📜 CCP uses Unesco (UN) to rewrite history.

「But there is more to China’s efforts [through Unesco #worldheritage status] than increasing tea sales and tourism. The Communist Party claims that present-day China, which has dozens (perhaps hundreds) of ethnic minorities, is a single nation with a continuous history stretching back thousands of years. National identity is conflated with that of the Han, the ethnic group accounting for more than 90% of the population. China’s heritage laws aim to maintain “the unification of the country” and foster “social harmony”. In practice, this often means distorting history so that it aligns with the party’s view of the past and reinforces its vision of nationhood.」

The actual imperial military occupations and settler colonialism of both Tibetan and Uyghur homelands only began soon after Chinese communists had overthrown the Republic of China (the losing Kuomintang nationalists fled to Taiwan...). Chinese had no foothold on the previously nearly inaccessible Tibetan plateau so Mao sent entire 'PLA' armies there, equipped with modern *foreign* weaponry and gear. Besides all the massacres that followed — an estimated one million Tibetans were killed — the Chinese invaders looted and destroyed as much of Tibet's invaluable heritage as they could. While major monasteries (functioning as *the* key places of religion and learning in the Buddhist society) were looted, ransacked, defaced and partially destroyed, in total almost all of the country's 3,000 places of worship were simply destroyed; some were used for... artillery target practice.

The more accessible East Turkestan (ch: '#xinjiang') was targeted for settler #colonialism by establishing a new paramilitary settler corps, #Bingtuan. Those (ex-)soldiers were not only provided with Han Chinese brides but they were allowed to keep their AK-47s... You can guess what happened to the Uyghur homeland next. (links to background in the post below)

https://www.economist.com/china/2023/09/21/how-china-uses-unesco-to-rewrite-history

#CCP #china #imperialism #genocide #propaganda #HanChauvinism #HanSupremacism #sinification #UnitedNations #UN #Unesco #EastTurkestan #Uyghurs #Tibet