Chinese Oppression of the Uighurs - Bernhard Zand

Persecution of the Uighurs The West Must Respond to Chinese Oppression

There are many disturbing aspects to modern-day China, but its treatment of the Uighurs is the most despicable. The West must come up with a response to the inhuman persecution.

Bernhard Zand

Der Speigel, December 04, 2019  05:04 PM

Working as a reporter in the Xinjiang region of China is an experience both exhilarating and depressing. From the vast expanse of the Taklamakan Desert to the majestic peaks of the Pamir range, the panoramas are overwhelming, the landscapes straight out of a painting. Fully two hours are needed to fly across China's largest province from east to west. On the ground, it can take days.

But few are interested in talking -- neither the man sitting next to you on the airplane nor the family sharing your compartment on the high-speed train. After a while, you grow hesitant about addressing anyone at all. Every encounter could have consequences: unpleasant ones for the reporter, but potentially dreadful ones for his counterpart.

Living in Xinjiang, after all, is dangerous. Those who talk to the wrong people or take the risk of speaking with foreigners, those who read the wrong books, visit the wrong websites or express the wrong thoughts: They all risk being interrogated or locked up that same night. Hundreds of thousands of people, and likely more than a million, have suffered that fate. Beijing has set up a surveillance state in the homeland of the Muslim Uighurs of a kind that the world has never seen before.

People across the globe have been broadly aware of the situation for years. But in the last few weeks, the New York Times and an international collective of investigative journalists have published details that had remained secret until now. They provide an in-depth look at how the camp system was conceived and how the state put it into practice. The documents include procedures for answering the questions of children whose parents are locked away in a camp. They include an instruction manual for running hundreds of penal and re-education camps, which Beijing euphemistically refers to as "vocational training centers." It makes it clear that it is of utmost importance to "prevent escapes," and states that inmates must be strictly monitored "while they are at class, dining, using the toilet, washing, receiving medical care or meeting with family."

Of all the disturbing aspects of the Chinese regime, it is what it is doing in Xinjiang that is the most disturbing. It reveals the true nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and may shape modern China's global image more lastingly than any event since the brutal crushing of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. It remains doubtful whether Beijing understands the intensity of the shock that the recent reports have triggered around the world.

The problem now facing the West is that of coming up with an adequate response to these hundreds of thousands of violations of basic human rights. Of breaking the silence about the fate of the Uighurs, a silence that is still there despite the recent revelations. Of determining what can actually be done for Muslims in China beyond empty statements of solidarity, given the tight political and economic relations the United States and Europe have with Beijing.

A Conflict over Values

The West finds itself involved in a number of conflicts with the burgeoning global power, from the U.S. trade war to the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, from Beijing's industrial policies to its influence along the New Silk Road, from the bickering over telecommunications company Huawei to the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Some of these clashes are the inevitable consequence of an emerging China stepping on the toes of an insecure West that is worried that its days of supremacy may be fading. On most issues, there are interests and arguments on both side, but compromise is fundamentally possible.

Xinjiang is different. There are, to be sure, interests at stake here as well: the Chinese population's legitimate need for security along with the equally legitimate concerns of the many countries to which thousands of oppressed Uighurs have fled. But at its core, the Xinjiang conflict is one over values. The degree of discrimination combined with the severity with which Beijing is persecuting its Muslim minority, represents a violation of fundamental values that are not up for negotiation. Rather, they are anchored in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which China also signed when it joined the United Nations -- and which Beijing isn't shy about invoking when it feels the rights of Chinese citizens have been violated abroad.

This conflict of values has been exacerbated by the technological aspect. In Xinjiang, China is relying on digital tools for mass surveillance to an unprecedented degree. DNA-profiling, compulsory installation of spying apps, algorithm-driven facial recognition, identifying citizens based on ethnic characteristics: Beijing is essentially using all of the technical tools at its disposal to keep the Uighurs under tight control.

