{"id":14770,"date":"2026-04-17T00:01:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T04:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/?p=14770"},"modified":"2026-04-25T01:32:01","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T05:32:01","slug":"dismissing-chinas-repression-in-xinjiang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2026\/04\/dismissing-chinas-repression-in-xinjiang\/","title":{"rendered":"Dismissing China\u2019s repression in Xinjiang"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcap\">V<\/span>ijay Prashad and Tings Chak\u2019s article in Monthly Review, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/monthlyreview.org\/articles\/the-idea-of-the-uyghur-genocide-and-the-realities-of-xinjiang\/\">The Idea of the \u2018Uyghur Genocide\u2019 and the Realities of Xinjiang<\/a>,\u201d is among the more substantial recent efforts on the international Left to defend China\u2019s repressive policies in Xinjiang and dismiss the grievances of local Muslim peoples. Their article strikes a similar tone to the Chinese government sources that they often rely on, featuring the same questionable historical narratives and narrow focus on a few individual critics and their affiliations. By the end of the piece, I was noting signs of intellectual sloppiness. As I did my due diligence and dug into its sources, my suspicions were confirmed.<\/p>\n<p>Prashad and Chak now edit the international edition of the journal <a href=\"https:\/\/thetricontinental.org\/wenhua-zongheng\/\">Wenhua Zongheng<\/a> \u6587\u5316\u7eb5\u6a2a. This has brought them into dialogue with Chinese intellectuals such as Wang Hui \u6c6a\u6656, and it was unsurprising to see the article\u2019s conclusion riffing off Wang\u2019s critique of technocratic governance in the PRC. Wang was cited here for the view that \u201c[g]enuine ethnic unity cannot be achieved through depoliticization, but must be built on recognition of history, diversity, and substantive equality.\u201d\u00a0I found this a well-meaning note to end on, even if the article itself had done little to advance these objectives.<\/p>\n<p>But as has now been confirmed through an exchange with Prashad online, Wang did not write these lines. The \u201clandmark essay\u201d attributed to him was made up. It also emerged that the authors had invented a book by Wang Ke \u738b\u67ef, a scholar of Xinjiang who works in Japan, and a <em>Grayzone<\/em> article by Max Blumenthal.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m unsure how much weight to give all this. Needless to say, I found it dismaying to find a left forum like <em>Monthly Review<\/em> infected by the same fake sourcing that I now must watch out for in the undergraduate essays I receive. Prashad says that there was no AI use involved in their article. Only he and his co-author know the truth of that. He has also said that the flaws in its referencing do not materially impact the substance of the article. Here we agree. Let us note this shortcoming and move on. Any debate should indeed focus on points of substance. On that, I\u2019m afraid to say, my conclusion is that the article\u2019s substance is as deficient as its referencing.<\/p>\n<h4>Misusing history<\/h4>\n<p>Take the authors\u2019 sketch of Xinjiang\u2019s history. Like every State Council White Paper, they repeat a version of the mantra that this territory has been part of China since ancient times. They claim that not only Xinjiang, but Tibet as well, were part of China during the Eastern Han dynasty (25\u2013229 CE)\u2014and also during the Tang (618\u2013907), Yuan (1271\u20131368), Ming (1368\u20131644), and Qing (1644\u20131912) dynasties.<\/p>\n<p>Before going on, I must pause to note how absurd it is for Prashad and Chak to drag us onto this terrain of debate at all. Since when has the Left considered the political status of a territory millennia in the past to have any bearing on the justice of its political configuration in the present? What business is it of today\u2019s radicals to plumb dynastic chronicles to decide whether this or that piece of land rightfully \u201cbelongs\u201d to a modern state? Prashad and Chak would not appreciate the comparison, but the similarity between this kind of argumentation and the logic of Zionism is striking.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">Since when has the Left considered the political status of a territory millennia in the past to have any bearing on the justice of its political configuration in the present?<\/aside>\n<p>Space precludes a full dissection of the specific claims. Briefly, though, the Han and Tang participated in multisided rivalries in the Tarim Basin, both establishing intermittent control there across a century or so\u2014i.e., for less than half their existence. As for the \u201cYuan,\u201d this was the Chinese name for the \u201cGreat Mongol Empire,\u201d i.e., it was a Mongol, not a Chinese dynasty. In any case, the Toluid family ruling the Yuan were mostly kept out of Xinjiang by their \u00d6gedeid and Chaghatayid cousins. The Ming then garrisoned Hami, on the very eastern edge of Xinjiang, for a century or so before the Islamised Chaghatayid Mongols drove them out. Finally, while maintaining that Xinjiang \u201cbelonged\u201d to the Qing, the authors acknowledge that it was only after the destruction of the Junghar khanate (1634\u20131758) that this empire was able to tax it. The admission brings them close to recognizing the obvious reality: that the Qing dynasty\u2019s mid-eighteenth-century incorporation of Xinjiang was an act of imperial conquest.