The WEST's war of words against CHINA. Starting with the Uyghurs.

[Arauna]

12 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Everyone here is predictable.

I guess I am the most predictable here..... but I do not care.   I say what I think and even if no-one takes anything seriously.... they will remember where they heard it when the time comes.

[JW Insider]

On 8/16/2020 at 10:20 AM, Arauna said:

But is does intimidate its neighbors.  They built 7 artificial islands and then promised USA they will not militarize it.  Next thing they have airports and ports where war ships are docked and airplanes ready to take off. …on these islands.... which may lead to problems.  They are claiming seas and fishing areas which have never belonged to them historically (for past 150 years).

This is mostly false.

A high-level, general summary of China's border disputes is found here (as reported from India): https://theprint.in/theprint-essential/not-just-india-tibet-china-has-17-territorial-disputes-with-its-neighbours-on-land-sea/461115/

Not just India, Tibet — China has 17 territorial disputes with its neighbours, on land & sea China has disputes with Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Singapore, Brunei, Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar and Tibet.

The article will provide a good starting point for anyone who wants to look into each dispute, one by one.

I've looked into details of most of the disputes already, and think that the following article gives the best high-level summary of what is really going on. I'll re-quote it here. For anyone who doesn't wish to read it, I thought the main points were these:

• The US has hundreds of battle ships in the South China Sea, including aircraft carriers, destroyers, nuclear submarines, bombers and underwater drones. The US has carried out several threatening military operations in the South China Sea. (Imagine if China carried out military operations in the Gulf of Mexico!)
• The US has 400 military bases "encircling" China, which a US strategist has called a "perfect noose." [Some corroboration at https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2331190/us-readies-for-war-with-china-with-400-bases-of-ships-and-nukes-to-create-perfect-noose-around-superpower-rival/ ]
• China's claims in the South China Sea are based on a 1947 map made by the pre-revolutionary Kuomintang government and recognized by the U.S. at the time, defining what is called the “nine-dash line.” It encompasses about 90 percent of the South China Sea, including areas claimed by Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Here is the article:

U.S. threats in South China Sea

Does the People’s Republic of China have the right to defend its sovereignty in the waters surrounding China?

What are U.S. aircraft carriers, destroyers, nuclear submarines, bombers and underwater drones doing in the South China Sea? China has no such force in the Gulf of Mexico; yet China is depicted here as the aggressor.

For more than 100 years, the imperialists invoked the “freedom of navigation” to dominate Chinese trade. U.S. and British gunboats controlled China’s Yangtze, Yellow and Pearl rivers and coastal waters, where they patrolled up to 1,300 miles inland. Finally, in 1949 with the successful Chinese Revolution, the People’s Liberation Army kicked out all foreign forces and their hated battleships from its rivers.

“Freedom of navigation” is a despised term in China, reeking of past colonial domination.

A Chinese ‘slingshot’

Almost daily we hear that China is “militarizing” the South China Sea by building air bases on seven small islands.

President-elect Donald Trump has tweeted that “China is building a massive fortress in the middle of the South China Sea.” These expanded mini-islands are described in the U.S. media as a great threat to world peace and regional stability.

China’s Defense Ministry announced on Dec. 16 that it would arm the islands with defensive anti-ship missiles: “They are primarily for defense and self-protection and this is proper and legitimate. For instance, if someone was at the door of your home, cocky and swaggering, how could it be that you wouldn’t prepare a slingshot?”

Washington has demanded that China stop this island construction. It carried out several highly threatening “freedom of navigation operations” close to these mini-islands last May.

The Chinese military responded by scrambling J-11 fighter jets. Chinese pilots reportedly issued warnings to an American destroyer, the USS William P. Lawrence, to leave Chinese territorial waters or face engagement. The Chinese Navy dispatched three warships and again officially opposed the repeated intrusions by air and ships in Chinese waters.

Then, on Dec. 17, China snatched an underwater drone operated from the USNS Bowditch, which was carrying out reconnaissance to detect Chinese submarine routes and construction on the seven islands. After objecting to U.S. intrusion in its waters, China returned the drone.

‘Pivot to Asia’

A new documentary by filmmaker John Pilger, “The Coming War on China,” describes the U.S. military presence in Asia in the film’s opening moments: “Today, more than 400 American military bases encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and, above all, nuclear weapons. From Australia north through the Pacific to Japan, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India, the bases form, as one U.S. strategist puts it, ‘the perfect noose.’

