The editors of the Washington Post remind us that China is actively engaging in genocide in its Sinjiang province. After a lengthy catalogue of the atrocities being perpetrated by the Chinese leadership against the Uighurs they conclude:
China long employed coercion in family life with its one-child policy, now abandoned. In Xinjiang, it has sought to whitewash the horrors it is inflicting on people. The new disclosures make it even more urgent that China’s leaders be pressed to account for these atrocities. The measures fall within the definition of genocide in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which includes “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.†China is a signatory but rejects the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
President Trump has just signed a new sanctions law against individuals who are found responsible for abuses in Xinjiang. But China’s treatment of the Uighurs is so reprehensible that it calls into serious question whether China should be permitted to proceed as host of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Why should the world sports community honor a country that has committed genocide?
There are several additional factors I think are worth mentioning. First, it needs to be recognized that although the Chinese leadership does not think very highly of ordinary Chinese people its regard for those who are not Han Chinese is even lower. China is, fundamentally, an ethnic state. From the point of view of its leadership that it is also a multi-ethnic empire is merely a temporary inconvenience, to be remedied by forcible birth control and resettling of Han Chinese people in areas formerly occupied by non-Han Chinese. They have run this playbook before.
Second, the Uighurs have no friends. They are distantly related to the Turks and for a while the Turks were their lonely Middle Eastern advocates. That is no longer the case. Coincidentally, the Turks have become increasingly dependent on Chinese aid. Since the community of all those who profess Islam is an article of faith for the religion in theory one might think that Muslims would be outraged by the treatment of the Uighurs. In practice Islam is and always has been an Arab tribal religion. That most Muslims are not Arabs does not seem to make much difference. Since the Uighurs are not Arabs, they look in vain for succor from their ostensible Muslim brethren.
The undergirding reason for the plight of the Uighurs can be simply stated: business is business.
The Khazakhs, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and other tribes of the original homeland of the Turks are under the thumb of Putin, so they won’t or can’t do anything about it without Vladimir’s say-so. Ditto the Mongols. The Tibetans are in some ways further down the road of demographic replacement than the Uighurs. I don’t think there’s much more OMB could do than he is now in his efforts to choke the Chinese economy short of an actual blockade. And DeMentia certainly wouldn’t call Tyrant Xi out on the problem.