an acceptable basis for a state to engage its
Muslim citizenry.
Qiao is evidently impressed by the fact that “Muslim-majority nations
and/or nations that have waged campaigns against extremism on their own
soil” stand in support of China at the United Nations. We are not so
impressed. These local “campaigns against extremism” have replicated the
worst violations of America’s War on Terror, and often in collaboration
with it.
One example Qiao gives here is Nigeria, whose counterterrorism Joint
Task Force was accused byAmnesty International
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2011/07/nigeria-security-forces-random-killing-following-bomb-blast/>in
2011 of engaging in “unlawful killings, dragnet arrests, arbitrary and
unlawful detentions, extortion and intimidation.” Another is Pakistan,
which the US commander-in-chief in Afghanistanonce praised
<https://asiasociety.org/interview-lt-gen-karl-eikenberry>as a “a great
ally on the war on terror,” and whose air and ground forces are
responsible for serial abuses against civilian populations.
The incidents of violence against ordinary Chinese citizens that Qiao
cites should of course not be dismissed: we must criticize those who
engage in terrorism, while at the same time recognizing the social
conditions that produce it, and pointing to the need for political
solutions.
Qiao, by contrast, directs us toward the murky world of
“terror-watching” punditry that has arisen in symbiosis with the
two-decade-long Global War on Terror, and has provided justifications
for that state violence. One of the authorities they cite on terrorism
in Xinjiang isRohan Gunaratna
<https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rohan_Gunaratna>, a
discredited figure who made his name in the 2000s urging America and its
allies to invade Muslim-majority countries and enact repressive security
laws at home. If Gunaratna and his ilk are our friends, the left will
have no need of enemies.
Uncritically invoking China’s “terrorism problem,” and downplaying the
severity of Beijing’s response to it, paints a left-wing façade on a
global discourse of counterterrorism that poses a threat to Muslim
communities everywhere. The struggle against anti-Muslim racism and the
devastating effects of the ongoing War on Terror is international, and
our solidarity in that struggle must extend to its victims in China.
For these reasons, we find it regrettable that you have chosen to give
wider audience to the Qiao Collective’s “report and resource
compilation.” In recognition of the existence of alternative
perspectives on the left, and in the interest of debate, we hope you
will also publish this letter alongside it.
We look forward to future opportunities to collaborate on critical left
analysis regarding China and the US-China conflict, and we hope you will
contact us whenever we can be of assistance. To find out more about the
Critical China Scholars and our activities, please see our website
<http://criticalchinascholars.org>, which includes video recordings of
past webinars.
In solidarity,
Joel Andreas
Angie Baecker
Tani Barlow
David Brophy
Darren Byler
Harlan Chambers
Tina Mai Chen
Charmaine Chua
Christopher Connery
Manfred Elfstrom
Christopher Fan
Ivan Franceschini
Eli Friedman
Jia-Chen Fu
Daniel Fuchs
Joshua Goldstein
Beatrice Gallelli
Paola Iovene
Fabio Lanza
Soonyi Lee
Promise Li
Kevin Lin
Andrew Liu
Nicholas Loubere
Tim Pringle
Aminda Smith
Sigrid Schmalzer
Alexander Day
Rebecca Karl
Uluğ Kuzuoğlu
Ralph Litzinger
Christian Sorace
JS Tan
Jake Werner
Shan Windscript
Lorraine Wong
David Xu Borgonjon
/For the Critical China Scholars/
//
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