China Tries to Counter Xinjiang Backlash With … a Musical?
The movie is part of Beijing’s wide-ranging new propaganda campaign to
push back on sanctions and criticism of its oppression of the Uyghurs.
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A Chinese government propaganda sign with slogans reading “Forever
following the Party” and “China’s ethnicities, one family” in Aksu,
Xinjiang, last month.
A Chinese government propaganda sign with slogans reading “Forever
following the Party” and “China’s ethnicities, one family” in Aksu,
Xinjiang, last month.Credit...Ng Han Guan/Associated Press
Amy Qin <https://www.nytimes.com/by/amy-qin>
ByAmy Qin <https://www.nytimes.com/by/amy-qin>
NYT, April 5, 2021UpdatedApril 6, 2021,6:10 a.m. ET
阅读简体中文版
<https://cn.nytimes.com/china/20210406/china-uyghurs-propaganda-musical/>閱讀繁體中文版
<https://cn.nytimes.com/china/20210406/china-uyghurs-propaganda-musical/zh-hant/>
In one scene, Uyghur women are seen dancing in a rousing Bollywood style
face-off with a group of Uyghur men. In another, a Kazakh man serenades
a group of friends with a traditional two-stringed lute while sitting in
a yurt.
Welcome to “The Wings of Songs,” a state-backed musical that is the
latest addition to China’spropaganda campaign
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/29/business/china-xinjiang-cotton-hm.html>to
defend its policies in Xinjiang. The campaign has intensified in recent
weeks as Western politicians and rights groups have accused Beijing of
subjecting Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang toforced
labor
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/fashion/uighur-forced-labor-cotton-fashion.html>andgenocide
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/us/politics/trump-china-xinjiang.html>.
The film, which debuted in Chinese cinemas last week, offers a glimpse
of the alternate vision of Xinjiang that China’s ruling Communist Party
is pushing to audiences at home and abroad. Far from being oppressed,
the musical seems to say, the Uyghurs and other minorities are singing
and dancing happily in colorful dress, a flashy take on a tired Chinese
stereotype about the region’s minorities that Uyghur rights activists
quickly denounced.
“The notion that Uyghurs can sing and dance so therefore there is no
genocide — that’s just not going to work,” said Nury Turkel, a
Uyghur-American lawyer and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in
Washington. “Genocide can take place in any beautiful place.”
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In the wake ofWestern sanctions
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/us/politics/sanctions-china-uighurs.html>,
the Chinese government has responded with a fresh wave of Xinjiang
propaganda across a wide spectrum.**The approach ranges from portraying
a sanitized, feel-good version of life in Xinjiang — as in the example
of the musical — to deploying Chinese officials on social media sites to
attack Beijing’s critics. To reinforce its message, the party is
emphasizing that its efforts have rooted out the perceived threat of
violent terrorism.
In the government’s telling, Xinjiang is now a peaceful place where Han
Chinese, the nation’s dominant ethnic group, live in harmony alongside
the region’s Muslim ethnic minorities, just like the “seeds of a
pomegranate.” It’s a place where the government has successfully
emancipated women from the shackles of extremist thinking. And the
region’s ethnic minorities are portrayed as grateful for the
government’s efforts.
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ImageOutside the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, Xinjiang, in 2019.
Outside the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, Xinjiang, in 2019.Credit...Gilles
Sabrié for The New York Times
The musical takes the narrative to a new cringe-inducing level. It tells
the story of three young men, a Uyghur, a Kazakh and a Han Chinese, who
come together to pursue their musical dreams.
The movie depicts Xinjiang, a predominantly Muslim region in China’s far
west, as scrubbed free of Islamic influence. Young Uyghur men are
clean-shaven and seen chugging beers, free of the beards and abstinence
from alcohol that the authorities see as signs of religious extremism.
Uyghur women are seen without traditional head scarves.
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The Uyghurs and other Central Asian ethnic minorities, seen through this
lens, are also portrayed as fully assimilated into the mainstream. They
are fluent in Chinese, with few, if any, hints of their native
languages. They get along well with the Han Chinese ethnic majority,
with no sense of the long-simmering resentment among Uyghurs and other
minorities over systematic discrimination.
