Made in China JournalNov 29, 2022

On 11/24 an electrical fire engulfed the upper stories of an apartment building in an Uyghur majority neighbourhood in Ürümchi. Some Uyghur residents had been taken to internment camps in 2017; the remaining community members were under a Covid lockdown for over 90 days. 1/

#China #ChinaProtests #Xinjiang

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20221128-uyghur-man-s-agony-after-five-relatives-died-in-urumqi-fire

Uyghur man's agony after five relatives died in Urumqi fire

When a deadly fire broke out in China's northwest Xinjiang region, triggering a wave of public anger over the country's zero-Covid policy, Abdulhafiz Maimaitimin initially could not believe that it claimed five of his relatives' lives.

France 24
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The fire burned for nearly three hours before emergency workers were able to access the barricaded complex. Eyewitnesses report that many apartments were wired shut from the outside as part of the state enforcement of quarantine measures so residents were unable to escape. 2/
Show threadMade in China JournalNov 29, 2022
In other towers, neighbours recorded their screams in Chinese asking the government to open the doors. For many this rescue never came. Within hours, Han residents in other parts of the city (and across the country) began to march in the streets demanding an end to the lockdown. 3/
Show threadMade in China JournalNov 29, 2022
In a manner that was similar to the forgotten Kurdish origins of recent protests in Iran, the ethnicity of the victims and their differential experience of state violence was largely forgotten. /4 https://www.democracynow.org/2022/11/28/protests_erupt_china_strict_zero_covid
From Xinjiang to Shanghai, Protests Grow in China over COVID Restrictions After Fatal Apartment Fire

Unprecedented protests have erupted in multiple Chinese cities over President Xi Jinping’s strict zero-COVID policies, which have resulted in extended strict lockdowns across the country. The protests were triggered by a deadly fire Thursday at an apartment building in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, where local COVID restrictions reportedly prevented firefighters from reaching the trapped residents. This comes as hundreds of workers at the world’s largest iPhone factory, Foxconn, clashed last week with police over restrictions that have forced many workers to live at the factory. “China now for three years has seen a level of lockdown that is simply inconceivable,” says Cornell labor scholar Eli Friedman, who calls the cross-class, cross-ethnic protests a “movement against surveillance.” Friedman says although China enforces the country’s COVID restrictions, top U.S. corporations like Apple and Tesla are implicated in upholding the closed-loop management system at Foxconn and other Chinese manufacturers.

Democracy Now!
Show threadMade in China JournalNov 29, 2022
Instead, for a day, Uyghurs are made to stand for all Chinese. And the Han settler vanguard who did protest in Ürümchi have come to stand as the ‘real’ victims. This erasure of colonial structures of violence, is something that MIC has actively tried to push back against. 5/
Show threadMade in China JournalNov 29, 2022
While Uyghurs around the world are happy that the Chinese people are standing up to the state, it is important to remember that Turkic Muslims are not able to protest in the same ways. That for them, the possibility of public protest within China has been largely eliminated. 6/
Show threadMade in China JournalNov 29, 2022
How did hundreds of thousands Turkic Muslims end up in reeducation camps since 2017, in conditions as awful as those discussed by Darren Byler in this conversation with Ivan Francechini? 7/ https://madeinchinajournal.com/2021/10/13/primo-levi-camp-power-and-terror-capitalism-a-conversation-with-darren-byler
Primo Levi, Camp Power, and Terror Capitalism: A Conversation with Darren Byler | Made in China Journal

What does Italian writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi have to tell us about life in reeducation camps in Xinjiang today? What role does labour play in these facilities? What is terror capitalism and how does it relate to other frontiers of global capitalism? Can there be such a thing as ‘benign’ surveillance? These and […]

Made in China Journal
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Some Han citizens have highlighted some domestic roots of how this process unfolded. In this essay, Ye Hui suggests we view the repression in XJ as part of the centuries-long global imperial history, which produced the epistemic infrastructure for this form of political violence. 8/ https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n9354/pdf/ch01.pdf
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Here, the Kazakh scholar Guldana Salimjan points their finger in particular at the policies of the Chinese Communist Party during the Maoist era, elaborating on the concept of ‘blood lineage’. 9/ https://madeinchinajournal.com/2020/03/06/blood-lineage/
Blood Lineage / 血统

Bloodline, or lineage, has been a political ideology of many monarchical regimes and aristocratic societies throughout history. The rise of nationalism in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries paralleled the discourse of purity and authenticity of one’s blood/race. In the context of national formation, blood is a metaphor for race, ethnicity, and sexuality that […]

Made in China Journal
Nov 29, 2022 at 10:04pmWeb
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Decades of settler colonialism also have led to increased marginalisation of Uyghurs in their ancestral homeland. In this photo essay, Tom Cliff describes the experience of being Han in XJ. Migration and colonial settlement are core elements of this. 10/ https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/01/16/oil-and-water/
Oil and Water | Made in China Journal