<\/p>\n<p>The difficulty for the authors is that the Chinese government line on Xinjiang has evolved in the last decade, in line with the heightened repression. The official position today is not that <em>some<\/em> dynasties had control of Xinjiang, but that they all did. The State Council report that Prashad and Chak cite says that Xinjiang became \u201cChinese territory\u201d in the Han Dynasty and that all dynasties since \u201cexercised the right of jurisdiction\u201d there. This is where things get truly awkward for anyone interested in preserving their credibility as a historian, and Prashad and Chak decide to dodge the issue by shifting to questions of ideology. \u201cChinese political thought,\u201d they argue, \u201cis not rooted in fixed territory but in a more abstract idea of belonging.\u201d All Chinese empires had documents that \u201csuggested\u201d their rule in Xinjiang, grounded in the civilizational notion of \u201call under Heaven\u201d, i.e. <em>Tianxia<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>There is a term for a style of analysis that rests on a stark binary between Eastern and Western ways of thinking and doing. Edward Said once wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/159783\/orientalism-by-edward-w-said\/\">a book<\/a> about it. But the fact is, there is nothing particularly unique about the universalist pretensions exhibited by China\u2019s dynasties. The Holy Roman Empire once claimed to rule all \u201cChristendom,\u201d even though its actual writ was far more limited.<\/p>\n<p>What the imperial self-aggrandizing of the past might have to do with the rights and wrongs of policies in the present is again something the authors entirely fail to explain.<\/p>\n<p>At this point Prashad and Chak add a final disclaimer: that the historical literature on Xinjiang is vast and \u201cbeyond our command to interpret.\u201d Were they genuinely so perplexed, the appropriate thing to do would be to present various sides of the debate. But this they have studiously avoided doing. The only version of history they have presented is the distorted one preferred by Beijing. Their closing gesture towards the inscrutable Orient is a last-ditch effort to restore some distance between themselves and the obviously false claims they have rehashed.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">Are we reinventing here the category of \u201cnon-historic\u201d peoples, destined to be swept aside by those with more viable national movements?<\/aside>\n<p>We move from here to an equally common talking point in official publications: that the notion of \u201cEast Turkistan\u201d was a foreign invention. I can assure the authors that well before any Russian influence, the notion that Xinjiang was part of \u201cTurkistan\u201d was commonplace. It is also true that modern nationalism came relatively late to Central Asia, and that when it did, local imaginings of nation and place were part of a trans-Eurasian dialogue, connecting to intellectual trends among Muslims and non-Muslims in Russia and the Ottoman Empire. There is nothing particularly unique in such a story. Entering the twentieth century, activists in or from Xinjiang laid claim to the territory using a mixture of old and new vocabulary: Uyghuristan, East Turkistan, Altishahr, occasionally even the archaic \u201cMoghulistan.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So what? Again, I am reminded of the way that Zionists try to discredit the Palestinian cause by claiming that \u201cPalestine\u201d was not a well-defined, or meaningful geographic unit for the inhabitants of the region at the time of Zionist colonization. Those facts are in dispute, but even assuming this was the case, what follows? Are people to be punished for arriving late to a fully elaborated nationalist program? Are we reinventing here the category of \u201cnon-historic\u201d peoples, destined to be swept aside by those with more viable national movements?<\/p>\n<p>The fact is, Prashad and Chak show no serious interest in the complex political history of the region they are discussing. They skip the entire history of Islamic reformism and Soviet-aligned Uyghur nationalism; there is no mention of Comintern strategies towards Xinjiang, which saw various schemes to extend the Russian revolution there; nothing on Uyghur labor organizing or cultural radicalism in Soviet Central Asia. Their \u201cleft\u201d analysis sets all this aside to commence a narrative of \u201csecession\u201d movements at the time of the Sino-Soviet split, aligning with a trend in China today to reduce Uyghur nationalism to a tool of Russian\/Soviet intrigue. They devote two long paragraphs to the relatively insignificant figure of Yusupbek Mukhlisi (1920\u20132004), with only a brief nod to the Second East Turkistan Republic as part of his life story. They inform us that Mukhlisi\u2019s Kazakhstan-centered network claimed responsibility for attacks in China in the 1990s, neglecting to mention that not even the Chinese government took these claims seriously. Prashad and Chak\u2019s narrative of more recent militancy likewise zooms in on individuals and organizations at the expense of any consideration of social conditions. No one denies that jihadists have emerged from discontented sections of Xinjiang\u2019s populace, and that some of these have engaged in unconscionable attacks on ordinary Chinese civilians. But simply recycling official narratives on the scale and nature of these attacks adds little clarity to the discussion.