“The greatest build-up of NATO military forces since the Second World War is under way on the western borders of Russia. On the other side of the world, the rise of China as the world’s second economic power is viewed in Washington as another ‘threat’ to American dominance.”

President Obama announced this provocative U.S. military offensive, called the “pivot to Asia,” in 2011. It includes a plan to move two-thirds of the U.S. Navy to Asia and the Pacific. The weapons are aimed at China.

Conveniently, the latest confrontations in the South China Sea come at a time when the U.S. Navy needs to justify its biggest expansion in 35 years.

It presently has 273 battle force ships. Obama’s Asia Pivot would increase it to 308. Trump pledged to increase it to 350. The U.S. Navy immediately put forward a plan for 355 ships.

Building this fabulously expensive new fleet means guaranteed long-term profits and decades of cost overruns for the largest U.S. corporations, including General Dynamics, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and L3; power suppliers General Electric and Babcock and Wilcox; and shipbuilders such as Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII).

This costly new fleet to threaten the world will rob from every U.S. social program not already gutted by past military expenditures.

South China Sea, a chokehold

China has claimed the majority of the South China Sea for centuries. Now the People’s Republic of China, with 1.3 billion people, is determined not to relinquish its sovereign right to protect and defend this Chinese territory.

Its claim is based on a 1947 map made by the prerevolutionary Kuomintang government and recognized by the U.S. at the time, defining what is called the “nine-dash line.” It encompasses about 90 percent of the South China Sea, including areas claimed by Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

U.S. imperialism has attempted to strike deals and exert enormous pressure on these countries to force alliances against China by claiming to be a protector of small nations and their rights.

The decision of President Duterte of the Philippines to open relations with China during a state visit in late October and step back from being a U.S. pawn has sent shockwaves through Pentagon planners.

The area holds the richest fisheries in the world and possibly rich deposits of oil and natural gas.

The location of the South China Sea, which links the Indian and Pacific oceans, makes it strategically important. About half the world’s merchant ships pass through it. Keeping the South China Sea open for commercial navigation is a top priority for China.

Eighty percent of China’s oil imports pass through the narrow Malacca Straits, where ship traffic is three times greater than through the Suez Canal and five times more than through the Panama Canal. A blockade by the U.S. Navy could strangle China’s economy and devastate all the countries in the region.

The region surrounding the South China Sea accounts for over 60 percent of U.S. exports. It was the focus of the recently failed U.S. effort to create a Trans-Pacific Partnership — a regional trade alliance of 11 Pacific-rim countries that would have excluded China.

The setbacks for U.S. imperialism’s arrogant plans for the TPP, as well as a realignment of the Philippines, may bring more reckless threats.

China is determined to keep the South China Sea open to all commercial ships. But not to uninvited military ships.

[JW Insider]

BTW, I just discovered this link on Ajit Singh list of links which I had not yet seen before today. It aligns pretty well with the estimate of famine deaths that I already gave, based on the problems with the statistical methods used:

https://mronline.org/2011/06/26/revisiting-alleged-30-million-famine-deaths-during-chinas-great-leap/

It's worth a read, but a couple of points are highlighted here:

