tirsdag 8. juni 2021

Chen Quanguo, Architect of Xinjiang Crackdown, Likely to be Rewarded With Central Position in 2022

Infamous for iron-fisted policies directed at China’s ethnic and religious minority border regions in Tibet and Xinjiang, Chen Quanguo could have already been promoted sooner and is likely in line for a powerful promotion in 2022. Having honed his ethnic affairs skills in Tibet, Chen was deployed to Xinjiang to affirm Chinese Communist Party supremacy over population centers ahead of their development into import hubs for the Belt and Road policy. Often characterized by Western media as a campaign against Uyghur Muslims, the Xinjiang policy is not anti-Muslim at its core but rather is more acutely a campaign against ethnic minorities. 

The same policy principles have been deployed against Buddhist Tibet and Inner Mongolia, and in Xinjiang any notional appeal to a rhetorical reactionary response to Uyghur Islamic separatism should be dispelled by ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and others being caught up in the same campaign.