By Sanjeev Sharma New Delhi, Nov 30, : .In what appears to be the first instance of material with “top-secret” statements made in China by a head of state being leaked into public domain, new documents called Xinjiang Papers have surfaced.
They show that Chinese President Xi Jinpings connections with the crackdown against Uyghur Muslims.
Adrian Zenz, Senior Fellow, China Studies, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, released the documents.
He said that the files contained highly sensitive and relevant material in relation Beijing’s policies regarding Xinjiang.Nearly all of the material is classified confidential.
Three speeches by the Chinese President (or General Secretary) Xi Jinping are contained in a single document.This document is classified as “top secret”, which can “cause particularly serious damage to security and interests of this country”.
Comparatively, the classification level on the main cable (or the telegram) of China Cables was “secret”, which is the second-highest level.
This appears to be the first time that materials containing “top secret” statements from a Chinese head-of-state have been released into the public domain.
This fact was not mentioned in the original New York Times report.
However, the present analysis shows that the links between statements and mandates made in 2016 by Xi and other central governments figures and policies are much deeper, more detailed, and more significant than previously thought.
Additionally, the original New York Times Report did not mention documents from the central government that were part of the leak and which contain critical additional evidence to support such links.
First, the documents reveal that Xi Jinping authorized the Xinjiang government in 2014 to draft a local law regulation to address religious extremism as well as violent resistance.
The resulting “De-Extremification Regulation” was implemented in April 2017 and is closely linked to the re-education campaign.
It did not mention, however, that Xi Jinping had made a similar demand in 2014 when he ordered that “those who should seized should seized and those who should incarcerated should be sentenced.”
According to the new papers, Xi’s statements about religious extremism being like a “powerful psychedelic drugs” and that acts like terror will “multiply as cancer cells” if they are not eradicated were quoted verbatim (and attributed directly to Xi in a March 2017 government document that compared re-education to free treatment for “sick thinking”
Xi had demanded that people’s immunity against extremist ideology be increased.Uyghur regions were active in early forms of reeducation and reported that they were “increasing people’s immunity to this threat”.
In two speeches, Xi called religious extremism poison in separate speeches.He claimed that Xinjiang had a “heart disease” that could only been treated by “heart medicine”.
This was to “support the right, and remove the evil”.
The 2017 Uyghur regional work report on reeducation stated that reeducation must “support and eliminate the evil”
Zenz stated that the materials showed that nearly three million rural surplus labourers were transferred into full-time work through a “vigorous development of labour-intensive industry”.
This was done to stop Uyghurs “having nothing to be done” and being “easily exploited” by evildoers.
Xi Jinping also suggested that unemployed people are prone to “provoke trouble” and that employment in companies encourages ethnic mixing and helps workers to “resist religious extremeism”.
He claims that such employment will allow ethnic workers to “perceptibly study Chinese culture”.Without them realising it, he argues that such employment will lead ethnic workers to “imperceptibly study Chinese culture” (i.e.
The reasons for Xinjiang’s labour transfers are therefore more politically motivated than economic.While the promotion of employment through labor transfers into labour-intensive sectors was not expected to make a greater impact on the economy or government revenues than other industries, it was considered a matter of vital importance to “Xinjiang’s long-term stability and peace.”
Third, documents show that plans for optimising the ethnic population composition are linked to Xinjiang’s campaign to suppress births.They can also be linked to demands and statements made by the central government.
In a top-secret speech, Xi argued “population proportion” and “population security are important foundations to long-term peace & stability.
Later, a senior Xinjiang official quoted this statement verbatim in July 2020.He then argued that southern Xinjiang had a Han population share that was “too low”.
Other classified documents also lament “severe inequalities in the distribution of ethnic population” as well as a “severely monoethnic population structure (an excess of Uyghurs in southern Xinjiang).
They require that 300,000 settlers, mostly Han from eastern China, be moved to southern Xinjiang by 2022.
These regions will be administered by the Xinjiang Construction and Production Corps, also known as ‘Bingtuan, a paramilitary colonial settlement entity with the explicit aim of increasing the Han population’s share.
Zenz claimed that Xi had ordered the abolition of preferential birth control policies in southern Xinjiang for ethnic groups that previously allowed them to have more kids than the Han.
His demand that birth control policies in the Uyghur heartland be made “equal” for all ethnicities is a euphemism.Since 2017, undergirded policies have drastically reduced ethnic birth rates.
Zenz stated that fourth, classified materials showed that many other policies were designed to assimilate the region’s ethnic group.These included a Chinese (Mandarin-speaking) language-focused education in centralised boarding school, more intensive forms predictive policing through analysis of big data, and sending Han officials to live among Uyghur families.
Xi, for example, demanded that rural children be placed in boarding schools to “study in school”, “live in school, and grow up in school”.
His observation that “some religious persons interfere with matters of secular life” was quickly formalized as the mandate that “religion cannot interfere with secular lifestyles”.
This policy was in place by 2017 and allowed for the internment in reeducation camps of people who had offered customary funeral prayers or participated in customary religious marriage ceremonies.
Xi’s requirements and remarks provided the basis for criminalizing most customary religious practices that were part ethnic populations’ daily lives.
These files also reveal the motivation behind these extraordinary measures.In a top secret speech, Xi argued the Belt and Road Initiative, his signature project in foreign policy, needs a stable domestic security environment.
He stated that China’s national security and achievement of its major goals in the 21st Century are at risk if the situation is not resolved in southern Xinjiang.
Xi demanded the region engage in an all-out fight to “prevent Xinjiang’s violent terrorist activities spreading to the rest China”.
He said that violent acts had already spread to other parts of China and that Xinjiang was currently in a painful phase of interventionary treatment.
(Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at [email protected])
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