Something dreadful is happening in the Chinese
province of Xinjiang. Large numbers of Uyghurs, the Muslim Turkic speaking people
of the region have been sent to re-education camps. There have been reports of
Uyghur women being sterilised. Han Chinese have been sent to the region in
large numbers and an attempt is being made to erase the language and culture of
the Uyghurs.
The Chinese Government disputes all of these things,
but the same Chinese Government denied that there was any famine during the
Great Leap Forward, denied that anyone was persecuted during the Cultural
Revolution and won’t even let its own people read about anything controversial
in recent Chinese history such as the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.
But why should the Chinese be persecuting the Uyghurs?
The reason is essentially historical. China is an Empire and rules over people
who are not Chinese.
Just as the Russian Empire began as a small settlement
on the banks of the Dnepr, so the Chinese Empire began as a community that grew
up between the Yangtse and the Yellow rivers. Just as Russia spread northwards
and eastwards, so too China spread northwards, southwards and westwards.
While Britain, France and Spain had empires that crossed
seas and oceans, which they eventually lost for this reason, the Chinese and
the Russian empires were contiguous. This is why they kept them.
The borders of the Russian and Chinese empires were
decided by when they met each other. The Russians reached as far east as present-day
Kazakhstan, but the Chinese reached what is now Xinjiang first.
There were disputes between the Soviet Union and China
over the borders. The Soviets invaded Xinjiang in 1934 and again set up a
Soviet Republic, the East Turkestan Republic in northern Xinjiang between 1944
and 1946.
After the Sino-Soviet split in 1962 many Uyghurs
crossed over to the neighbouring Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic and the
Soviet Union promised them independence and encouraged the Uyghurs to rise up
against the Chinese. Soviet Chinese tensions finally escalated in 1969 into war between the Soviet Union and China along the Xinjiang border.
It is an accident of history that the Uyghurs ended up
on the wrong side of the border. If one of these wars or disputes had turned
out differently then the Uyghurs would have formed another of the republics of
the Soviet Union and when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 they would have gained
a new nation state similar to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the other states of
the region. There is little difference between the Turkic speaking peoples of Central
Asia. They usually can understand each other without difficulty, and they are
culturally similar. There are Kazakhs in China and Uyghurs in Kazakhstan. It is
entirely accidental that some people in this region are citizens of their own
state, while others are in re-education camps.
The fall of communism led to the break-up of the
Soviet Union. There was no attempt to hold the Soviet Union together by force.
But the transition from communism to a market economy in China did not lead to
any similar breakup of China. The people of the Chinese empire remained Chinese
whether they liked it or not.
It may be that Putin regretted the breakup of the
Soviet Union. But Russia’s brief moment of weakness had enabled the Soviet republics
to escape the Russian empire. By the time Putin arrived it was too late. He was
dealing with sovereign nation states and any attempt to get them back would
involve war.
China never had that moment of weakness. Deng Xiaoping
who guided the transition from Mao to the market did not allow it to weaken China’s
hold over the whole of China’s territory.
The Chinese attitude to territory can be summed up
simply. What was ever ours is always ours and we will always claim it and be willing
to do what is necessary to get it and keep it.
It is for this reason that China claims Taiwan, Hong
Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet. At some point in history these were all part of the
historical Chinese empire. This and this alone justifies the Chinese keeping
them no matter the wishes of the people living in these places. It justifies China controlling them in such a
way that they will always be Chinese.
The Chinese will not
tolerate anyone in China who wishes to separate from the Chinese state and will
use all means within their power to prevent it.
They have already moved
Han Chinese into Tibet. They have done the same in Xinjiang.
Having done this, they can justify anything else they choose to do in terms of
protecting their own citizens.
There is little doubt
that the Uyghurs have historically hoped for independence. They
have little in common with the Han Chinese. They are remote geographically from
other parts of China. They are culturally, religiously and linguistically very
different from the ethnic Chinese, but they have much in common with their Central
Asian neighbours in places like Kazakhstan.
China shows what a sovereign nation state can do to
hold itself together. Many in both
Taiwan and Hong Kong would like to be fully separate from the Peoples Republic
of China, but they don’t have a choice. Few countries even recognise Taiwan’s independence.
The Chinese model of sovereignty is that you are Chinese whether you like it or
not.
Are the Uyghurs really a threat to Chinese sovereignty? Do they have any serious chance of breaking away from China? The answer has to be no. But Chinese ruthlessness about its territorial integrity means that it will always do what is necessary to crush even the slightest threat that might one day develop. It views what happened to the Soviet Union as both a warning and a sign of Russian decadence for being unwilling to fight for what had once been Russian.
China is not weak. A glance at Chinese history over the past decades
shows its determination and willingness to do what is necessary to become ever
more powerful. The Chinese are a ruthless, intelligent and cunning opponent in
international relations. They win because they are always willing to do what is
necessary and they don’t care one little bit what we think or whether we
object.
People in places like Scotland who have civil rights
and the vote who complain about lacking freedom and self-determination should
remember that they were given what the Uyghurs will never get. Scots were given
an independence referendum. We voted to stay in the UK. We were given self-determination.
Choosing to stay was just as much an act of self-determination as choosing to
leave would have been.
Britain’s concept of sovereignty is completely
different to China’s. There is hardly another country in the world that would
allow a part a referendum on secession. Can you imagine China allowing Hong Kong,
Xinjiang or Tibet to have such a referendum? No doubt the Chinese think us weak
and decadent. The pity is that Scottish independence supporters gave Britain no
credit for allowing them to choose, simply because they lost. It's not so much Saor Alba [Free Scotland] as sour grapes.
Scottish nationalists who complain that Scotland is
not free should
be made to point out Xinjiang on the map and learn what lacking freedom really involves.
The Chinese should realise that Uyghurs are no threat and should be allowed to live in peace. We all have learned a lesson about China this year. It will lie rather than lose face no matter what it costs the rest of the world. China is a selfish, unrelenting and cruel power which since the start of communism has treated its own people worse than Stalin treated his. We only fail to view China as the moral equivalent of the worst aspects of the Soviet Union because of our ignorance and desire for Chinese trade.
There can be no return to normal relations with China until
we can trust them to tell the truth and also until they treat all their peoples
with common decency.