Even many Chinese harbor fears that these technological tools could soon be used elsewhere in China and even beyond the country's borders. These concerns are justified. The scale of digital surveillance being used in Xinjiang is nothing short of a civilizational rupture. For the first time, it has become conceivable that an authoritarian regime will succeed in robbing an entire population of its culture and religion using digital means.

An Aside

How should the West react to something like that?

The first step must be that of ascribing the diplomatic and political weight to the Xinjiang issue that it demands. Thus far, only the U.S. government has done so sufficiently. European heads of government, by contrast, have "addressed" the persecution of the Uighurs during their recent visits to China, but only as a side note and among other issues.

Second, European countries must insist more forcefully than they have thus far that Western diplomats be guaranteed unimpeded access to Xinjiang. It is important that they get a firsthand look at a situation that only very few journalists have thus far laid eyes on. Furthermore, such visits to the region by European diplomats are necessary to shine the spotlight on oppression. In contrast to the protest movement in Hong Kong, whose representatives have traveled the world to drum up attention for their demands, and in contrast to Tibet, whose plight is never completely ignored because of the presence of the Dalai Lama, the Uighurs have few prominent supporters abroad.

Third, the West must significantly increase both the political and economic cost for Beijing should it continue its human rights violations in Xinjiang. That could include import restrictions for companies that benefit from the tech-powered surveillance regime in Xinjiang, including firms like Dahua, Hikvision and Iflytek. Should the conflict escalate, the West could also consider targeted export bans.

Some of this may sound dated and somewhat futile given China's current economic strength. And one shouldn't have any illusions about how much influence the West has on Chinese domestic policy. It's not much. But for Beijing, the use of severe -- or even extreme -- measures in foreign policy is a matter of course. Norway learned as much in 2011 after regime critic Liu Xiaobo received that year's Nobel Peace Prize. South Korea likewise bore the brunt in 2017 after the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system in the country, and Canada was penalized by Beijing in 2018 after arresting the chief financial officer of Huawei, including the arrest of two Canadian citizens who are still behind bars to this day.

To be sure, China wouldn't be alone in bearing the costs for a more robust Xinjiang policy. Western companies would suffer as well. And Germany, because of its reliance on exports, is particularly exposed. But together with its European and American allies, Berlin does have significant influence. And because of its own history, Germany has a greater responsibility than any other country to flex its muscles.

Unacceptable

Earlier this year, the European Commission released a report in which it referred to China as a "systemic rival." That is particularly true when it comes to Xinjiang. Still, the West must resist the temptation to conflate the human-rights violations in Xinjiang with other ongoing China conflicts and turn it into an all-encompassing confrontation between two worldviews. That would neither be a fruitful approach to the Xinjiang question, nor would it contribute to finding solutions to the other disputes. On the contrary, it would constitute a relapse into a world divided along an ideological fault line. With humanity currently facing an array of problems that cannot be solved without China -- nuclear proliferation, climate change, the fight against poverty and the consequences of globalization, to name a few -- that is something we can ill afford.

What is taking place in Xinjiang is unacceptable. Even as a million Uighurs have been separated from their children for indoctrination in camps, hundreds of millions of people further to the east in this vast country are living the "Chinese dream," working hard, ensuring a good education for their children, amassing consumer goods and traveling the world. 

But sometimes, even in faraway Beijing, the reality of the surveillance state in western China makes an appearance. A few weeks after I had returned to the capital after my last trip to Xinjiang and written about the oppressive realities in the region for DER SPIEGEL, I was called in by the Foreign Ministry.

An official there lectured me about the "irresponsibility" of my coverage and about my ignorance of the true conditions in Xinjiang. "You sit in your air-conditioned office," he said, "and don't have a clue what is going on there." When I reminded him that I had just spent a week in the region, he pulled out a slip of paper and said: "Yes, and you pressured a taxi driver into talking about his family, among other things." He knew the exact place, date and time: the morning of July 7 in the oasis city of Kashgar. 