Most Han in Xinjiang, Western China, have settled—or been settled by state decree—in the region since the Chinese Communist Party won the Civil War and took control of China in 1949. Since that time, the proportion of Han in the population has risen from 4 percent to at least 42 percent, and is now roughly […]

Made in China Journal
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As a matter of fact, efforts to assimilate Uyghurs within the ‘Chinese Nation’ long predate the establishment of reeducation camps in 2017, as Timothy Grose explains in this conversation about his latest book. 11/
https://madeinchinajournal.com/2020/05/06/negotiating-inseparability-in-china-timothy-grose/
Negotiating Inseparability in China: A Conversation with Timothy Grose

Over the past few years Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been the target of unprecedented repression by the Chinese Party-state. However, efforts to assimilate this ethnicity within the Han-dominated ‘Chinese Nation’ (中华民族) long predate the establishment of reeducation camps in 2017. A good example is the case of the ‘Xinjiang Class’ (内地新疆高中班), a programme that funds […]

Made in China Journal
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A similar point is made by David Tobin in this conversation with Darren Byler about his recent book ‘Securing China’s Northwestern Frontier: Identity and Insecurity in Xinjiang’. 12/ https://madeinchinajournal.com/2021/04/22/securing-chinas-northwest-frontier-a-conversation-with-david-tobin/
Securing China’s Northwest Frontier: A Conversation with David Tobin

Over the past two decades, a rhetoric of terrorism has been used to conflate the criminal actions of a relatively small number of people with the religious and cultural practices of more than 12 million Uyghurs who call the southern part of the Uyghur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang) their ancestral home. This has had a dramatic […]

Made in China Journal
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In another essay, Guldana Salimjan also explains how today's mass incarceration in XJ is rooted in Chinese settler colonialism through ethnic Han influx and explores the ongoing human transfer project through the banal language of employment. 13/ https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/10/25/recruiting-loyal-stabilisers-on-the-banality-of-carceral-colonialism-in-xinjiang/
Recruiting Loyal Stabilisers: On the Banality of Carceral Colonialism in Xinjiang

This article explores the ongoing human transfer project in Xinjiang through the banal language of recruitment and employment, which aims to eventually dilute and replace the native populations.

Made in China Journal
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However, this narrowing down of the political space available to Uyghurs can also be connected to the Global War on Terror in the West, with which Chinese policies in XJ share some philosophical underpinnings, as David Brophy shows here. 14/ https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/07/09/good-and-bad-muslims-in-xinjiang/
Good and Bad Muslims in Xinjiang | Made in China Journal

A huge network of internment camps for those displaying the slightest sign of ‘extremism’, where, according to some ex-detainees, Muslims are encouraged to renounce their religion. Closure and demolition of mosques, with intense surveillance of those still functioning. Severe restrictions on the observance of ritual fasting, enough to dissuade all but the most devoted to […]

Made in China Journal
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Similarly, the Chinese government has adopted counterinsurgency modes emerging from the US, Israel, & Europe to deal with hundreds of thousands of Turkic Muslims deemed to be potential ‘extremists’, as Darren Byler shows here. 15/ https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/10/25/preventative-policing-as-community-detention-in-northwest-china/
Preventative Policing as Community Detention in Northwest China

A preventative policing system in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has detained as many as 1.5 million Turkic Muslims deemed ‘pre-terrorists’ or ‘extremists’. This essay shows how a counterinsurgency mode of militarism that emerged in the United States, Israel, and Europe, has been adapted as a ‘Xinjiang mode’ of community policing in China. It argues that the scale of detentions and the use of surveillance technology make the ‘Xinjiang mode’ of counterinsurgency unprecedented.

Made in China Journal
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This framing of the securitisation of XJ as counterterrorism plays into the hands of the Chinese authorities both domestically and internationally, writes Matthew P. Robertson. 16/ https://madeinchinajournal.com/2020/06/12/counterterrorism-or-cultural-genocide/
Counterterrorism or Cultural Genocide? Theory and Normativity in Knowledge Production About China’s ‘Xinjiang Strategy’

‘Wake up! There is something for us to learn here. What they’re saying applies to us, even if it was not meant for us.’          Friedrich Nietzsche, Anti-Education (1872)   Since 2017, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has embarked on a rapid and intense securitisation of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. This has included mass […]

Made in China Journal
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What is certain is that Chinese policies in XJ have had a massive impact on the life of the Indigenous populations. In this essay, Rian Thum documents the destruction of some of the most revered Uyghur sacred sites and places it in the wider context of state efforts to transform the Uyghur built environment. 17/ https://madeinchinajournal.com/2020/08/24/the-spatial-cleansing-of-xinjiang-mazar-desecration-in-context/
The Spatial Cleansing of Xinjiang: Mazar Desecration in Context | Made in China Journal