• There are two routes through which very large ‘famine deaths’ have been claimed — firstly, population deficit and, secondly, imputing births and deaths which did not actually take place.  Looking at China’s official population data from its 1953 and 1964 censuses, we see that if the rate of population increase up to 1958 had been maintained, the population should have been 27 million higher over the period of 1959-1961 than it actually was.  This population deficit is also discussed by the demographers Pravin Visaria and Leela Visaria.  The population deficit was widely equated with ‘famine deaths.’  But 18 million of the people alleged to have died in a famine were not born in the first place.  The decline in the birth rate from 29 in 1958 to 18 in 1961 is being counted as famine deaths.
• To say or write that “27 million people died in the famine in China” conveys to the reader that people who were actually present and alive starved to death.  But this did not actually happen and the statement that it did is false.
• China had lowered it death rate sharply from 20 to 12 per thousand between 1953 and 1958.  (India did not reach the latter level until over a quarter century later.) ...That a dramatic reduction in the rural death rate was achieved is not disputed by anyone.  During the early commune formation from 1958, there was a massive mobilisation of peasants for a stupendous construction effort, which completely altered for a few years the normal patterns of peasant family life....The birth rate fall from 1959 had to do with labour mobilisation, and not low nutrition since the 1958 foodgrain output was exceptionally good at 200 million tons (mt).
• There was excess mortality compared to the 1958 level over the next three years, of a much smaller order.  Let us be clear on the basic facts about what did happen: there was a run of three years of bad harvests in China — drought in some parts, floods in others, and pest attacks.  Foodgrain output fell from the 1958 good harvest of 200 mt to 170 mt in 1959 and further to 143.5 mt in 1960, with 1961 registering a small recovery to 147 million tons.  This was a one-third decline, larger than the one-quarter decline India saw during its mid-1960s drought and food crisis.  Grain output drop coincided in time with the formation of the communes, and this lent itself to a fallacious causal link being argued by the academics who were inclined to do so, and they blamed the commune formation for the output decline.  One can much more plausibly argue precisely the opposite — that without the egalitarian distribution that the communes practised, the impact on people of the output decline, which arose for independent reasons and would have taken place anyway, would have been far worse.
• As output declined from 1959, there was a rise in the officially measured death rate from 12 in 1958 to 14.6 in 1959, followed by a sharp rise in 1960 to 25.4 per thousand, falling the next year to 14.2 and further to 10 in 1962.  While, clearly, 1960 was an abnormal year with about 8 million deaths in excess of the 1958 level, note that this peak official ‘famine’ death rate of 25.4 per thousand in China was little different from India’s 24.8 death rate in the same year which was considered quite normal and attracted no criticism.  If we take the remarkably low death rate of 12 per thousand that China had achieved by 1958 as the benchmark, and calculate the deaths in excess of this over the period 1959 to 1961, it totals 11.5 million.  This is the maximal estimate of possible ‘famine deaths.’

----------

Of course, this high number of famine deaths is still a terrible thing, and there is photographic evidence of areas where some of this actual starvation occurred. But there is also evidence that the more egalitarian distribution system, and irrigation work, may have actually saved lives overall. The timing of the droughts/floods coinciding with the most disruptive periods of communal projects was devastating. But several scholars have seen these projects as emergency measures that helped immensely in the immediate future, protecting against just such future years of potential drought/flood conditions. If some of Mao's "Great Leap Forward" projects had been completed just a couple of years earlier, it may have even saved millions more from the droughts/floods of 1959 to 1962. But I'm sure Mao knew there was a risk of such disasters happening during the mobilization for these projects. Therefore, better planning and less emphasis on simultaneous large projects would have been much smarter. Some of the projects were wasteful, producing some good, but not overall. This includes the inefficient, low quality steel production in small furnaces heated with wood instead of coal.

[Srecko Sostar]

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

Donald Trump

Yeah, how blessed people must be with their leaders, capitalist or communist :))

The Trump administration proposed rule changes that would allow shower heads to boost water pressure, after Trump repeatedly complained that bathroom fixtures do not work to his liking.

The Department of Energy plan followed comments from Trump last month at a White House event on rolling back regulations. He said he believed water does not come out fast enough from fixtures.

“So what do you do? You just stand there longer or you take a shower longer? Because my hair – I don’t know about you, but it has to be perfect. Perfect,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/12/us-shower-pressure-trump-hair-water

 

[TrueTomHarley]

6 hours ago, Arauna said:

I guess I am the most predictable here.

I haven’t tried to rank them. If I did, I don’t think you would be in first place.

6 hours ago, Arauna said:

 I say what I think and even if no-one takes anything seriously.... they will remember where they heard it when the time comes.

I do take it seriously. I just dial it back a notch or two.

If it is any consolation, I dial JWI’s stuff 2 notches or 3. You don’t think I buy all his stuff, do you? It is but food for thought—sort of like that verse that says you think you know it all after hearing the first witness, and then the other fellow comes along. I don’t know why he goes on and on the way he does—to me, all one need do is see how governments are treating our brothers and extrapolate from there—still, this site is a lab for me. I think it is a lab for you. I think it is a lab for him. As Voltaire said, the most sure way to be dull is to reveal everything—I don’t have to know where everyone is coming from.

