It’s not hard to spot the ethno-racial profiling Chinese authorities use to clamp down on Uighur resistance. In recent years, Chinese authorities have established numerous checkpoints in cities and towns across Xinjiang, the vast province that abuts post-Soviet Central Asia. In some areas, one is unable to walk more than a couple of hundred meters…
Academics in Australia might reflect on the fact that scholarly books critical of the Chinese Communist Party are now shunned by publishers. Scholars who work on China know that continued access to the country requires them to play by Beijing’s rules, which for most means self-censorship – the dirty secret of China studies in Australia.…
Before he disappeared from his luxury apartment at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong on Jan. 27, 2017, Xiao Jianhua, a Chinese-Canadian billionaire, favored female bodyguards. Why, exactly, was unclear: Perhaps he simply liked being surrounded by women; perhaps he trusted them more than men. Whatever the reason, those guards weren’t much help when…
Nostalgia for the boyishly-brutal Wang Zhen flooded across Han Xinjiang in the days, weeks, and months following the intra-communal violence of early July 2009 in Urumqi. Many Han invoked Wang Zhen’s notorious approach to management of Xinjiang’s non-Han (and in particular, Uyghur) population as the solution to what they termed the ‘ethnic problem’ (minzu wenti).…
High school sweethearts – both originally from China’s Xinjiang Uighur region – dreamed of living together in Australia The last time Almas Nizamidin saw his wife was on Valentine’s Day last year, when he flew from Australia to China to surprise her. Now she’s in prison. A month after his visit to China, his newly pregnant wife,…
Authorities in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region have jailed the four wealthiest ethnic Uyghurs in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) city for acts of “religious extremism,” according to an official, amid a crackdown he said is unlikely to end any time soon. A source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, recently told RFA’s Uyghur Service that Abdujelil…