Sometime between 10 and 17 March 2018, on a high sand dune 75 kilometres from the town of Niya, a beloved historical monument disappeared (Kuo 2019). For at least 450 years the site had drawn pilgrims from across the expanse of Altishahr, the southern half of what is now known variously as Eastern Turkistan or […]

Made in China Journal
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In the same vein, Timothy Grose outlines the ways in which traditional Uyghur architecture and the layout of Uyghur homes are being forcibly demolished and reorganised as part of a process that destroys Indigenous cultures to replace them with the values, sensibilities, and practices of the coloniser. 18/
https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n9354/pdf/ch09.pdf
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Guldana Salimjan discusses the violent displacement of Kazakh pastoralists under the banner of ‘ecological restoration’, drawing parallels with the establishment of the US national parks in the context of the dispossession and genocide of Indigenous peoples. 19/
https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n9354/pdf/ch11.pdf
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And Darren Byler explores how factories function as an extension of the camp system, outside the rule of law and at the margin of the social contract, with Uyghur and Kazakh workers functioning as a disposable reserve labour force. 20/
https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n9354/pdf/ch12.pdf
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This is not to deny agency to the Uyghurs. Although Beijing is resorting to extreme measures, Uyghurs may continue to be subjects of their own history thanks to the manuscripts, oasis storytelling, and ‘active mysticism’ that so alarm the CCP, writes Zenab Ahmed. 21/ https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/12/12/revolution-and-state-formation-as-oasis-storytelling-in-xinjiang/
Revolution and State Formation as Oasis Storytelling in Xinjiang

No one can say that the world is ignoring Xinjiang. In October, at the American Association of Christian Counselors, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo likened China’s treatment of over a million Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region to George Orwell’s 1984 (Reuters 2019). This was at the same time that the Trump White […]

Made in China Journal
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Yet, reverberations are still being felt well beyond China’s boundaries. Through ethnographic interviews, in this essay Sadia Rahman and Darren Byler underscore the plight and, paradoxically, the power of this community in relation to threats received by their families in China and Turkey. 22/ https://madeinchinajournal.com/2022/10/11/chinas-soft-power-counter-localisation-and-the-role-of-stateless-uyghurs-in-turkey/
China’s Soft Power, Counter-Localisation, and the Role of Stateless Uyghurs in Turkey | Made in China Journal

[Some people are saying that they cannot contact their relatives in Xinjiang. They are demonstrating in front of our embassy. They also spread fake news on social media. Several Turkish Ministers of Parliament and the Vice-President of the World Uyghur Congress were also involved in endorsing this fake news. It seems it was an organised […]

Made in China Journal
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There are also uncanny similarities between what has been unfolding in XJ and what happened in Kashmir, on the other side of the border with India, writes Nitasha Kaul. 23/ https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n9354/pdf/ch17.pdf
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In light of all this, it is important that we also keep an eye on international complicities. Here, Gerald Roche has discussed the involvement of Western private companies in XJ. In 2019, the Frontier Support Group led by Erik Prince announced plans to open a ‘training centre’ in XJ. 24/ https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/02/12/transnational-carceral-capitalism-xinjiang
Transnational Carceral Capitalism in Xinjiang and Beyond | Made in China Journal

On 22 January, the innocuously-named ‘Frontier Services Group’ (FSG) announced plans to open a ‘training centre’ in Xinjiang, where approximately one million people are currently being held in concentration camps (Shepherd 2019). This announcement highlights a vital and underexplored element in the story of Xinjiang’s camps—the role of private paramilitary companies and transnational circulations. Frontier […]

Made in China Journal
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And according to James Darrowby, Western universities are also complicit in the development of malicious technologies through co-funded projects that are then deployed in XJ (and beyond). 25/ https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/04/02/intellectual-property-artificial-intelligence-and-ethical-dilemmas-china-and-the-new-frontiers-of-academic-integrity/
Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and Ethical Dilemmas: China and the New Frontiers of Academic Integrity | Made in China Journal

Recent media headlines in Australia and the United States have highlighted the threat of intellectual property (IP) theft by Chinese actors. This reporting has placed particular emphasis on Chinese hackers, as well as military technology or economically-competitive IP developed by Australian/US universities—either through local funds or sponsored by Chinese companies and government—before being transferred to […]

Made in China Journal
Show threadMade in China JournalNov 29, 2022
Throughout China and around the world, feminist, labour rights, and LGBTQ advocates are taking leading positions in these youth-led protests. If these movements are to achieve their decolonial potential, it is more important than ever to think about the way policing is entangled in global imperialisms. /END