I am on a Voltaire kick now. My Great Courses regimen has gone from Bart E to Henry VIII, and now it is on Voltaire. I listen to the CDs while walking the dog, who doesn’t listen himself, and they permit me to be a seed-picker, like they said of Paul at Acts 17:18, who picks up a seed here and poops it out there. I give the appearance of being smart, having something to say on everything, yet if one pressed you or JWI on China, both of you could expand indefinitely. If one presses me, a seed-picker, I change the subject to Gilligan’s Island. Seed-pickers frequently operate on the very edge of their knowledge, but nobody knows that but they. All that is lacking—as I note from watching Zoom commentators on TV—and which I will soon remedy—is to truck in a ton of books from the Goodwill, and make a podcast in which I can barely be seen for their sheer number. “Whoa! Look at all those books!” people will say, “he must be smart!” Mission accomplished. 

Voltaire is a name that I’ve long known of but relatively little about. Now I know a little more, and I find, so my surprise, that some of the things I do, he also did. My head, which was already dangerously large, as Cesar pointed out, 

21 hours ago, César Chávez said:

Opinions are no more than opinions no matter how high one regards themselves.

now gets so big as to take up all the space in the Librarian’s library.

As to at least make a pretense of staying on topic, the daughter of one of my friends served as a missionary in China, along with her husband. Several years ago he told me that the Chinese secret police had infiltrated our congregations there in no time at all, but they also reported to their superiors that there was nothing to worry about, since our people had no interest whatsoever in changing politics. It is a story a little bit at odds with reports coming out of that land now. Maybe it was naïveté to begin with—some starry-eyed brother misreading reality—we do things like that. At any rate, based upon that input, I expressed similar naïveté in Tom Irregardless that I am almost embarrassed to own now. Still, no harm done, I think. It never hurts to give the other guy the benefit of the doubt, even if sometimes it is hurled back in your face.

I fall in between you and JWI as regards looking at signs, probably a bit closer to your way. Angels are desiring to peer into these things. It is not for me to tell them to straighten up and get back to work. But the friends can get pretty worked up over things that may turn out here-today, gone-tomorrow. Someone was all excited the other day about Trump brokering a new deal in the mid-east. Does that herald the cry of peace and security? they wondered what I thought. I don’t get worked up over such things. The media has so firmly suppressed the story, for fear of making Trump look good, that few here know much about it, anyway. I try to seek first the kingdom and his righteousness, follow counsel I have found trustworthy, and figure that matters of timing will unfold as they will.

 

 

[Arauna]

On 8/19/2020 at 6:48 PM, TrueTomHarley said:

Someone was all excited the other day about Trump brokering a new deal in the mid-east. Does that herald the cry of peace and security? t

It is a red herring.  The UN is the organization to watch out for calling peace and security..... 

[TrueTomHarley]

1 hour ago, César Chávez said:

You are correct, we should all stay on topic, not just me.

A fine new ally of @The Librarian. Who would have guessed? Like two peas in a pod, they are.

[JW Insider]

On 8/19/2020 at 4:19 AM, Arauna said:

Because the billion dollar Teck companies are censoring all information the UN does not want you to see.

And what the US doesn't want you to see, too. Another woman who has long identified herself as a Uyghur Muslim was just removed from Twitter for simply saying that China is not mistreating Muslims in the region.

You have spoken about how China pays journalists to write positive stories. I haven't seen the evidence for that, although it could well be true, but it reminded me of the news about Steve Bannon today:

Trump's one time appointee, Steve Bannon, was just arrested in a scheme that raised $25 million to construct portions of a Mexican border wall (and spend a million on himself). Bannon is well-known for paying people to spread outlandish propaganda against China in regular media and social media.

Other organizations that write against China are paid in US Government grants. The World Uyghur Congress is a US-backed, right wing, regime change network that seeks the fall of China. The US pays it millions through grants from the NED (National Endowment for Democracy).

If you don't think the NED is about US imperialism and covert regime change, just listen to ex-CIA whistle-blower, Philip Agee:

 “Nowadays, instead of having the CIA going around behind the scenes and trying to manipulate the process by inserting money here and giving instructions secretly and so forth, they have now a sidekick, which is this National Endowment for Democracy, NED.”

Allen Weinstein, a founding member of the NED, admitted this to the Washington Post: ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/09/22/innocence-abroad-the-new-world-of-spyless-coups/92bb989a-de6e-4bb8-99b9-462c76b59a16/ )

“A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” 

NED's own website has admitted giving money the World Uyghur Congress and its affiliate organizations, and their focus is on influencing US Congressmen.