<\/p>\n<h4>Counter-terrorism and repression<\/h4>\n<p>The authors\u2019 master narrative of recent years is of a Communist Party gradually shifting from a counter-terrorism crackdown to recognizing the social and economic grievances that generated support for Uyghur militancy and addressing these through development schemes. There is a grain of truth here, and recent improvements in basic living standards in Xinjiang have indeed been impressive. But the party has long had grand designs for Xinjiang\u2019s economy. The relevant policy shift between the first and second decades of the twenty-first century was not from counterterrorism to development, but from militarized counterterrorist policing to a far more wide-ranging \u201cde-radicalization\u201d paradigm. This involved a panoply of War on Terror techniques: predictive policing (on the basis of Islamophobic \u201cindicators\u201d of radicalization), surveillance of social media and domestic space, public loyalty ceremonies, and of course mass ideological re-education carried out through detention centers.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, a Stalinist purge hit Xinjiang\u2019s institutions, targeting non-Han elites deemed insufficiently loyal. As one Chinese commentator described it in 2020: \u201cXinjiang has punished a large number of \u2018two-faced people\u2019 and \u2018two-faced factions\u2019 in the fields of public security, prosecution, law, education, publishing, propaganda and culture.\u201d The Chinese government has itself publicized stories of Uyghur intellectuals imprisoned for publications that were once approved by state censors, but which now fall foul of tightening ideological standards. Alongside this, there is ample evidence of people receiving devastating sentences for acts as simple as providing religious instruction at home or maintaining contact with relatives outside China.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">The authors would have us believe that stories of repression in Xinjiang originate in a narrow circle of U.S.-aligned diaspora activists.<\/aside>\n<p>All this is grossly minimized by Prashad and Chak. In the only mention of formal incarceration in their entire article, they note in passing that \u201cseveral people\u201d were imprisoned from 2014 to 2019 for \u201cviolent activities.\u201d \u201cSeveral people\u201d? Total prosecutions in Xinjiang soared during this period, jumping from 41,305 in 2016 to 215,823 in 2017, and increased in average length. China has not hidden the fact that thousands have been convicted for \u201cterrorism\u201d offenses\u2014keeping in mind that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ohchr.org\/sites\/default\/files\/documents\/countries\/2022-08-31\/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf\">a UN review of available judicial documentation<\/a> described \u201cjudgments referring to conduct being &#8216;extremist&#8217; despite none of the formal charges being related to terrorism or \u201cextremism.\u2019\u201d This was seen as indicative \u201cof an approach that considers any type of violation of law committed by a Muslim person as presumptively \u201cextremist.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The authors would have us believe that stories of repression in Xinjiang originate in a narrow circle of U.S.-aligned diaspora activists. But some of the most chilling stories I have encountered\u2014of family members ripped from their beds at night, eventually returning months or years later as broken individuals\u2014have been from people who studiously avoid all involvement in diaspora politics. Against such narratives, the authors counterpose the glowing reports that China has received from bodies such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. I suppose if China\u2019s State Council is a trustworthy source on human rights in Xinjiang, then why not Egyptian or Indonesian diplomats?<\/p>\n<p>In the end, Prashad and Chak fall back on a form of whataboutism: Sure, the camps might have been coercive, but China\u2019s counter-terrorism policies were still preferable to Russia\u2019s in Chechnya, America\u2019s in Iraq, or Israel\u2019s in Palestine. This is true enough. China has not engaged in the mass slaughter of Uyghurs and Kazakhs. Gaza stands in ruins, while Xinjiang\u2019s modern infrastructure grows. But the comparison strikes me as odd, given the earlier insistence that Xinjiang has been part of China for millennia. If so, why are imperialist wars and colonial genocides the points of reference here?