It was true. On that day, a driver in Kashgar had taken me to the airport. And we chatted along the way, about our children.

A Loucura Agricola Comum: UE torra metade do orcamento

Os europeus são malucos: eles estariam muito melhor com uma política agrícola mais fundamentada em mecanismos de mercado, mas ficam subsidiando atividades claramente acessórias, criando desigualdades estruturais sem necessidade, na verdade, mantendo um imenso sistema de dependência coletiva na droga do subsídio, pior que a cocainomania de certos europeus.
Eles poderiam estar muito melhores se desistissem das grandes culturas comerciais -- tipicamente commodities, mas também produtos hortifrutigranjeiros -- e passassem a importar tudo o que pudesses ser feito em melhores condições, e a menores custos, pelos países vizinhos do Mediterrâneo e outros países em desenvolvimento dispondo de terras e insumos agrícolas mais favoráveis. Os europeus estariam muito melhor desenvolvendo uma agricultura de qualidade -- foie gras, camembert, produtos especiais -- e importando todo o resto, do que mantendo essa estrutura pesada, custosa, irracional.
Vejam os gastos e as desigualdades acumuladas pelo sistema no grafico deste artigo da Der Spiegel.
http://m.spiegel.de/international/business/a-881447.html#spRedirectedFrom=www&referrrer=
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Farm Wars: EU Grapples with Costs of Subsidizing Agriculture

By Susanne Amann, Jörg Schindler and Christoph Schult

Andreas Endemann/ DER SPIEGEL

European Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos wants to reform Europe's agricultural policy, but resistance from the farming lobby threatens to derail his plans. It will be to the detriment of citizens, who are expected to pay for a highly subsidized industry that is harmful to the environment.

From the top of the hill, farmer Martin Ramschulte has an unobstructed view of the past. "That one down there has given up," says Ramschulte, "and so has that one, and that one back there, too." Then he points to a brick house next to a pond. "And if this continues, it'll eventually spell the end of that place, too."