On 8/16/2020 at 10:20 AM, Arauna said:

To apologize for any of the empire building, subversions, predatory loans, human rights abuses etc (pretty everyone is doing them but to different degrees at present) is taking sides.

I won't apologize for any empire building, subversions, predatory loans, or human rights abuses. But I also won't try to "call out" a specific country for such abuses unless I have seen credible evidence. I don't believe nations are altruistic, and I believe all of them do things to varying degrees. I don't say there have been no abuses by Chinese against Uyghur Muslims, either. But I have seen and heard much evidence that the Chinese government has done much to mitigate these abuses. And I have seen several claims from the Uyghur side that are easily shown to be complete lies. And I have seen the Western media so anxious to "eat up" any claims and then allow those claims to be exaggerated 1,000 times over. (And of course this fits a pattern that can easily be found in almost all anti-Chinese propaganda from the West.)

I found another article on the Uyghur separatist propaganda, that I will try to cut down a bit to quote it in my next post.

 

[JW Insider]

An article on the Uyghur issue that I pretty much agree with so far is found here: https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/21/china-detaining-millions-uyghurs-problems-claims-us-ngo-researcher/

I don't have time to reduce it because I have to leave for 24 hours, so here it is with comments removed and only a couple of sentences highlighted in red.

China detaining millions of Uyghurs? Serious problems with claims by US-backed NGO and far-right researcher ‘led by God’ against Beijing

Claims that China has detained millions of Uyghur Muslims are based largely on two studies. A closer look at these papers reveals US government backing, absurdly shoddy methodologies, and a rapture-ready evangelical researcher named Adrian Zenz.

The US House of Representatives passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act on December 3, legislation which calls for the Donald Trump administration to impose sanctions against China over allegations that Beijing has detained millions of Muslim-majority Uyghurs in the western region of Xinjiang.

To drum up support for the sanctions bill, Western governments and media outlets have portrayed the People’s Republic as a human rights violator on par with Nazi Germany. Republican Rep. Chris Smith, for instance, denounced the Chinese government for what he called the “mass internment of millions on a scale not seen since the Holocaust,” in “modern-day concentration camps.” 

The claim that China has detained millions of ethnic Uyghurs in its Xinjiang region is repeated with increasing frequency, but little scrutiny is ever applied. Yet a closer look at the figure and how it was obtained reveals a serious deficiency in data.

While this extraordinary claim is treated as unassailable in the West, it is, in fact, based on two highly dubious “studies.” 

The first, by the US government-backed Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, formed its estimate by interviewing a grand total of eight people.

The second study relied on flimsy media reports and speculation. It was authored by Adrian Zenz, a far-right fundamentalist Christian who . . .  believes he is “led by God” on a “mission” against China.

As Washington ratchets up pressure on China, Zenz has been lifted out of obscurity and transformed almost overnight into a go-to pundit on Xinjiang. He has testified before Congress, providing commentary in outlets from the Wall Street Journal to Democracy Now!, and delivering expert quotes in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ recent “China Cables” report. His Twitter bio notes that he is “moving across the Atlantic” from his native Germany.

Before Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal questioned Zenz about his religious “mission,” at a recent event about Xinjiang inside the US Capitol, he had received almost entirely uncritical promotion from Western media.

The Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, which first popularized the “millions detained” figure, has also been able to operate without a hint of media scrutiny.

Washington-backed NGO claims millions detained after interviewing eight people

The “millions detained” figure was first popularized by a Washington, DC-based NGO that is backed by the US government, the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD).

In a 2018 report submitted to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination – often misrepresented in Western media as a UN-authored report – CHRD “estimate[d] that roughly one million members of ethnic Uyghurs have been sent to ‘re-education’ detention camps and roughly two million have been forced to attend ‘re-education’ programs in Xinjiang.” According to CHRD, this figure was “based on interviews and limited data.” 

While CHRD states that it interviewed dozens of ethnic Uyghurs in the course of its study, their enormous estimate was ultimately based on interviews with exactly eight Uyghur individuals

Based on this absurdly small sample of research subjects in an area whose total population is 20 million, CHRD “extrapolated estimates” that “at least 10% of villagers […] are being detained in re-education detention camps, and 20% are being forced to attend day/evening re-education camps in the villages or townships, totaling 30% in both types of camps.”

Applying these estimated rates to the entirety of Xinjiang, CHRD arrived at the figures submitted to the UN claiming that one million ethnic Uyghurs have been detained in “re-education detention camps” and two million more have been “forced to attend day/evening re-education sessions”. 

