The truth about Xinjiang

by New Worker correspondent

A meeting organised by Friends of Socialist China at the Marx Memorial Library in London last week heard eyewitness accounts from a group of activists, journalists, publishers and businesspeople from a tour of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the far west of China.
Xinjiang is the size of Iran with a population of 25 million and has, of course, been the target of a Western black propaganda op alleging slave labour and mass 're-education' camps, and the systematic suppression of Islam. It is a multi-ethnic region made up of 44 per cent Uygurs and 42 per cent Han Chinese as well as many other groups including Kazakhs, Mongols, Kirghiz and Tajiks.
There are 50 minority-language newspapers published in Xinjiang, including the Xinjiang Economic Daily, which is well known across China, and TV and radio are broadcast in the Mandarin, Uygur, Kazakh and Mongolian languages.
From the 1990s until around 2015 Western-backed terrorists waged an extremely violent campaign in Xinjiang that claimed the lives of thousands of civilians.
David Peat from Iskra Books said: “A major goal of the USA and its allies is to block the development of transport links through Xinjiang with China's ‘Belt and Road’ initiative. The West stepped up its propaganda and sanctions against China after President Obama's Asia Pivot, essentially when it was realised that the rapidly growing economic competition from China outweighed the massive profits Western businesses had made by outsourcing their factories to China.”
Ali Al-Assam from Friends of Socialist China said that: “The Jihadist terrorism began in Xinjiang at almost exactly the same time as in Iraq, and was linked to the massive promotion of the minority Wahhabist Muslim sect’s ideology around the world through finance and the training of Imams, including in Xinjiang.
“The Communist Party of China uses Marxism as a tool for uniting the people, and for 're-introducing' the unity which had already existed in the province.
“Traditional Islam has also been preserved in Xinjiang, where some of the world's largest Islamic libraries can be found. While Islam makes up just under 60 per cent of believers in Xinjiang, about a third are Buddhists, along with Daoist and Christian minorities.
“Trade unions in Britain have made a very important contribution towards engaging with China and countering the Western media’s lies and fake news about slave labour in Xinjiang.
“Many people in Muslim countries are aware of the West’s attempts to destabilise Xinjiang and make comparisons with the West’s imposition of wars and sanctions on the people of the Arab world.”
Roger McKenzie, International Editor of the Morning Star, said Xinjiang “was one of the most comfortable places I have ever been as a black person. We felt absolutely free to talk to anyone in the streets, markets and mosques”. He recounted experiencing racism in almost every country he had visited, including in every city he had visited in the USA.
"We saw a society trying to build a complete different society, one which most people in Britain wouldn't be able to understand. The media reports we see are straightforward lies and pure propaganda.
“Almost every day we saw huge festivals celebrating the different cultures of Xinjiang in the streets.
“Xinjiang is one of the least developed and poorest of China’s regions, and despite hundreds of billions of dollars in state investment, there is still a way to go. While the West projects fake news about Xinjiang, they don't seem to have any problems with slave labour in countries like the Republic of the Congo, where they are happy to invest huge sums in mineral extraction. But it’s important to remember that there are many on the left in Britain who support these fabricated claims.”
These accounts are fully supported in recent YouTube travel videos made by British visitors to Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi. While Urumqi looks similar to any modern world city, with a high level of use of social media and digital payments, these videos also show a thriving music and dance culture on the streets, both modern and traditional.