Ramschulte, 59, is pointing to his own house. "That's just the way it is," says the gaunt farmer. It was three or four years ago that Ramschulte began pondering the fate of farming in his area. One neighbor had just ordered 1,500 hogs, another neighbor had ordered 2,000. Less than a kilometer away, factory-like buildings were erected to house about 200,000 chickens. The buildings are surrounded by swaths of open land the size of several soccer fields. "This isn't what I call farming anymore," the farmer says.
In 1978 Ramschulte became a hog farmer in the northwestern German town of Schöppingen, where the 100,000-strong hog population vastly outnumbered the mere 8,000 humans. At the time, he was considered a big player with his 25 hectares (62 acres) of land. By today's standards, his current 35 hectares and 950 hogs pale in comparison. The local farming organization advised him to expand and grow his business if he wanted to stay in farming.
He receives about €10,000 ($13,500) a year from Brussels, while some of his fellow farmers collect several times as much. He was told that he too could qualify for larger subsidies, but Ramschulte has his doubts. "Bigger and bigger, more and more -- it's just absurd."
He isn't an environmentalist. In fact, he's suspicious of environmentalists. Nevertheless, he did take notice when the last bit of pastureland was plowed for cultivation in Schöppingen. "In the long run, in the interest of the future and biodiversity, we have to do it the way this Europe man suggests."
Commissioner Wants Environmental Commitments
That "Europe man" is Dacian Ciolos, the European Union's commissioner for agriculture and rural development, and currently the man the powerful agricultural lobby loves to hate. For months, the amiable Romanian has been at the center of a political battle, one in which even German Chancellor Angela Merkel has become involved.
At issue is by far the largest chunk of money the EU has to hand out, and whether the decades-long motto of European agricultural policy -- "He who has, shall receive" -- is still justifiable in times of crisis. But most of all, the battle revolves around the question of how we intend to feed ourselves in the future, and at what price.
Ciolos has a solution, but one that's unacceptable from the standpoint of the German Farmers' Association and agriculture officials in Brussels and Berlin. He wants farmers to make more binding commitments in return for the billions in taxpayer money that shower down onto Europe's fields. He wants agriculture to no longer be focused primarily on growth, mass production and expanding exports, but rather on environmentally friendly farming and biodiversity. In other words, Ciolos is concerned about the survival of the bit players, both farmers and animals.
The fate of Ciolos's plans will be decided at the EU summit in Brussels at the end of this week. After that, European leaders will negotiate the budget for the years 2014 to 2020. An attempt to reach an agreement failed in November because of broad disagreements among individual member states. The Eastern Europeans wanted more money while the British felt that the cuts proposed by European Council President Herman Van Rompuy didn't go far enough.
It's clear that the smaller the EU budget, the less will remain of agricultural reform. Only if there is enough money is there a chance that the member states will agree to tougher environmental regulations -- and that is what the Germans, in particular, want to prevent at all costs.
The European Union plans to spend about €60 billion, or about 40 percent of the entire EU budget, on agriculture this year alone. It's a lot of money for an economic sector that generates less than 2 percent of the bloc's gross domestic product and employs less than 6 percent of its workforce.
Subsidies Benefit Big Farms Most
Landowners receive much of the money as direct payments. For years, the average payment in Germany has been more than €300 per hectare, even for land that is not actively being farmed. The main beneficiaries of this policy, according to the authors of the journal Der Kritischer Agrarbericht (Critical Agricultural Report), are "large-scale, streamlined farming operations, which receive annual payments of up to €120,000 per employee."
In Germany, 1.9 percent of businesses collect about 30 percent of payments, and they are not always farms. Ice hockey clubs, aristocratic families and companies like candy maker Haribo and sugar producers Südzucker and Nordzucker also benefit from EU agricultural subsidies. In 2009, defense contractor Rheinmetall also received a hefty sum of cash -- for planting trees in a former tank training area.
Farmers who run their farms differently from the mainstream are the ones left with nothing in the long term. It's a contradiction Agriculture Commissioner Ciolos knows all too well. In his native Romania, he has visited plenty of the massive farming operations created under former Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Even today there are still areas where the soil has been depleted, villages have been abandoned, fields have become overgrown and the groundwater has been contaminated.
It was partly his experiences in Romania that prompted Ciolos to unveil his reform proposal in October 2011, which is intended to force European farmers to satisfy a minimum of climate and environmental regulations. "Subsidies are not a birthright," the commissioner says. "Those who expect billions in taxpayer money should also have to do something in return."
His ideas are not really all that revolutionary. For instance, he wants to put an end to the unrestrained practice of plowing pastureland to convert it into arable fields -- a process that releases massive amounts of greenhouse gases. Ciolos wants to stop the trend toward monocultures in fields with more extensive crop rotation, which would eliminate the need for tons of high-energy chemical fertilizer. He also wants to see 7 percent of farmland turned into "environmental priority areas," off-limits to the use of chemicals and high-tech farming methods. The notion of "greening" is at the core of Ciolos's package of proposals.
Agriculture at Heart of European Union
Not surprisingly, opponents of the reforms in Brussels have been up in arms for months. No other area of policy in Europe is as centrally, and thus collectively regulated as agriculture.
The goals are outlined in Article 39 of the Lisbon Treaty, which uses the same wording that was used in the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Community in 1957. The objectives at the time were to "increase agricultural productivity," ensure that farmers could have a reasonable income and guarantee them a "suitable lifestyle." Europe, heavily damaged in the war, lacked adequate, safe and high-quality food, and rebuilding the industry secured the food supply and provided urgently needed jobs.
The main objective was to increase productivity, which made sense at the time, and the results have been impressive. In 1960, a cow in Germany produced an average of 3,400 liters (900 gallons) of milk a year; today it produces almost twice as much. Agricultural workers are nine times as productive today as they were 60 years ago.