Thanks to questionable sources like the CHRD, the United States government has accused China of “arbitrarily detain[ing] 800,000 to possibly more than two million Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other Muslims in internment camps designed to erase religious and ethnic identities.”

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2018, State Department official Scott Busby stated this this “is the U.S. government assessment, backed by our intelligence community and open source reporting.”

The Chinese government has rejected US allegations, and claims that it has in fact established “vocational education and training centers […] to prevent the breeding and spread of terrorism and religious extremism.” The Chinese Foreign Ministry has stated that “there [are] no so-called ‘re-education camps’ in Xinjiang at all. The vocational education and training centers legally operated in Xinjiang aim to help a small number of people affected by terrorist and extremist ideologies and equip them with skills, so that they can be self-reliant and re-integrate into society.”

In its mounting pressure campaign against China, the US is not only relying on CHRD for data; it is directly funding its operations. As Ben Norton and Ajit Singh previously reported for The Grayzone, CHRD receives significant financial support from Washington’s regime-change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

The NGO has spent years campaigning on behalf of extreme right-wing opposition figures who celebrate colonialism and call for the “Westernization” of China.

‘Leading expert’ on Xinjiang relies on speculation and one questionable media report

The second key source for claims that China has detained millions of Uyghur Muslims is Adrian Zenz. He is a senior fellow in China studies at the far-right Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which was established by the US government in 1983.

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is an outgrowth of the National Captive Nations Committee, a group founded by Ukrainian nationalist Lev Dobriansky to lobby against any effort for detente with the Soviet Union. Its co-chairman, Yaroslav Stetsko, was a top leader of the fascist OUN-B militia that fought alongside Nazi Germany during its occupation of Ukraine in World War Two. Together, the two helped found the World Anti-Communist League that was described by journalist Joe Conason as “the organizational haven for neo-Nazis, fascists, and anti-Semitic extremists from two dozen countries.”

Today, Dobriansky’s daughter, Paula, sits on the board of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. A former Reagan and George HW Bush official and signatory of the original Project for a New American Century document, Paula Dobriansky has become a fixture in neoconservative circles on Capitol Hill.

From its office in Washington, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation agitates for regime change from Venezuela to the periphery of China, advancing the “double genocide” theory that rewrites the history of the Holocaust and posits communism as a deadly evil on par with Hitlerian fascism.

Zenz’s politicized research on Xinjiang and Tibet has proven one of this right-wing group’s most effective weapons. 

In September of 2018, Zenz wrote an article published in the Central Asian Survey journal concluding that “Xinjiang’s total re-education internment figure may be estimated at just over one million.” (A condensed version of the article was initially published by the Jamestown Foundation, a neoconservative think tank founded during the height of the Cold War by Reagan administration personnel with the support of then-CIA Director William J. Casey).

Like the CHRD, Zenz arrived at his estimate “over 1 million” in a dubious manner. He based it on a single report by Istiqlal TV, a Uyghur exile media organization based in Turkey, which was republished by Newsweek Japan. Far from an impartial journalistic organization, Istiqlal TV advances the separatist cause while playing host to an assortment of extremist figures. 

One such character who often appears on Istiqlal TV is Abdulkadir Yapuquan, a reported leader of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a separatist group that aims to establish an independent homeland in Xinjiang called East Turkestan. 

ETIM has been designated as a terrorist organization with ties to al-Qaeda by the US, European Union, and UN Security Council’s Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee. The Associated Press has reported that since “2013, thousands of Uighurs… have traveled to Syria to train with the Uighur militant group Turkistan Islamic Party and fight alongside al-Qaida,” with “several hundred join[ing] the Islamic State.” 

The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) has been among the most recalcitrant forces operating in the Al Qaeda-controlled Idlib province, rejecting all ceasefire efforts while indoctrinating children into militancy. TIP leadership has called on foreign Muslims to wage jihad in Syria, publishing an online recruitment video in 2018 that celebrated the 9/11 attacks as holy retaliation against a decadent United States awash in homosexuality and sin.

Children of the Turkistan Islamic Party in Idlib, Syria

According to the Los Angeles Times, Yapuquan is “a regular guest on Istiqlal TV… where his interviews often extended into hours-long emotional tirades against China.”

