The Warning from China’s Vanishing Muslims
Family members vanished in the middle of the night.
Held captive in camps.
“Wooden and rubber batons, whips made from twisted wire, needles to pierce the skin, pliers for pulling out your nails” - Tortured.
Pork forced down their throats, against their religion.
Forced labour. Solitary confinement. Food deprivation.
No due process, no legal representation.
Forced to renounce their beliefs and identity.
A US commission called it the ‘the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today’ while a leading historian called it ‘cultural cleansing’.
These are the conditions faced by up to two million Uighurs Muslims inwestern China's Xinjiang region. Yet, in July 2019, as countries condemned the Chinese state at the UN,37 countries banded together to defend China’s human rights record and dismissed the countless reports on the mass detention and torture.
What stood out from the letter submitted in China’s defencewas the composition of its signatories, with overwhelming Chinese support coming from a number of Middle Eastern and African states.
The list of African states included: Algeria, Angola, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Comoros, Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Gabon, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Togo and Zimbabwe.
Looking at the percentage of Muslims per country (map on above), we can see that a number of the signatories that came to China’s defence have a large percentage of Africa’s Muslim population.
What is puzzling is that countries including Algeria and Egypt have spoken out and condemned global inaction on Islamophobia. In 2008, when an Ad Hoc Committee of the UN Human Rights Council received a report by a group of experts outlining their recommendations regarding conventions to combat racism, Egypt was the first critic. Egypt found the report “unacceptable” because it omitted issues related to the defamation of religion and Algeria followed suit, likening 20th century Nazism and anti-Semitism to the current wave of Islamophobia.
To add to the confusion, in February, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Comoros, Egypt, Gabon, Nigeria, Somalia and Togo are all party to, condemned anti-Muslim violence in India, which began after protests were ignited by the passing of India’s new citizenship law, in November 2019. The law, introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, grants fast-tracked citizenship to non-Muslim persecuted minorities from neighbouring countries. To add, nearly2 million people, in the north-eastern state of Assam have been excluded from the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and have been asked to prove their citizenship.“India is also building a detention centre for the tens of thousands of people, who the courts are expected to ultimately determine have entered illegally” – putting Muslims at risk of being stateless or in detention camps. In response, the OIC urged the Indian authorities to bring “instigators and perpetrators of acts of anti-Muslim violence to justice, and to ensure the safety and security of all its Muslim citizens and the protection of Islamic holy places across the country”.
Across a continent, not a single administration raised its voice in defence of the Uighurs.
Abstinence is one thing. The silence is questionable.
Overt support is another. It is unjustifiable.
By publicly and boldly supporting the mass incarceration of the Uighur Muslims, the Middle East and Africa have revealed the strength of China’s economic chokehold.
In the African case, the fate of many infrastructure and industrial projects is in the hands of the Chinese, to the extent that China became the largest contributor of Africa’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in 2016.
This does not even begin to portray the extent to which Africa’s economies are entwined with Chinese capital. According to the China-Africa Research Initiative, at John Hopkins University, the value of China-Africa trade in 2018 was $185 bn, up from $155 bn in 2017. The largest exporter to China from Africa, in 2018, was Angola, followed by South Africa and The Republic of Congo and the largest buyers of Chinese goods were South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt.
At the 2018 Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), in Beijing, President Xi Jinping pledged that China would invest a further $60 billion on the continent.In Somalia, the Chinese government has built over 80 infrastructure projects like hospitals, stadiums, and roads. Furthermore, according to Stears Business, as of May 2019, Chinese companies have even invested$20 billion in over 150 firms in Nigeria.McKinsey also discovered that there are 10,000 Chinese companies operating in Africa, including 920 in Nigeria and 861 in Zambia.
Belt Road Countries
Additionally, 44 out of 55 African countries (Western Sahara included) have ratified a memorandum of understanding on the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aims to promote trans-continental trade while connecting China with Asia, Europe, and Africa, through the completion of multiple infrastructure projects.
It is also important to note that there is an element of self-preservation at play for signatories of the China defence letter. For example, Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan and South Sudan have also been condemned by the UN for their respective human rights violations.
The Sino-African relationship has often been presented as being ‘welcomed with open arms’and touted as being ‘conditionless’, especially in comparison to Africa’s dealings with Western states. However, as the relationship deepens, it is increasingly scrutinised by those on the continent and abroad for replicating the destructive neo-colonial relationship Africa has with the West.
Despite this, both Chinese and African leaders reject claimsthat Beijing’s activities the continent come under a form of "new colonialism". The Chinese president Xi Jinping proclaimed that “China’s investment in Africa comes with no political strings attached”. Similarly, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and President Paul Kagame of Rwanda have defended Africa’s growing relationship with China with Ramaphosa refuting “the view that a new colonialism is taking hold in Africa” and Kagame exclaiming on separate occasions that “our growing ties with China do not come at anyone's expense" and that “China relates to Africa as an equal”.
“Our growing ties with China do not come at anyone's expense"
President Paul Kagame
Kagame’s words echo.
The mirage persists - “our growing ties with China do not come at anyone's expense".
The questionable silence and unjustifiable support given to China is simply evidence that African leaders have coaxed themselves into believing that their deal with China is sweet.
Whilst unpacking the impacts of Chinese loans on Nigeria, Stears Business, posited that in addition to requiring Chinese companies to undertake projects whilst bringing Chinese workers with them, the Chinese are typically unwilling to negotiate debt relief and friendlier loan terms during critical situations, unlike Western creditors and Multilateral Banks. For example, as Zambia struggles with debt repayments, research from the business risk consultancy EXX Africasuggested that Chinese firms are seeking control of Zambian mining assets as collateral for potential loan defaults, including Glencore’s Zambian operation Mopani, which may be heading towards a sale, and the country’s largest producer, First Quantum Minerals.