The downside of this development was long ignored: environmental pollution, poor husbandry conditions, lack of animal welfare and poor sustainability. To keep them alive, chickens and hogs were fed antibiotics, which entered the groundwater and led to resistance. As global pesticide sales approach the €50-billion mark, the United Nations estimates that more than 3 million people suffer severe pesticide poisoning each year. Ciolos's reform would be a first step at best. Nevertheless, owners of large farms, the agricultural industry, even politicians are mounting the barricades against the proposed changes. In their opinion, the commissioner's proposals would mean that after decades and several false starts, direct payments to Europe's farmers would be tied to painful environmental regulations for the first time.
"People always think it's more important that their food is produced in a safe, transparent and sustainable way," says Ciolos. A poll by the conservation organization WWF shows just how right he is. It concludes that about 80 percent of Europeans want the subsidy payments to be tied to sustainable agriculture and rural development. Some 90 percent say that it is important or very important that farmers, in return for the government subsidies, serve the public good.

• Part 2: Public Support for Farm Subsidies Eroding
• Voters' opinions of farm subsidies were borne out in the recent elections in the agricultural state of Lower Saxony in northern Germany: Residents tired of the stench of liquid manure and large factory farms summarily voted the pro-farmer Christian Democratic Union (CDU) out of office.
  The trend is also reflected in the academic and political worlds. In a declaration published in November 2009, agricultural economists from all over Europe called for agricultural policy to be more strongly oriented toward goals like climate protection and water management. In December 2011, Germany's upper legislative chamber, the Bundesrat, which represents the 16 German states, demanded that the direct payments be "more strongly legitimized by social contributions." The German conference of agriculture ministers also endorsed the fundamentals of the Ciolos proposals.
  "It is in the interest of farmers not to further distance themselves from society," says Ciolos, who senses that a phalanx of special interests in agriculture and politics could defeat his reform. At the head of this phalanx is Joachim Rukwied, president of the German Farmers' Association, who has refused to tolerate criticism of his profession and did not respond to SPIEGEL requests for an interview.
  Meanwhile in Brussels, people like Albert Dess have been doggedly fighting the proposed revamping of agricultural policy for months. Dess, a veteran member of Germany's conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), is now a member of the European Parliament and rapporteur on the future of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). He sets policy for the parliament and, as a rapporteur, negotiates laws with the European Council and the European Commission. Dess was the clear winner in the first round of negotiations in the agricultural committee the week before last.
  The majority of members, most of whom are farmers themselves, are watering down Ciolos's plans. If the committee prevails, all that will change is that farmers will have the option of satisfying the environmental requirements in the future -- or not. Nothing will have been accomplished.
  Dess, a self-confident farmer from the Upper Palatinate region of Bavaria, says he has absolutely nothing against protecting the environment. In fact, he adds, he feels connected to nature -- as he did when he once stepped down from his tractor "to carry a fawn out of the field." But the things Ciolos wants? Poorly conceived and bureaucratic!
  Germany Stands With Farm Lobby
  Dess's opponents in Brussels refer to the 65-year-old Bavarian's work as "Dess-information" (disinformation). In fact, Dess is one of the biggest boycotters of the reform and has introduced a potentially record-breaking 8,000 amendments into the parliament. He reportedly even pushed for having the amendments translated into all 22 EU languages. "A lot of work," says Dess, who seems to relish his words.
  The CSU politician knows that he enjoys the support of Chancellor Merkel and Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner (also of the CSU), whose rhetoric has been inconsistent with her actions.
  Aigner likes to point out how often she is at odds with farmers. "We support much of what Ciolos proposes," the minister insists. In reality, however, she is doing a number of things to satisfy the wishes of the farmers' lobby. Like the lobby, she misses no opportunity to disparage the reform as a bureaucratic monstrosity. And again echoing the lobby, she characterizes Ciolos's proposal to use 7 percent of arable land in environmentally sound ways as "putting fields out of commission."