<\/p>\n<h4>The question of \u201cgenocide\u201d<\/h4>\n<p>Which brings me to the question: Is this genocide? This often sits at the center of debate on Xinjiang, but in my opinion it need not. When public discourse shifted to talk of \u201cgenocide\u201d in Xinjiang, I was among those who were wary. The hope that accusing China of the crime of crimes might prompt international action was understandable, if misplaced. But it was equally obvious that the claim would serve as a lightning rod for skeptical critique, and risk obscuring the wider question of mass repression and cultural erasure. Some adopt capacious definitions of genocide that may arguably capture the Xinjiang case. Personally, I use the term in its common-language sense of the deliberate destruction of a people. While some have died in China\u2019s camps and prisons, I am not convinced that \u201cgenocide\u201d best describes the situation.<\/p>\n<p>I can also concur with the authors that talk of genocide in Xinjiang has been cynically exploited by governments that have no business lecturing anyone on human rights, implicated as they are in their own horrific crimes. Liberal human rights organizations have often been too quick to make common cause with China hawks. The Left should have no truck with any of this.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">Aligning as they do with official Chinese government positions, Prashad and Chak\u2019s argumentation draws more on the logic of nationalism than left traditions of debate on the national question.<\/aside>\n<p>But equally, the Left should not allow criticism of genocide claims to smuggle in an attitude of indifference to the human suffering that those claims point to\u2014precisely what Prashad and Chak are trying to do. In their hands, talk of genocide is reduced to the work of a handful of individuals affiliated with right-wing think tanks, a move that allows them to focus on cultivating a sense that the entire Xinjiang issue is a construct of funding sources and self-interest. This will pass for \u201cmaterialism\u201d in some circles, but it is the sort of analysis that Gramsci had in mind when he complained of the reduction of Marxism to \u201ceconomic superstition.\u201d In such thinking, \u201c\u2018Critical\u2019 activity is reduced to the exposure of swindles, to creating scandals, and to prying into the pockets of public figures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, far too much of today\u2019s China debate has this feel to it. Prashad and his co-thinkers are often enough on the receiving end themselves of critiques focusing on funding sources. It is a pity that instead of elevating the discussion above this level, they choose to descend to it.<\/p>\n<h4>Concluding<\/h4>\n<p>Aligning as they do with official Chinese government positions, Prashad and Chak\u2019s argumentation draws more on the logic of nationalism than left traditions of debate on the national question. They are quite often wrong, but just as often they present talking points with little obvious relevance to determining where the Left should stand on\u00a0 the situation in Xinjiang. Wang Hui\u2019s critique of \u201cdepoliticization,\u201d which the authors embrace in their conclusion, expresses a desire for more dialogue and debate to build trust among the peoples of Xinjiang. Well and good. But who do they imagine participating in this dialogue? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.versobooks.com\/en-gb\/products\/2525-we-uyghurs-have-no-say\">Minzu University Professor Ilham Tohti<\/a> once tried to initiate such an exchange, and is now serving a life sentence in prison for separatism. Any comment from the authors on that?<\/p>\n<p>Marxists have always insisted that the only way to build trust amid national antagonisms is through the forthright defense of national rights\u2014something that is entirely missing from Prashad and Chak\u2019s lengthy presentation. In the absence of this, what is the import of a call for more \u201cpoliticized\u201d governance in Xinjiang? After all, Xinjiang has seen plenty of politics in the last decade: relentless ideological bullying, the constriction of non-Han languages and cultural expression, and life-destroying punishments for anyone who steps out of line. The full implications of China\u2019s new Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress remain to be seen, but it looks likely to involve more of the same. Some may choose to keep downplaying all this in the name of anti-imperialism. I think the Left needs to tell the truth.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"half\" \/>\n<p><small><em>Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/about\/\">About Tempest Collective<\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/small><br \/>\n<small>Featured Image credit: <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Uyghurs_praying.jpg\">Preston Rhea<\/a>; modified by Tempest.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vijay Prashad and Tings Chak recently defended China\u2019s policy toward ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang. <strong>David Brophy<\/strong> exposes the weakness of their case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":456,"featured_media":14772,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[265],"class_list":["post-14770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-china"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Copy-of-tempest_feature_card-53.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/456"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}