The narrative presents a picture starkly different from thereality on
the ground
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/04/world/asia/xinjiang-china-surveillance-prison.html>,
in which the authorities maintain tight control using adense network of
surveillance cameras
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveillance-xinjiang.html>and
police posts, and have detained many Uyghurs and other Muslims inmass
internment camps
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html>andprisons
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/31/world/asia/xinjiang-china-uighurs-prisons.html>.
As of Monday, the film had brought in a dismal $109,000 at the box
office, according to Maoyan, a company that tracks ticket sales.
Image
A watchtower at a high-security facility near what is believed to be a
re-education camp on the outskirts of Hotan, Xinjiang, in 2019.
A watchtower at a high-security facility near what is believed to be a
re-education camp on the outskirts of Hotan, Xinjiang, in
2019.Credit...Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Chinese officialsinitially denied
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/world/asia/china-xinjiang-un.html>the
existence of the region’s internment camps. Then they described the
facilities as “boarding schools
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/world/asia/china-xinjiang.html>” in
which attendance was completely voluntary.
Now, the government is increasingly adopting a more combative approach,
seeking to justify its policies as necessary to combat terrorism and
separatism in the region.
Chinese officials and state media outlets have pushed the government’s
narrative about its policies in Xinjiang in part by spreading
alternative narratives — including disinformation — on American social
networks like Twitter and Facebook. This approach reached an all-time
high last year, according toa report published last week
<https://www.aspi.org.au/report/strange-bedfellows>by researchers at the
International Cyber Policy Center of the Australian Strategic Policy
Institute, or ASPI.
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The social media campaign is centered on Chinese diplomats on Twitter,
state-owned media accounts, pro-Communist Party influencers and bots,
the institute’s researchers found. The accounts send messages often
aimed at spreading disinformation about Uyghurs who have spoken out, and
to smear researchers, journalists, and organizations working on Xinjiang
issues.
Anne-Marie Brady, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of
Canterbury in New Zealand who was not involved in the ASPI report,
called China’s Xinjiang offensive the biggest international propaganda
campaign on a single topic that she had seen in her 25 years of
researching the Chinese propaganda system.
“It’s shrill and dogmatic, it’s increasingly aggressive,” she said in
emailed comments. “And it will keep on going, whether it is effective or
not.”
In a statement, Twitter said it had suspended a number of the accounts
cited by the ASPI researchers. Facebook said in a statement that it had
recently removed a malicious hacker group that had been targeting the
Uyghur diaspora. Both companies began labeling the accounts of
state-affiliated media outlets last year.
The party has also asserted that it needed to take firm action after a
spate of deadly attacks rocked the region some years ago.**Critics say
that the extent of the violence remains unclear, but also that such
unrest did not justify the sweeping, indiscriminate scope of the detentions.
Last week, the government played up a claim that it had uncovered a plot
by Uyghur intellectuals to sow ethnic hatred. CGTN, an international arm
of China’s state broadcaster, released a documentary on Friday that
accused the scholars of writing textbooks that were full of “blood,
violence, terrorism and separatism.”
Image
A Uyghur child doing his Chinese homework at a bus stop in Hotan,
Xinjiang, in 2019.
A Uyghur child doing his Chinese homework at a bus stop in Hotan,
Xinjiang, in 2019.Credit...Giulia Marchi for The New York Times
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The books had been approved for use in elementary and middle schools in
Xinjiang for more than a decade. Then in 2016, shortly before the
crackdown started, they were suddenly deemed subversive.
The documentary accuses the intellectuals of having distorted historical
facts, citing, for example, the inclusion of a historical photo of
Ehmetjan Qasim, a leader of a short-lived independent state in Xinjiang
in the late 1940s.
“It’s just absurd,” said Kamalturk Yalqun, whose father, Yalqun Rozi, a
prominent Uyghur scholar, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2018
for attempted subversion for his involvement with the textbooks. He said
that a photo of Mr. Rozi shown in the film was the first time he had
seen his father in five years.
“China is just trying to come up with any way they can think of to
dehumanize Uyghurs and make these textbooks look like dangerous
materials,” he said by phone from Boston. “My father was not an
extremist but just a scholar trying to do his job well.”
Amy Chang Chiencontributed reporting.
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