Turkish journalist Abdullah Bozkurt reported that Istiqlal TV has also hosted fanatical anti-Semites like Nureddin Yıldız, who in an interview on the network, “called for armed jihad not only in China’s autonomous Xinjiang region but all over the world and described China as a nation of savages, worse than the Jews.”

[Arauna]

6 hours ago, JW Insider said:

Muslim was just removed from Twitter for simply saying that China is not mistreating Muslims in the region.

You are soooo naive. Does she have family members back in China that could be rounded up?  Confirm that and I may believe you.   Chinese people inside America are being pressured by chinese loyalists on university campuses. Other ex-pats receive threats  - if you do not understand this then I have nothing further to say.  I do not argue with willfully blind people....... time will tell on what they are doing to Jehovah's people.  This should be the canary in the mine for you.

 I was talking about China's human rights abuses long before it became popular to demonize them......just like I was referring to the killing of Christian's in the middle east and north Africa as a matter of routine. I have also talked about UN human rights abuses and the corruption in this org.

Another thing I would like to mention is the Chinese destruction of forests, rare animals and total lack of care for the environment since communism took over. They have pollution everywhere. They are decimating fish in the seas..... by means of predatory agreements or by encroachments in other countries waters.

I do not go along with the popular narrative or propaganda...... and yes, you will most probably and predictably say that USA is also destructive to the environment as we all already know..... but the scale of Chinese destruction is unknown because of the secretive nature of China to lay low and take what it can. China is careless and has an insatiable drive for materialism..... enriching the CCP.  Yes, neo- communism is more capitalist than the west.  It believes it should gain all riches in the world to have successful governance of people and then clamp down on freedoms.  They believe that communism failed at first because people need first ti be uplifted....then totalitarian communism will be highly successful. ..... 

Funny, but many in the west like the totalitarians

[Patiently waiting for Truth]

9 minutes ago, César Chávez said:

Question for the Librarian, TTH, JWI: Why am I the only one to lose the likes and dislike submission in my post in this forum?

Is it a fault on your own computer ?  I wouldn't think you would lose it intentionally. If anyone was to lose it I would think it would be me. Hope it returns for you soon.  I think this is a new page setup as of today.

@Arauna  Your last comment is very political and not neutral at all   I don't think that is just 'Keeping on the watch'.

[JW Insider]

7 hours ago, Arauna said:

Another thing I would like to mention is the Chinese destruction of forests, rare animals and total lack of care for the environment since communism took over. They have pollution everywhere.

Yes. China has had a huge problem with pollution, and had apparently done little about it until this past decade or so. Some things to consider:

Here's what the BBC admitted: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40341833

Future Energy: China leads world in solar power production

... China may consume more electricity than any other country, but it is also now the world's biggest solar energy producer

...According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the country installed more than 34 gigawatts of solar capacity in 2016 - more than double the figure for the US and nearly half of the total added capacity worldwide that year.

Early figures for 2017 show China has added another eight gigawatts in the first quarter alone.

...Within China, distributed generation is growing at an extraordinary rate, driven in large part by farmers who use the panels to power agricultural equipment that might not be connected to the grid.

...The largest solar farm in the world - Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, all 30sq km of it - is a Chinese project. And the country recently opened the world's largest floating solar farm, in Huainan, Anhui Province. It has been constructed over an old coal mine, which over the years had filled with rainwater.

And here's an admission by Forbes magazine's website:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2017/06/16/how-china-not-obama-waged-the-war-on-coal-and-won/#1f9466b57a5f

How China, Not Obama, Waged The War On Coal

Global coal production is down record amounts thanks largely to China, BP's chief economist said Thursday, and coal's probably not coming back.

"I think we are seeing a significant and decisive shift in coal, a break from the past in terms of coal," said BP Group Chief Economist Spencer Dale at a Washington D.C. forum sponsored by the Atlantic Council on Global Affairs.

"Many of the factors driving that—the key, the heart of that shift—are structural, long-term factors: the growing competitiveness of natural gas and renewable energy combined with mounting government and societal pressure to move towards cleaner, lower-carbon fuels."

That pressure has been strongest in China, he said. Chinese coal production has declined for three consecutive years, coinciding with the slowing of industrial growth, but according to BP's Statistical Review of World Energy 2017, released this week, it has never declined more than it did in 2016. At the beginning of 2016 China enacted a series of policies designed to reduce a supply glut, including closing 1,000 mines and restricting mining days to improve the profitability of the ones that remained open.