Consider this:
The value of African industrial output handled by Chinese businesses is equal to $500bn (roughly 12% of the total)
Chinese businesses tend to come with their own workers
This means that there is a limited transfer of knowledge and as a result, we run the risk of depending on China for industrial survival.
Moreover, Felix K. Chang, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institutelabelled the BRI a form of ‘debt-trap diplomacy’. He highlighted how “China often uses backroom deals to gain support for BRI projects; how burdensome the BRI’s financing terms have become; how the BRI has heaped massive debts onto recipient countries; and ultimately how poorly performing many BRI-backed projects have been”.
On 24th April, Tanzanian President John Magufuli cancelled a Chinese loan worth $10 billion, signed by his predecessor Jakaya Kikwete, to construct a port. According to reports, the terms of the loan included a provision where Chinese investors would get 30 years to guarantee on the loan and 99 years uninterrupted lease. Magufuli even went as far as to state that the terms of the loan agreement could “only be accepted by a drunken man”.
Kagame’s words echo.
“Our growing ties with China do not come at anyone's expense"
President Paul Kagame
Across a continent, not a single administration raised its voice in defence of the Uighurs.
China, like many nations, has co-opted the discourse on ‘The War on Terror’ to justify its religious and cultural oppression, under the guise of reeducation against extremism.
Since the mid-90s, China has accused militant Uighurs of starting terrorist attacks across the country. When Chen Quanguo became the Chinese Communist Party Secretary in August 2016, there was a92% increase in security spending in Xinjiangfrom 2016-17, resulting in a dramatic increase in the scale and intensity of social and religious control in the region. From then, Uighur language schools have been closedand Uighur Muslims have been detained “for minor or seemingly arbitrary infractions without formal charges, due process rights or access to legal representation”.
Picture: Chen Quanguo
In one case, a Uighur man was detained in 2018 for having his watch set to ‘local time’ better known as ‘Urumqi time’. During the founding of Modern China, Mao Zedong created a single time zone, across China, to foster national unity – China Standard Time – but because the country is so big, Xinjiang is actually two hours behind Beijing, in natural daylight terms.
Reports have even suggested that in some cases, all adults of an extended family have been detained. So, children are taken into state-run child ‘welfare centres’ while their family members undergo 'reeducation training’ sessions on Mandarin, Chinese law, ethnic and national unity, de-radicalisation and patriotism.
As health experts make their various remarks about the effectiveness of China’s ability to quarantine a huge amount of people to combat the spread of Covid-19, Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch, linked the mass quarantine to “the extraordinary degree of control that they use to arbitrarily detain 1 million people”. Over the past few years, China had been expanding and improving on their surveillance system in Xinjiang. The Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect reported that “Chinese authorities have implemented systems that monitor the daily lives of Uighurs, including what they read, the content of their communications, and the people with whom they interact… Authorities also reportedly collect DNA during medical check-ups, install a GPS tracking system on all vehicles, and monitor and control all mobile and online communications”.
“Our growing ties with China do not come at anyone's expense"
President Paul Kagame
"African Village" Guangzhou
The very little attention the persecution of the Uighurs received was quickly drowned by the fears over WWIII, Covid-19 and the historic slump of oil prices.
The world may forget the plight of the Uighurs, but it is highly relevant in the advent of the recent discrimination faced by Africans in China.
In recent weeks, videos and reports of Africans being the target of discrimination and ostracism in China have surfaced. Despite paying rent, numerous African tenants have found themselves on the streets of Guangzhou. The local government went as far as implementing surveillance, conducting compulsory testing and enforcing a 14-day quarantine for all African nationals – even if they had been already been tested negative and hadn’t recently travelled outside China.
Kicked out of hotels, kicked out of apartments - left to sleep on the concrete
Refused entry into shops. Denied entry into hospitals.
Forceful isolation.
Visas revoked.
Chinese Youtuber, Simon Yu, explains that discriminatory outbursts are common in China and are caused by inherent features in China’s political system. Yu argues that political capital is not derived from Chinese citizens but from superior Chinese officials, who have placed great value on economic development and stability. “Motivated by these two performance measures, Chinese officials see containing Covid-19 as their top priority - a rise in infection numbers could mean going back to lockdowns, which drags the economy and causes social instability”.
The continent’s response, well lack thereof, to the Uighur crisis has shown China that African nations are ok with their methods of safeguarding social stability.
In his response to the letter of complaint written by African Ambassadors in China to the Foreign Minister, the Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian noted that the Guangdong authorities “attach great importance to some African countries’ concerns”. Zhao's statement, however, did not reference the ambassadors' note nor did it mention the allegations of discrimination or racism against Africans in the city - a sign of political indifference.
The Chinese embassy in Zimbabwe also dismissed the accusation that Africans were being deliberately targeted, stating, "it is harmful to sensationalize isolated incidents…China treats all individuals in the country, Chinese and foreign alike, as equals”.
Across a continent, not a single administration raised its voice in defence of the Uighurs.
So, can we be resentful and frustrated if the world does not come to our defence?
The Chinese government’s behaviour towards the Uighur people should have served as a warning for all African countries jumping into bed with them. It is a cautionary tale, bolstered by the recent acts of discrimination towards Africans, about the lengths China is willing to go to preserve its economic and social stability. So, when examining past, present and future Sino-African relations:
Should we beware of the dragon in the Lion’s den?