  Last April, Aigner's ministry unveiled a proposal intended to make "greening" completely voluntary. Her two state secretaries supposedly ensured that a very similar draft was introduced into the European Council, the powerful EU body representing leaders and ministers from the 27 member states, apparently with success. "In addition, there is considerable overlap between the ideas put forth by the European Farmers' Association in November and what is now in the proposals," says WWF official Matthias Meissner.
  Berlin already put a stop to a central building block of the reform last year. Ciolos wanted to eliminate direct payments to the largest operations, which can run their farms on their own steam. Aigner claimed that if that happened, the companies would simply divide themselves into smaller entities to qualify for the subsidies again.
  "Ironically Germany, which is the largest net payer and usually wants the European Commission to pay special attention to how public money is being spent, is now saying no to the capping of direct payments to large farms," Ciolos says with astonishment.
  "Neither Ms. Aigner nor her party allies want a serious reform, because it would harm their own clientele," says Martin Häusling, a Green Party member of the European Parliament. "That's why they are doing everything to continue to support export-oriented agriculture, in which quantity and size are all that matters. What they fail to recognize is that the billions of euros in direct payments have long been unacceptable to the public."
  Without Reform, Subsidies Could End Completely
  The showdown over agricultural policy will be on the agenda in Brussels in the coming weeks, and not for the first time. But in contrast to past showdowns, this time it will not be dominated solely by the Commission and the leaders of the EU member states. The European Parliament will also be given a say in how the billions in subsidies to farmers are structured. The contest is still seen as undecided, although one thing is clear: If the farming lobby does manage to block the Ciolos reform, a much more unpleasant debate could follow, namely whether the billions in subsidies in the current form are justifiable at all.
  "There are actually only two socially acceptable justifications for payments to farmers," says agricultural expert Lutz Ribbe of the European Nature Heritage Fund. One argument, he explains, is that the money can supplement the meager income of farmers, thereby preventing the farming lifestyle in Europe from going extinct. The other is that the farmers can provide vital aid to the environment in return for support from the taxpayer.
  But poor income is hardly an issue anymore for farmers. Global market prices have almost doubled since 2005. According to calculations by the government-run Thünen Institute of Rural Studies, larger farms recently made an average annual profit of about €160,000, of which about 40 percent was financed with taxpayer money. Farmers are also increasingly profiting from the boom in alternative energy, as they rake in millions with biogas plants and wind turbines that they operate on the side.
  This leaves the environmental services Ciolos is calling for. If they don't materialize, says agricultural expert Ribbe, "there will no longer be any justification for direct payments, and they'll have to be eliminated!" Environmental groups like Friends of the Earth Germany, as well as the Greens, tend to agree. Bärbel Höhn, deputy chair of the Green Party's parliamentary group, says: "It must be clear to farmers that social acceptance for direct payments hinges on 'greening.'"
  This explains why EU Commissioner Ciolos has absolutely no intention of giving up the fight. He visited Germany several times last year and spoke to farmers there, he says. "They repeatedly criticized items that aren't even included in the reform." Ciolos says that he was surprised by this "almost ideological opposition to things people haven't even understood."
  Ciolos is quite disconcerted by the chancellor's aim to bring up the issue at the EU summit on Thursday and Friday this week. If Merkel actually manages to cut in half the already minimal environmental offset areas on farmland, says Ciolos, it will mean that Germany is doing nothing at all. "We can talk about details, but there are certain red lines, as far as I'm concerned," says Ciolos. "I will not accept a bogus reform."
  The commissioner is adamant in defending his views, but other commissioners before him have expressed similar opinions. They are gone now, but defenders of the status quo are still around.
  Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
    The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 6/2013 (February 4, 2013) of DER SPIEGEL.