{"id":1200,"date":"2019-02-02T19:59:09","date_gmt":"2019-02-02T19:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=1200"},"modified":"2019-02-02T20:05:31","modified_gmt":"2019-02-02T20:05:31","slug":"the-learning-curve-how-communist-party-officials-are-applying-lessons-from-prior-transformation-campaigns-to-repression-in-xinjiang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=1200","title":{"rendered":"The Learning Curve: How Communist Party Officials are Applying Lessons from Prior \u201cTransformation\u201d Campaigns to Repression in Xinjiang"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

JamesTown Foundation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s Note:<\/em>\u00a0This article continues coverage by\u00a0<\/em>China Brief\u00a0of the ongoing efforts by the Chinese government to suppress dissent in Xinjiang\u00a0<\/em>(see\u00a0China Brief<\/a>, May 15 2018; and\u00a0<\/em>China Brief<\/a>, November 5 2018).\u00a0This article examines commonalities between the situation in Xinjiang and the government\u2019s prior (and ongoing) efforts to suppress and \u201ctransform\u201d practitioners of Falun Gong.<\/em>\u00a0Due to the detailed nature of the information this article contains, for this issue of<\/em>\u00a0China Brief\u00a0a rare exception is being made to our standard publishing practices: this article, significantly longer than the standard contribution for China Brief, is being offered as a dual-length piece i<\/em>n lieu of a fourth contributors\u2019 article.<\/em><\/h6>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

A 45-year-old seamstress is arbitrarily taken away by police for detention at a \u201ctransformation through education\u201d session held at an old munitions factory guesthouse, where she is pressured to renounce her religious beliefs. Nine days later, her husband is informed that she has died in custody and see signs of abuse on her body, but is pressured by local officials to permit rapid cremation.<\/p>\n

For those following the current campaign of detentions, indoctrination, and torture in Xinjiang, such a scenario may sound familiar. But this incident did not occur in Xinjiang in 2019, and the victim was not Uighur\u2014this happened in Hebei province in 2010 to Yuan Pingjun, a Han Chinese and an adherent of the Falun Gong spiritual practice (Human Rights in China<\/a>, September 2011). However, there is a link to current events in Xinjiang: Hebei\u2019s deputy party secretary at the time was a rising star in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) named Chen Quanguo (\u9648\u5168\u56fd), now party secretary in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.<\/p>\n

Much analysis to date has noted Chen\u2019s previous experience in Tibet, and the similarities between securitization policies implemented there and those expanding under his tenure in Xinjiang (China Brief<\/a>, September 21 2017;\u00a0International Campaign for Tibet<\/a>, December 10 2018). Less serious attention has been given to the Xinjiang campaign\u2019s commonalities with the party\u2019s long-standing struggle to eliminate Falun Gong\u2014another massive CCP effort at \u201ctransformation\u201d targeting millions of spiritual believers. But as is outlined below, Chen\u2019s own career path is not an isolated example: rather, it would appear that the CCP\u2019s nearly 20-year experience implementing the anti-Falun Gong campaign has shaped policies and tactics in Xinjiang, a dynamic that yields insights into how events may unfold in that region and beyond.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cTransformation Through Education\u201d in the Repression of Falun Gong<\/strong><\/p>\n

The concept of \u201cre-education\u201d has a long history in Communist China, most starkly epitomized by the \u201cre-education through labor\u201d (\u52b3\u6559,\u00a0laojiao<\/em>), or RTL, system in existence from the 1950s through 2013. In the early 2000s, a new term for a particular type of re-education targeting religious believers gained prominence: \u201ctransformation through education\u201d (jiaoyu zhuanhua<\/em>, \u6559\u80b2\u8f6c\u5316). This set of practices emerged in the context of the party\u2019s campaign to eliminate Falun Gong, a spiritual and meditation discipline practiced in the late 1990s by tens of millions of Chinese citizens, but which was abruptly banned in 1999 after then-CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin decided it posed a threat to the party\u2019s power.\u00a0[1]<\/strong><\/p>\n

The primary bureaucratic entity charged with the suppression of Falun Gong is the \u201c610 Office,\u201d an extra-legal CCP-based security agency named for the June 10 date of its establishment in 1999. Amongst its other tools, the 610 Office developed a particular specialty in thought reform targeting Falun Gong and other religious movements that were categorized as\u00a0xiejiao<\/em>\u00a0(\u90aa\u6559)\u2014meaning \u201cheterodox religion,\u201d but often translated in official sources as the more demonizing term \u201ccult\u201d (China Brief<\/a>, September 16 2011;\u00a0Freedom House<\/a>, February 2017).<\/p>\n

\u201cTransformation through education\u201d soon emerged as a central component of the party\u2019s effort to wipe out Falun Gong, with the slogan intended to invoke a positive image of personal growth and compassionate treatment by the state. In reality, in the Falun Gong case, \u201ctransformation\u201d has not only involved forcing adherents to renounce the practice\u2014often through the use of violence; iit has also required victims to actively demonstrate, by participating in the psychological manipulation and abuse of fellow believers, that they have decisively turned against their former beliefs centered on the tenets of truthfulness, kindness, and forbearance.<\/p>\n

In addition to the now-abolished RTL camps and judicial prisons, extralegal detention regimes at various venues (often operating under euphemisms such as \u201clegal education center\u201d) became a common form of punishment, and a means for \u201ctransforming\u201d Falun Gong practitioners. The use of such facilities gained new momentum with the abolition of the RTL camp system in 2013 (Amnesty International<\/a>, December 2013). One study in 2014 uncovered 449 \u201clegal education centers\u201d in existence under various names, spread throughout 329 districts and 173 municipalities (China Change<\/a>, April 3 2014). The proliferation of these centers also coincided with two nationwide anti-Falun Gong campaigns initiated by the central 610 Office\u2014one from 2010 to 2012, and another from 2013 to 2015 (Congressional-Executive Commission on China<\/a>, March 2011;\u00a0China Quarterly<\/a>, September 2015).<\/p>\n

At the centers, detainees are forced to watch propaganda videos, sing patriotic or pro-Communist Party (CCP) songs, and \u201crepent,\u201d while those refusing to concede are made subject to various forms of physical coercion and torture. Medical analogies are used\u2014such as describing dedicated believers as \u201caddicts,\u201d while staff or volunteers with backgrounds in psychology are employed at the centers (Jiangxi Provincial Government<\/a>, November 2017).<\/p>\n

One theme that emerges consistently from official websites and party journals is an effort by the CCP to\u00a0 refine its tactics for \u201ctransformation through reeducation work\u201d relating to Falun Gong or other banned\u00a0xiejiao<\/em>\u00a0groups, such as the quasi-Christian \u201cAlmighty God\u201d sect (Congressional-Executive Commission on China<\/a>, October 31 2008;\u00a0Wugong County (Shaanxi) Government<\/a>, March 7 2018). Many examples of this are available, stretching across China and over a period of several years:<\/p>\n