"The impact of these measures was really stark," Dale said, calling it a "magnificent policy."

And here is an admission by TIME magazine's website:

https://time.com/3848171/china-environment-promotions/

China Ties Officials' Promotions to Saving the Environment

For decades, Chinese officials’ job prospects have depended on one factor above all others: economic growth. The incentive structure seemed to make sense given that China has enjoyed one of the greatest economic expansions in human history. But on May 5, new Chinese regulations added another inducement to the mix: environmental protection. Officials will be held accountable for the air, water and soil in areas under their control. Should they fail an environmental responsibility audit, promotions will be nixed.

It’s no secret that China’s breakneck growth has devastated the country’s environment. Even by the government’s own reckoning — which some consider an underestimation of the problem — only eight of 74 Chinese cities met national standards for clean air last year, according to state newswire Xinhua. Sixty percent of ground water in one official survey was deemed “bad” or “very bad,” reported Xinhua.

Beijing is now talking tough and last year declared a “war against pollution.” A revised environmental law, which took effect on Jan. 1, promises to target polluters and officials who fake environmental data. Last month, construction on a controversial $3.75 billion dam was blocked. During his annual address in March, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang vowed “a firm and unrelenting approach to ensure blue skies, clear waters, and sustainable development.”

According to Xinhua, the government guidelines released on May 5 state that “by 2020, China aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 40% to 45% from the 2005 level, and increase the share of nonfossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 15%.”

And here is Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2016-12-20/how-china-beats-the-u-s-at-clean-air-progress

How China Beats the U.S. at Clean-Air Progress

Americans were pretty rich before they tackled pollution. Poorer Chinese are already doing it.

 

And reuters.com: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution-water-idUSKCN1B4090

China launches 8,000 water clean-up projects worth $100 billion in first half of 2017

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China launched nearly 8,000 water clean-up projects in the first half of 2017 with projected total investment of 667.4 billion yuan ($100 billion), the environment ministry said on Thursday. 

...

The projects were devised as part of a 2015 action plan to treat and prevent water pollution, and cover 325 contaminated groundwater sites across the country, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) said in a notice.

A total of 343 contaminated sites had been identified, meaning that 95 percent had drawn up plans to bring water quality up to required standards, it said.

And this from https://www.firstpost.com/world/watch-china-is-building-worlds-first-forest-city-3761401.html

Watch: China is building world's first forest city

China is building the world's first forest city in Liuzhou to combat its pollution problem.

FP Staff June 30, 2017 15:22:10 IST

China is building the world's first forest city near its southern region of Liuzhou. Commissioned by the Liuzhou Municipality Urban Planning, this initiative is taking place to combat the country's pollution problem.

All of the city's structures – offices, houses, hotels, hospitals, and schools – will be entirely covered in plants and trees, and the city itself will be equipped to produce 900 tons of oxygen. The "green" setup includes 40,000 trees and almost one million plants of over one hundred species, and is expected to absorb almost 10,000 tonnes of CO₂ and 57 tonnes of pollutants per year.

For connectivity, a fast rail line is being set up, on which electric cars will run. It will connect the forest city to the main city of Liuzhou. To maintain energy efficiency, the design uses the help of solar panels and a geothermal energy source.

The architects of this forest city, Stefano Boeri Architects Group, have built vertical forest towers in cities like Milan, Antwerp and Nanjing, among others.

Slated to be complete by 2020, the city will house 30,000 people.

 

And ecosnippets.com, covering ecology topics, sustainable living, small farming, natural herbs, etc., reported this about CHina:

 

China Announces That It Will Cover Nearly A Quarter Of The Country In Forest By 2020

 

China has announced, via a United Nations report, that it will be covering nearly a quarter of the country with forests by 2020.  The plan is to turn China into an “ecological civilization” and function as a model for future building projects.

 

...The report also indicated that by 2020 the country plans on cutting water consumption by 23 percent, energy consumption by 15 percent and carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 18 percent.

There is also action to restore 35 percent of the natural shorelines, increase prairie vegetation coverage by 56 percent and reclaim more than half of reclaimable desert in the country. (Via Minds)

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I don't put any stock in promises, but at least it comes from a country that has built more efficient public transportation, fast trains, etc, than all the other countries in the world combined. And it comes from a country that has raised more people out of poverty than the rest of the world combined.