Tag: Urumqi (China)

Volkswagen and BASF Are Reconsidering Ties to Xinjiang, China

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Volkswagen Group is reviewing the future of its joint venture in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China and another German industrial giant is starting to sell its stakes there following new international scrutiny of forced labor by predominantly Muslim ethnic groups. Volkswagen said last week that it was in discussions with one of its main joint venture partners in China, the state-owned Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, in the wake of allegations of human rights violations at their joint venture in Xinjiang. The companies are examining “the future direction of the…

Star Uyghur Scholar Who Vanished Was Sentenced to Life in China

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She was a trailblazing professor and ethnographer from the Uyghur ethnic group in far-western China who documented the religious and cultural traditions of her people. She was at the height of a career that the Chinese government had once recognized with awards and research grants. But it was not enough to keep her safe. Rahile Dawut, who nurtured a generation of academics and scholars, disappeared in 2017, along with other prominent intellectuals and academics targeted by the Chinese government in its campaign to crush the Uyghur cultural identity. Details about…

Book Review: ‘Waiting to Be Arrested at Night,’ by Tahir Hamut Izgil

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But their departure is no triumph. When Izgil calls his mother after arriving in the United States, the police in China confiscate her cellphone and ID card, returning them only after Izgil’s father and brother sign an affidavit promising never to speak to Izgil again. His friends delete his contact info on WeChat. Despite these precautions, some of his relatives are swept up in the mass detentions that have ensnared more than one million Uyghurs. Izgil cannot enjoy the uneasy freedom of life in the United States. With little English,…

China Moves to Erase the Vestiges of ‘Zero Covid’ to Deter Dissent

Chin@Strategy

This is how China’s ruling Communist Party wants people to remember how it handled the Covid-19 pandemic: It was a “miracle in human history.” Every measure the government imposed was rooted in science, supported by the masses — and, ultimately, “completely correct.” The party is waging an ambitious propaganda campaign to rewrite the public’s memory of “zero Covid,” a signature policy of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, that helped contain the virus for almost three years — but went to such extreme lengths that it smothered the economy and set off…

Protests Stretch China’s Censorship to Its Limits

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He too shared videos of the protest on WeChat, though he deleted them after 24 hours in an effort to evade the authorities, who had begun to go after some demonstrators. Though only up shortly, his videos changed the minds of two people he had thought would be unreceptive: his parents. “My parents, like many Chinese parents, used to think what I’m doing is meaningless and childish, but they have changed dramatically in the past two days,” Mr. Qu said. His parents now understand why he would participate in such…

What China’s Covid Protesters Are Calling For

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As he crossed a small road in Shanghai, the man held up a bundle of flowers and issued a rallying call to a crowd of excited onlookers. Within minutes, he was surrounded by security officials and wrestled into a police car. It was one of the more dramatic moments in several days of protests in China that captured the boldness of young Chinese demonstrators as well as the risks they face in challenging the country’s authoritarian leadership. The protests have been fueled by anger over an apartment building fire in…

Proud, Scared and Conflicted. What the China Protesters Told Me.

Chin@Strategy

They went to their first demonstrations. They chanted their first protest slogans. They had their first encounters with the police. Then they went home, shivering in disbelief at how they had challenged the most powerful authoritarian government in the world and the most iron-fisted leader China has seen in decades. Young Chinese are protesting the country’s harsh “zero-Covid” policy and even urging its top leader, Xi Jinping, to step down. It’s something China hasn’t seen since 1989, when the ruling Communist Party brutally cracked down on the pro-democracy demonstrators, mostly…

China Regroups to Snuff Out a Wave of Covid Protests

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After China experienced its boldest and most widespread protests in decades, defying Xi Jinping, a Communist Party leader who prizes his reputation for ironclad authority, his security apparatus is scrambling to reassert control. Public security personnel and vehicles have blanketed potential protest sites. Police officers are searching some residents’ phones for prohibited apps. Officials are going to the homes of would-be protesters to warn them against illegal activities and are taking some away for questioning. Censors are scrubbing protest symbols and slogans from social media. On Monday, the demonstrations were…

The Covid Protests in China, Explained

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“Lift the lockdown,” the protesters screamed in a city in China’s far west. On the other side of the country, in Shanghai, demonstrators held up sheets of blank white paper, turning them into an implicit but powerful sign of defiance. One protester, who was later detained by the police, was carrying only flowers. Over the weekend, protests against China’s strict Covid restrictions ricocheted across the country in a rare case of nationwide civil unrest. There had been signs of dissent, but the new wave of anger may pose a bigger…

Protests Erupt in Shanghai and Other Chinese Cities Over Covid Controls

Chin@Strategy

Protests spread to cities and campuses in China on Saturday night amid rising public anger at the country’s strict but faltering controls against the spread of Covid, with a crowd in Shanghai going so far as to call for the removal of the national leader, Xi Jinping. The demonstration occurred after an outpouring of anger online and after a street protest erupted on Friday in Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang in western China, where at least 10 people died and nine others were injured a day earlier in an…