{"id":1328,"date":"2019-04-22T17:27:50","date_gmt":"2019-04-22T17:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=1328"},"modified":"2019-04-22T17:28:52","modified_gmt":"2019-04-22T17:28:52","slug":"chinas-uyghur-re-education-centres-in-xinjiang-will-not-produce-a-loyal-and-obedient-population","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=1328","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s Uyghur re-education centres in Xinjiang will not produce a loyal and obedient population"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n

The Chinese government\u2019s denials of its mass interment of Xinjiang\u2019s Uyghur citizens have evaporated as international\u00a0pressure<\/a>\u00a0has piled up in recent weeks. In their place has come\u00a0propaganda<\/a>\u00a0extolling the \u201cre-education centres\u201d in which the Uyghurs are held, and which\u00a0new evidence<\/a>\u00a0from the BBC has shown are rapidly expanding.<\/p>\n

The Uyghurs are a largely Islamic people that comprise the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, though \u2013 as a result of large-scale Han Chinese migration in the 20th century \u2013 they no longer maintain an overall majority. Closely related to Kazakhs and Uzbeks, who have also suffered persecution in Xinjiang, they are ethnically and culturally distinct from China\u2019s majority Han population.<\/p>\n

The state claims that the centres offer \u201cfree vocational training\u201d and prevent acts of terrorism. Xinjiang\u2019s chairman, Shohrat Zakir, has given a\u00a0detailed interview<\/a>\u00a0defending their value, while\u00a0state news broadcasts<\/a>have shown willing students in (relatively) pleasant surroundings.<\/p>\n

Such depictions are starkly at odds with the reports from former inmates. They have\u00a0described<\/a>\u00a0beatings, the withholding of food, and desperately crowded conditions. It is difficult to substantiate specifics \u2013 partially because the state maintains tight control on information, and partially because so few inmates have been released. But many of the already-vast complexes, ringed with barbed wire and watchtowers, are expanding rapidly, and resemble \u2013 in their architecture and equipment \u2013 prisons far more than they do schools.<\/p>\n

Yet the educational component of these institutions is not mere euphemism. Education has long been employed by the People\u2019s Republic of China in its efforts to mould Xinjiang\u2019s Uyghur population into citizens stripped of all loyalties except those to the state. The programme is clearly\u00a0inspired<\/a>\u00a0by China\u2019s \u201cre-education through labour\u201d system, which ended in 2013. However, the region\u2019s education policies for ordinary schools in recent decades offer clues both to the aims of the re-education programme, and to its likely consequences.<\/p>\n

Uyghur language threatened<\/h2>\n

By far the most controversial element of these policies has been the\u00a0steady erosion<\/a>\u00a0of tuition in the Uyghur language. Uyghur language schools have progressively been closed or converted into nominally \u201cbilingual\u201d but\u00a0de facto<\/em>\u00a0monolingual institutions. At the same time, Chinese has become required from preschool to university, and private schools teaching the Uyghur language have been forced to close.<\/p>\n

A charitable perspective might view this programme as intended to supply useful language skills to the Uyghur people. They have not benefited from Xinjiang\u2019s increasing wealth in the way that its Han Chinese population has \u2013 and Mandarin arguably provides better access to China\u2019s wider economy. But the foremost consequence of these policies has been the weakening of Uyghur language skills. With this has come the weakening of the ability of young Uyghur people to fully engage in their own communities, receive transgenerational knowledge, and understand related languages such as Uzbek and Kazakh. Whether it was intended or not, this result will have been welcomed by China, which is wary of both Uyghur nationalism and connections with other Turkic and Islamic peoples \u2013 such as Kazakhs and Uzbeks \u2013 across the border.<\/p>\n

Reports from\u00a0former inmates<\/a>,\u00a0staff<\/a>, and\u00a0state broadcasts<\/a>\u00a0at the camps, indicate that Chinese language tuition operates alongside political indoctrination as a key element of re-education. The poverty and poor conditions as well as types of behaviour \u2013 such as Islamic religious piety and foreign contacts \u2013 likely to result in arrest and internment means those in the camps are less likely to already be well-versed in Mandarin.<\/p>\n

In this, and various other ways, the re-education centres replicate the conditions of Xinjiang\u2019s schools. Students were already forbidden from engaging in religious practice, forced to learn Chinese, and subjected to historical and political education widely distrusted as misleading. The\u00a0securitisation<\/a>\u00a0of Xinjiang, of which the re-education centres are merely one aspect, extends this condition to the entire population. Movement, information, and even personal attire are controlled with the strictness of a penal institution. Checkpoints and security cameras fill the streets, spyware is required on all mobile phones, and spies are assigned to live in Uyghur homes and record their habits.<\/p>\n

Counterproductive policies<\/h2>\n

The consequences of Xinjiang\u2019s assimilationist education policies for younger Uyghurs have been significant. My\u00a0doctoral research<\/a>, which built on two years of fieldwork in the region, explored Uyghur people\u2019s responses to changes in education policy. Older Uyghur informants complained that their children\u2019s generation lacked both Uyghur language skills and values. Many attempted to compensate by only allowing the Uyghur language to be spoken in their homes, and by teaching religious and cultural traditions themselves. Such efforts are increasingly difficult and dangerous in Xinjiang where surveillance has become\u00a0all-pervasive<\/a>, and such activities are sure to attract the attention of the security services.<\/p>\n

Yet, while education policies \u2013 along with numerous other restrictions on religious and cultural traditions \u2013 have had an erosive effect on Uyghur culture, among my Uyghur contacts this has not led to new loyalty to the state. Graduates of monolingual Chinese schools, the group most isolated from wider Uyghur society, were often the most fervent ethnic nationalists. Conscious of what they had lost \u2013 and still outsiders in Han Chinese society \u2013 many were actively trying to educate themselves in the Uyghur tongue and traditions as well as in Islam.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands<\/a>\u00a0of Uyghur people, at least, are currently held in re-education centres \u2013 unable to care for\u00a0their children<\/a>, pay their rent, or run their businesses. If Xinjiang\u2019s schools provide any guide, these institutions may well succeed in catastrophically undermining the cultural foundations of Uyghur society, but they will not produce the loyal, obedient population that the Chinese authorities desire.<\/p>\n

Rather, they will create a mass of individuals no longer embedded in their own communities, but with no love for the state. These are exactly the kind of destabilising conditions China is so eager to prevent.<\/p>\n

Source:https:\/\/theconversation.com\/chinas-uyghur-re-education-centres-in-xinjiang-will-not-produce-a-loyal-and-obedient-population-105630<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Conversation The Chinese government\u2019s denials of its mass interment of Xinjiang\u2019s Uyghur citizens have evaporated as international\u00a0pressure\u00a0has piled up in recent weeks. In their place has come\u00a0propaganda\u00a0extolling the \u201cre-education centres\u201d in which the Uyghurs are held, and which\u00a0new evidence\u00a0from the BBC has shown are rapidly expanding. The Uyghurs are a largely Islamic people that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinas-uyghur-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1334,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions\/1334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}