The treatment of the Uyghur people of Xinjiang Province under Chinese rule is a major talking point in diplomacy. There is a more nuanced view.
Dan Steinbock is a widely published international commentator and the founder of the Difference Group. In mid-2021, he published an extended, systematically detailed review of the American initiation of a genocide accusation directed at China, entitled: Playing Genocide Politics: The Zenz-Xinjiang Case. It begins by making two key points. First, the case made – and intensified by a willing Western media – relies to an extraordinary degree on a single, remarkably unchallenged source, the German researcher Adrian Zenz. Next, this flimsy, amplified case mocks real genocide survivors.
Steinbock builds a detailed argument linking Zenz’s Victims of Communism group with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations founded by Nazi Germany’s Minister of the East, Alfred Rosenberg, in 1943. The dot-joining explaining the “Zenz debacle” highlights the roles of a wide range of like-minded Sinophobic organisations including the Jamestown Foundation, the Turkish Grey Wolves, varied US-supported Uyghur groups – and the CIA.
Steinbock concludes with comments based on the recent work of Jeffrey Sachs and William Schabas: “The charge of genocide should never be made lightly. Washington’s rejection of top legal experts for a far-right, ultra-religious crusader is a frightening precedent. When the word ‘genocide’ is exploited without a solid legal basis, the very designation is politicized and diluted.”
You can read the full report here.
Richard Cullen is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. He was previously a Professor in the Department of Business Law and Taxation at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.