Map shows trillion-dollar reason why China is oppressing its Muslims | Hacker News Reader

Map shows trillion-dollar reason why China is oppressing its Muslims

businessinsider.com

This article is wrong in suggesting the BRI is the reason behind the camps, that somehow everything is about economics. The real reason is the China sees Xinjiang as part of its territory and wants to limit Islamic influences.

Kevin Rudd, the former prime minister of Australia, has done a great analysis behind Xi Jinping's world view and interests. They are, in order of importance to him:

"1. The centrality of the party, keeping the party in power for the long term, as well as Xi's power within the party;

2. Consolidating the internal unity of the country;

3. Maintaining sustainable economic growth to ensure a continued increase in Chinese living standards, breaking though the "middle-income trap," while balancing now against a parallel requirement for environmental protection now demanded by China's urban elites;

4. Keeping China's 14 bordering countries in a benign, and preferably supine state;

5. On China's maritime periphery, projecting its regional naval and air power, politically fracturing U.S. alliances in Asia, and ultimately removing the United States from the immediate region militarily;

6.Leveraging its economic power across China's vast continental periphery, causing Eurasia, and in time the Middle East and Africa to become accommodating to China's economic, foreign policy, and security interests; and

7.Reforming parts, but by no means all, of the post-war international rules-based order over time to better suit its interests, and to better reflect China's domestic values rather than those of the post-war consensus."

Just apply this formula to China's actions and everything makes sense.

That's a good summary of Xi Jinping's goals. I would just add that the BRI has an important role to play in most of them.

I feel stupid but I still don't completely understand why this oppression is necessary. Do they need to remove the villages for BRI to come to fruition?

I don't get it either. Why not play nice with them?

They’d probably want some degree of cultural and religious autonomy, and that’s politically unacceptable to Beijing.

I guess the unwillingness to give some level of autonomy is ultimately the downfall of most dictatorships. This will just keep festering unless they are willing to kill all of them.

The Turks have been making the same mistake with the Kurd for a long time. Instead of looking for a mutually acceptable solution they just keep oppressing with no end in sight.

There's no such thing as an Uighur, just funny looking Chinese people. There's no such thing as a Kurd, just Turkish people with a funny accent. They're just making their supposed cultural differences up, why can't they just be like us?

My guess: "Muslims answer to Allah" and an Imam from X country can unleash them against China, today or tomorrow. Why risk it...

There is more to the story and the propaganda than meets the eye. With all of these stories you have to ask yourself 'why is this person writing this and why does it matter now'?

China is going places and across numerous sectors we can ignore China and tell ourselves that they just steal our IP and have no creative ideas of their own. We did this when Japan was going places and insisted they just imitated our cars, motorbikes etc. Nobody says this now.

In the Western narrative about China it is of considerable propaganda value to get some 'human rights' argument on the go. Whether or not China are oppressing people is immaterial to the argument and the propaganda. The point is that discussion is framed that way with China on the back foot if they buy into this narrative.

Incidentally, further West from this region where all the Chinese 'terror campaigns' go on is the NATO narco-state of Afghanistan. This is the model of democracy that has been put in place by our great leaders over the last 17.5 years.

There is a NATO modus operandi of buying guns from Eastern European countries getting them in to places that are sovereign but not aligned to Washington, hiring mercenaries, giving them the guns and calling them terrorists (or freedom fighters) to create a situation that requires the troops to be sent in for 'humanitarian reasons'. Other tactics include 'colour revolutions' and 'Arab springs'. This happens where the media tells a different story, for instance the situation in Venezuela is an example of this, but, if you only watch the mainstream news then your only thought can be 'those poor people in Venezuala, we must bomb them now so the food aid can get through!'.

China has existed as a large empire for many millennia and survived colonial ambitions such as the Opium Wars. China learned about printing too much paper money, having global colonial ambitions and the art of war many, many centuries ago. They don't have capitalist politicians running the show and values in Chinese society are more Confucius than Chicago school of economics. Chinese leaders see China as a beautiful garden, you may scoff at that, but that is how they want China to be and that is more important to them than having 'democracy' as in the Western capitalist version of empire.

So, to get to your point, China, as in this culture that makes Washington look like a toddler on Ritalin, doesn't want a Maidan colour revolution going on or any of that nonsense in the far provinces. Same goes for 'free Tibet' with a CIA asset Dalai Lama getting Western SJW types antsy.

Same here. Exactly the 'reason why' advertised in the headline is missing from the article. Is it the collateral environmental destruction if any, that the locals are opposing (in which case it's irrelevant that they are Muslims)? Is their traditional way of life under threat?

The geographical and economical pointers from the article are welcome however, so the oppression of Uyghurs can be put in a context that is not about cultural or linguistic differences.

Uighur separatists would gain significant leverage in their calls for autonomy/independence if billions of dollars of unguarded infrastructure are built across their land. Derailing a single piece of train track in the baron desert would cost pennies but yield perhaps millions in maintenance, insurance, and other costs to the Chinese state. This could be repeated dozens of times per day across a vast swathe of land.

This is why its easier for critical logistics node workers to unionize than other workers. If 50 workers in a port strike, the entire economy grinds to a halt. If 50 Walmart greeters strike, they get replaced by the same afternoon.

This post should not be considered an endorsement of the CCP's methods or goals by myself.

Probably some line of reasoning along the lines of : Winning against insurgency in central asia is almost impossible. So to protect the critical junction they must assimilate the population there.

For a long time, I was quite puzzled by the Road-and-Belt initiative. Then I saw a map much like this one - but which included it's current land route through Russia; and realized that the road to Europe, through Iran, is probably key. Previously, all Chinese trade with Europe going by land went through Russia. Although there are undoubtedly many purposes behind Road-and-Belt, including building up heavy construction capacity partly on other country's dime; I concluded that China forsees the possibility of being at odds with Russia, perhaps even in the near term - or later at a time when they are less dependent on Russian carbon fuels - and that China wants to ensure that any such confrontations happen without interfering with its economy.

I don't think the plans have anything to do with future Russian relations, the reasons are better explained here than businessinsider tabloid spam https://www.strategy-business.com/feature/A-Strategists-Guid...

Basically they want to spread their currency, expand their market to all regional neighbors and provide political/economic stability to the various regimes around them. The separatist East Turkestan crackdown has been happening for decades long before they imagined this initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Turkestan

I had read these explanations, but found them insufficient. You don't mention the G5/optic cable angle, which I think is a better argument on your side: https://www.wired.com/story/china-will-likely-corner-5g-mark...

Chinese trade with Europe goes through the ocean, which is dominated by the US navy. BRI is a way to find a land route.

We agree, then.

This is a ridiculous thesis. The Uighurs have the most to gain from trade with the outside world, especially since their culture in significantly un-Chinese, and has more in common with non-Chinese. The reason for “oppressing Muslims” is the collision between two cultures. The Uighurs will never accept Chinese domination— their country is East Turkistan. For the Han Chinese it is humiliating to be resisted by an inferior Turkic white minority that they have successfully subjugated militarily. In China, (1) You do as you’re told and get along (2) The Han people are intrinsically superior to other races, Oh, and by the way. That this is about Islam and terrorism is pure Chinese propaganda, like Trump‘s Latin American murders and rapists.

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