{"id":2020,"date":"2023-09-02T18:43:46","date_gmt":"2023-09-02T18:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=2020"},"modified":"2023-09-03T18:45:24","modified_gmt":"2023-09-03T18:45:24","slug":"how-china-woos-the-muslim-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=2020","title":{"rendered":"How China woos the Muslim world?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Money talks louder than Uyghur Muslims can scream<\/p>\n

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ARTILLERY ROW <\/a>By Georgia L. Gilholy<\/a>, 2 September, 2023<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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T<\/span>his week an Organization of Islamic Cooperation delegation visited China. It\u00a0offered<\/a>\u00a0slavish praise and deference to the state responsible for atrocities against millions of mostly Muslim Uyghurs, which a British tribunal\u00a0designated<\/a>\u00a0as genocide.<\/p>\n

The OIC is the largest multilateral body claiming to represent the global Ummah. Like many such global organs of power, it hardly seems to have its constituents\u2019 best interests at heart.<\/p>\n

When it comes to the pertinent issue of Beijing\u2019s extreme policies toward Uyghur Muslims, the OIC, which frequently lashes out at Israel and India, is less outspoken. In a\u00a0Jul<\/a>y<\/a>\u00a02<\/a>019\u00a0<\/a>statement, over a dozen OIC member states went so far as to co-sign a letter that \u201ccommended China\u2019s achievements in the field of human rights\u201d.<\/p>\n

Uyghur exiles have been detained and deported across the Islamic World, and\u00a0Turkey<\/a>\u00a0could still sign off on the extradition treaty it struck with China in December 2020. This would have placed its 100,000 Uyghur diaspora at high risk of being forced to return to Beijing\u2019s brutality \u2014 though Ankara\u00a0denies<\/a>\u00a0this would come to pass.<\/p>\n

The key factor behind the OIC\u2019s double standards is obvious: money. The attempt to decimate and subjugate the Uyghurs is an\u00a0informal component<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0\u201cBelt and Road<\/a>\u201d Initiative. This program is scheduled to pour over $8 billion into a transcontinental \u201cbelt\u201d of overland economic corridors. This \u201cbelt\u201d and its corresponding maritime \u201croad\u201d will encompass\u00a0a major chunk\u00a0<\/a>of the world\u2019s Muslim-majority nations from Sudan to Indonesia. With the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic in full swing, and patchy development throughout the Muslim world, many leaders are predictably eager to carve up their share of the BRI pie.<\/p>\n

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The Middle Kingdom\u2019s quasi-colonialism fortifies repressive Islamic governments<\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Easy cash, however, is just one part of the story. Just as the dictators of Russia, Cuba and North Korea collaborate with China on the international stage in a bid to normalise authoritarianism at large, administrations across the Muslim world likewise seek to reap the same nefarious rewards. Whilst the North Atlantic Treaty Organization\u2019s adventures in Africa, the Middle East and Asia have often involved ill-fated attempts at implementing democracy and regime change, China currently shares no such ambition. If anything, the Middle Kingdom\u2019s quasi-colonialism is serving to fortify the repressive governments that dominate the Islamic world.<\/p>\n

Beijing is now the largest\u00a0foreign investor<\/a>\u00a0in the Gulf region. By keeping largely out of the proxy wars playing out in Syria, Libya and Yemen, Beijing has been able to play the long game and incorporate bitter rivals such as Iran and Saudi Arabia into the BRI fold. Such states are more than willing to oblige Beijing\u2019s \u201chands-off\u201d diplomacy whilst the cash continues to flow.<\/p>\n

Cunning employment of moral relativism is at the heart of this arrangement. When engaging with democracies, OIC representatives gleefully employ the language of liberal human rights. When brown-nosing other autocracies and dispensing domestic law, however, these principles are mysteriously absent.<\/p>\n

Hence former\u00a0Pakistan PM Imran Khan\u2019s\u00a0<\/a>aggressive rebuke of French President Macron\u2019s plans to tackle Islamic radicalism, compared with his consistent refusal to acknowledge the Uyghur plight. This does not mention his own country\u2019s brutal policies toward minorities. Likewise, Erdogan\u2019s condemnation of Chinese policy was abandoned once it offered Turkey a\u00a0$1 billion<\/a>\u00a0bailout in 2019.<\/p>\n

Does this cynical state of affairs have an expiration date? There have long been\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0of extensive inefficiency and corruption forcing Chinese financial authorities to cut down their cash flows to Pakistan. This is\u00a0not a rare<\/a>\u00a0flaw in Beijing\u2019s initiatives at home and abroad.<\/p>\n

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Beijing is happy to haemorrhage its balance sheet for a long-term return<\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Pakistan has\u00a0secured<\/a>\u00a0relaxed repayment terms on a series of power plants, suggesting that Beijing is happy to haemorrhage its balance sheet for the sake of a long-term return on investment abroad.<\/p>\n

China itself is changing, too. Its low birth rate and gender imbalance are a seething demographic time bomb, and concerns about the PRC\u2019s\u00a0first<\/a>\u00a0credit crisis abound. Some experts perceive its vast network of repression and forced labour as a shortsighted\u00a0reaction<\/a>\u00a0to rising wage demands that threaten its edge in low-cost manufacturing. This suggests that the status of China\u2019s beleaguered minorities may get worse before it gets better.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s acknowledgement of genocide in\u00a0Xinjiang<\/a>\u00a0is a start, but it\u2019s meaningless without any follow-up. The United States and its allies are still the primary bankrollers of both the World Bank and the United Nations.<\/p>\n

Alongside domestic probes into corporate complicity, it must be made clear that there will no longer be any funding of China\u2019s human rights abuses via global institutions or the British taxpayer.<\/p>\n

These manoeuvres will only be credible if they are underscored by the expression of equal concern and action regarding all global human rights abuses, regardless of whether this causes tension in the West\u2019s ties with OIC states including the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.<\/p>\n

The OIC has made its priorities clear. Only by pursuing economic self-sufficiency, and defending its alternative vision of human dignity, can the West credibly approach the moral failures of the world.<\/p>\n

Source: https:\/\/thecritic.co.uk\/how-china-woos-the-muslim-world\/<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Money talks louder than Uyghur Muslims can scream ARTILLERY ROW By Georgia L. Gilholy, 2 September, 2023 This week an Organization of Islamic Cooperation delegation visited China. It\u00a0offered\u00a0slavish praise and deference to the state responsible for atrocities against millions of mostly Muslim Uyghurs, which a British tribunal\u00a0designated\u00a0as genocide. The OIC is the largest multilateral body […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uyghur-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020","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=2020"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2024,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions\/2024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}