China’s Xi Jinping makes rare visit to Xinjiang

President aimed to demonstrate national unity in visit to region where Beijing has been accused of genocide against Uighurs.

Xi Jinping on a meet and greet in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi on Tuesday. Picture: Xinhua

Chinese President Xi Jinping this week made a rare appearance in the troubled region of Xinjiang, his first visit there in more than eight years and his second trip in two weeks aimed at demonstrating national unity after touring Hong Kong, as he seeks to lengthen his rule.

On Friday, state media outlets carried about 1½ minutes of China Central Television footage showing Mr Xi in government offices, a museum, classrooms and a trade zone in the Xinjiang capital Urumqi. Mr Xi was greeted by musicians and dancers in dress traditionally worn by members of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority, an ethnic group targeted by what the US and other Western governments say is a vast assimilation program by Mr Xi.

China’s government denies it mistreats its ethnic minorities and says Xinjiang policy is a domestic matter. The brief reporting about Mr Xi’s visit appeared to emphasise national unity instead of ethnic divisions.

The surprise visit caps an almost two-week period in which Mr Xi hasn’t appeared in state media making a public appearance, an unusually long time for China’s leader to be out of view. This year is critical for Mr Xi politically as he completes what analysts predict will be his bid to remain in power for a third term. China’s government often withholds news of Mr Xi’s travels until his trip is concluded.

The trip to Xinjiang came on the heels of Mr Xi’s visit over two days to Hong Kong in late June to mark 25 years since the former British colony returned to Chinese sovereignty. It was Mr Xi’s first visit there since Beijing imposed a strict national security law that critics including the US government say curtailed rights in the once freewheeling city.

Mr Xi isn’t known to have visited Xinjiang since evidence began emerging that the Chinese government had expanded a year-long campaign of forcible assimilation and omnipresent surveillance by holding members of the region’s mostly Muslim ethnic minorities in concentration camps.

The President toured Xinjiang in April 2014 when, in the wake of violent incidents elsewhere in China that Beijing blamed on ethnic separatists including Uighurs from Xinjiang, he ordered military personnel in the region to “strike first” at terrorists. Hours after that four-day visit ended, Chinese media reported an attack involving knives and explosives at an Urumqi railway station that left several people dead.

By 2018, Western human rights groups, governments and media were documenting evidence that surveillance of Uighurs and some members of other ethnic minorities had been vastly stepped up in Xinjiang and some were being mass-detained in internment camps and others subject to forced labour. Estimates of those detained later topped one million.

Beijing has described the facilities as vocational schools. This month, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said, “Xinjiang-related issues are of major concern to China. The so-called forced labour in Xinjiang is an outrageous lie from the US side to smear and contain China”.

Shortly before leaving office in January 2021, the Trump administration declared China’s activity in Xinjiang as genocide, a term the Biden administration has since adopted.

Western governments have also imposed economic sanctions on some Chinese officials involved in Xinjiang policy, and cut trade and investment links to the region. The US and some allies diplomatically boycotted this year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing in protest over Xinjiang policy, as well as China’s policies towards Hong Kong.

In the brief report on Mr Xi’s latest trip to Xinjiang, local media said its purpose was an opportunity for the President to understand Xinjiang’s strengthening of talent, Covid-19 control, economic and social development, and reinforce the Chinese nation’s unity.

A poster behind elderly people in Uighur clothing who danced for Mr Xi read: “All ethnicities are one loving family; collectively building the China Dream with one heart,” using one of Mr Xi’s favoured slogans.

Mr Xi has stayed away from Xinjiang in recent years in a bid to create distance between China’s central government and the atrocities that have taken place, according to Salih Hudayar, the Washington-based prime minister of a self-declared government-in-exile for East Turkistan.

He interpreted Mr Xi’s emphasis on local communities during the visit as signalling a more “micro-level emphasis” on control for people in the region.

Separately, Omer Kanat, an ethnic Uighur who directs the Uighur Human Rights Project in Washington, in an email criticised the President’s visit.

“To see Uighurs smiling and dancing in front of the man responsible for atrocities is difficult to bear, especially given how far the government has gone to erase genuine expressions of culture,” he wrote.

The Wall Street Journal