International RelationsOpinions

Europe’s Long March of Indifference: The Great Sinicisation of Xinjiang

There is something rotten in the People’s Republic of China. Its odious and pungent smell permeates through our social media, the clothes we wear, and even the cars we drive. CCP Apparatchiks (read: ambassadors) in the ‘West’ have been trying, often failing, to whisk the stench away, as if it were some brief and unimportant nuisance. The source of this rotten stench is unmistakably Xinjiang, and more specifically the cultural genocide of China’s largest Muslim minority population. If this truly is the era of ‘saying it like it is’, let us at least opine strongly on matters that should infuriate both citizens and leaders in the ‘free world’.

The Situation in Xinjiang

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), has reported that in the last three years, the PRC built at least 380 ‘re-education camps’ in Xinjiang, with the intention to detain Uyghur Muslims and other supposed non-conformists. The official line will state that these camps were set up to help the Uyghurs, re-educate and ‘moderate’ an ethnic minority plagued by Islamic fundamentalism and boost their socio-economic outcomes by moulding them into citizens worthy of the PRC. In other words, the goal is to turn these supposedly hapless and anti-intellectual band of Turkic nomads into Han-Chinese model citizens. Any glance at the PRC’s aptly-named CCTV, or its Pravda-esque newspapers, will simply echo this lie.

What we are actually looking at is the systematic cultural genocide of Xinjiang’s majority Uyghur population and the incarceration of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Muslim Chinese citizens in internment camps, since at least 2017. One does not have to look long to figure out just how inhumane conditions and treatment in these camps are. The reports of brutish psychological torture involving sleep deprivation and threats to one’s family as well as slave labour; other sources have obtained testimonials by on-camp teachers revealing forced sterilisation as well as the brutal rape of female inmates, the details are too gruesome to spell out here. The UN’s own criteria would characterise this brutality as a genocide.

Xinjiang in China
Xinjiang in China, Wikimedia Commons

What is the EU doing?

Suffice it to say that Xinjiang’s camps are inhumane and an affront to human dignity as insidious and extensive as anything we have seen since the end of World War II. Surprisingly, we have yet to see an official confrontation or even condemnation on the matter by European leaders. We recently saw prominent European politicians mark Black Ribbon Day, a day on which we commemorate the victims of the 20th century’s violent totalitarian regimes. References to the ongoing repression in Xinjiang were notably absent.

Indeed, any consistent criticism of from Europe’s high political circles seems to originate with outspoken Belgian liberal MEP, Guy Verhofstadt. By contrast, his liberal compatriot Charles Michel, now president of the European Council, had little more to offer than happy musings about European cheese and wine during and after a recent virtual Europe-China summit, with human rights issues assuming a relative backstage role, being labelled under ‘International affairs and other issues’, by the Council website. The Commission President, Ursula Von der Leyen, at least made sure to save space in a tweet about the event for ‘fundamental values’. It seems that our Union of Values is all bark and little bite when it comes to the most pressing human rights issue of our time.

No concrete steps have been taken to leverage a Chinese shift in policy regarding the Uyghurs of Xinjiang. Of course, the bloc’s armoury of policy instruments in external affairs is limited, but it can still rely on access to its internal market as a ploy. For instance, the EU could apply a surgical tariff, or ideally ban, on all goods imported from the PRC that are suspected or have been confirmed to have involved forced labour from Xinjiang.

For all his faults, President Trump is moving in the right direction, by considering to label what is happening in Xinjiang a genocide. Should he lose November’s election, his likely successor Joe Biden would do the same. Would it be too much for the EU to follow suit, or even go a few steps further? The EU’s economic soft power can easily be provided with a hard edge should access to its internal market be weaponised against transgressions demeaning human decency, including at the very least the cultural genocide being perpetrated in Xinjiang. Again, the US has already led the way in this regard, as the House of Representatives has voted in favour of banning import from Xinjiang over forced labour concerns.

The Economic Problem

The stumbling block, as per usual, appears to be internal. In this case, it appears to be of a Teutonic nature. Germany’s economy has become increasingly dependent on exports to China over the last few decades (€100bn alone last year). Increasingly as well, its car-manufacturing corporations are basing nodes of their value chains in the PRC. Most insidious amongst these must be Volkswagen’s factory in Xinjiang. As far as Berlin is concerned, Europe’s relationship with China is ‘complicated’ and ‘nuanced’, but most of all one defined by business interests.

This author is not an anti-globalist but does question the usefulness of paying lip-service in voicing concerns over human rights abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang, while German companies (read: Volkswagen) allegedly benefit from forced labour practices in the PRC. Are we not a Union of Values? Why has the European Parliament’s call to apply targeted sanctions and freeze assets been ignored so far in the Council? Why is it that Germany is able to mobilise a moral spine in order to threaten a veto on the Mercosur deal on deforestation grounds, but not on any future deal with a communist regime perpetrating cultural genocide?

Instead, active European leadership on the matter has been reliant on Sweden’s H&M banning Xinjiang cotton yarn from its production chain. At a political level, however, the EU’s inaction on the issue, as with other policy fields, is determined too much by Germany’s lack of geostrategic intelligence and backbone. Domestic political costs associated with cancelling a deal with China are eroding the EU’s veneer of international leadership in the Asia-Pacific.

Our Responsibilities

As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us, a (European) house divided simply cannot stand. In this case, it is unacceptable for the EU to turn its nose from the pungent smell of mass incarceration in Xinjiang, where the most heinous crime against humanity of our lifetimes is being perpetrated. What is being done, is an attempted ethnic cleansing at a scale and cold-hearted sophistication we have not seen since the 1940s. Hannah Arendt once said that ‘we must prevent wrongdoing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong sufferer and spectator, is at stake.’ I fear that it might already be too late for Xinjiang’s Uyghurs.

 

Guest article by Adam Hall. The author is pursuing a PhD at the VUB in Brussels.

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This article was written by a guest. The content does not necessarily reflect the official opinion of My Country? Europe. Responsibility for the information and views expressed therein lies entirely with the author.

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2 Comments

  1. Those who for decades are investing in China, building its factories, warehouses,… and developing its stock exchange, are the very same who keep pushing for more EU.

  2. The EU Commission has pushed through an investment agreement with China. For 7 years and without any transparency, the EU Commission has been working on this agreement.
    An internal EU Commission briefing reveals that, despite outrage from MEPs and resistance from Member States, the investment agreement limits itself to Beijing agreeing to make “continued and sustained efforts” to ratify “international norms banning forced labor”.
    Undoubtedly, the driving forces behind the EU will lavishly reward their soldiers of fortune.

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