They make a desert and call it ‘peace’.

-Tacitus, Agricola1

Weaponizing History: The CCP’s War of Words against Memory

Tony Serna

September 2019

Academic Disclaimer: The views expressed in this research are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy of Indo-Pacific Command, the Department of Defense, of the United States Government.

1 “It is no use trying to escape their arrogance by submission or good behavior. They have pillaged the world: when the land has nothing left for men who ravage everything, they scour the sea. If an enemy is rich, they are greedy, if he is poor, they crave glory. Neither East nor West can sate their appetite. They are the only people to covet both wealth and poverty with equal craving. They plunder, they butcher, they ravish, and call it by the lying name of ’empire’. They make a desert and call it ‘peace’”

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“This is a huge mistake, probably one of the biggest in my career,” lamented Craig Smith, president of Marriott’s Asia Pacific Office. He was pleading to the (state-run) paper Daily for forgiveness for his company’s actions, which had “appeared to undermine Marriott’s long held respect for China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.2” The problem? A third party contractor for Marriott had sent a promotional email to members of Marriott’s loyalty program that included a drop-down menu question; “What is your country of residence?” The menu unfortunately included separate options for China, , , and . To compound the misfortune, a suddenly overwhelmed and confused customer service employee for Marriott’s feed in Nebraska accidentally liked a received tweet instead of dismissing it. The tweet was from Friends of Tibet, a pro-independence lobby group, congratulating Marriott for recognizing Tibet as a country along with Hong Kong and Taiwan.

That accidental like on twitter was what caused the Marriott executive to grovel for mercy from the state-owned Chinese press, prompted the international hotel giant to issue an “eight point rectification plan” to appease the offended Chinese nation, and resulted in the bewildered Nebraska call center employee being fired, all having learned a very costly lesson in the ’s interpretation of history. Invigorated by this glorious victory, Chinese netizens prowled the part of the internet that they could access over the weeks that followed, searching for other national offences in drop down menus. Delta Airlines was found guilty of the “grave mistake” of listing Taiwan as a separate county, and publicly apologized for the “emotional damage caused to the Chinese people.3” The Civil Aviation Administration of China then issued a directive to 44 other international airlines, demanding that they list Taiwan as a part of China on their websites. In 2018 every major airline kowtowed to .

This is the conquest of Taiwan- with weaponized history. Beijing authorities have progressively eroded the international perception and recognition that Taiwan has been an empirically independent country for seven decades. Despite its continued existence as a free democracy with a professional military and a powerful economy, Taiwan is being obliterated by the People’s Republic of China in a psychological war on memory- like Tibet of yesterday and Hong Kong of today. The tools of this war are words. Political reality can be bent by twisting historical narratives around specifically chosen vocabulary. When professionals in the arts of influence spend effort in choosing words and terms there is usually a good reason. It should also be remembered that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is an organization whose whole root, core, and brain is constructed around and intensely focused on influence; and it has a very special concern with certain words, phrases, and terms.

2 Griffiths, James. The Great Firewall of China. London: Zed. 2019. 309. 3 Kinetz, Erika. “Airlines obey Beijing’s demand to call Taiwan part of China”. : Associated Press. May 22, 2018. https://www.apnews.com/6f55419ce6a9449687b91f3fdfb3417d

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This paper will examine a few of the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party-state to bend reality to its ideology through a fanatical adherence to and promotion of its historical propaganda; first through a brief overview of how history works as a tool of the Chinese state inside China, and then though a few examples of how Beijing is now waging historical warfare against the world. Most people don’t instinctively know Chinese history, and can only unwittingly acquiesce to the version forcefully peddled by Beijing. So here follows some outlawed Chinese history.

Controlling History in China

It is becoming more widely known that the People’s Republic of China features an amazing and dystopic party-state controlled information environment. The CCP system and structure which controls all information in the country is an unprecedented achievement in human history. The party has long perfected its supremacy over print, radio, television, and film; but the internet behind the Great Firewall of the PRC is its own new universe in so many ways. It is an echo chamber of epic proportions, and only the Party gets to decide which sounds resonate. YouTube is censored. Wikipedia is blocked. Google is banned. There is instead a Chinese version of everything that outsiders are familiar with, and so much more! Super apps like WeChat can do everything- Facebook, Venmo, LinkedIn, and banking, all-in-one. The successful apps and digital enterprises are owned and operated by billion-dollar, nominally private, but state-supervised companies, and all employ their own teams of censors. Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, and Sina are just a few well known examples.

The rules of censorship in mainland China are intentionally vague and ambiguous.4 The specific limits of what is and is not allowed are often left undefined to encourage self-censorship and carefulness of expression so that nothing said should get too close to the sensitive limits of Party-approved thought. This method is effective at an individual level as users self-censor to prevent having their online access slowed, restricted, or blocked altogether. Proactive censorship also makes business sense, as the big social media companies will employ teams of censors to cleanse their platforms of disruptive thoughts and ensure that lucrative Party favor is sustained. CCP style censorship ensures that information is harmonized with Party guidance to ensure what the New York Times has described as “ideological security.”5 This style of thought coercion is a traditional element of CCP media governance, but in the cyber realm the struggle between the CCP and the Chinese people is more dynamic.

4 Link, Perry. “China: The Anaconda in the Chandelier”. April 11, 2002. China File. http://www.chinafile.com/library/nyrb-china-archive/china-anaconda-chandelier 5 Wong, Edward. “Chinese Security Laws Elevate the Party and Stifle Dissent. Mao Would Approve.” The New York Times. May 29, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/30/world/asia/chinese-national-security-law-aims-to-defend- party-grip-on-power.html

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The results can often seem humorous; Winnie the Pooh is censored. So are political posts about River Crabs and Bolivian Alpacas.6 But May 35th is also a term that is forbidden, because it, like many other creative but banned mathematical combinations, are evasive ways of saying June the 4th - the most sensitive date on the Chinese internet; the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square and Beijing Massacre in 1989- also known as “Chinese Internet Maintenance Day.”7 The memory of that historical event has been effectively purged from the consciousness of mainland China as part of a monumental effort to build a harmonious future society where events like that never occur again. It isn’t mentioned in books or film, or featured in museums. Many writers cite anecdotes of mainland students studying abroad who are surprised to learn of the events for the first time, but end up rationalizing the correct actions of the party-state. Eric Fish, author of a book on Chinese millennials, quoted two Beijing graduate students who told him:

“’I really feel bad for those students, but politically speaking, maybe it was necessary,’ one of them said, pointing to the incoherence of the protestors’ demands and the authoritarian traits some of the more radical student leaders displayed. ‘Things look different once it becomes history,’ the other student added, claiming that the massacre facilitated necessary economic reforms by ending unrest and establishing order. ‘Tiananmen looks bad, but maybe there were some good things. Chinese really want stability above all else.’”8

The erasure of the past in order to impose a better future is a common feature of Marxist societies, because Marx’s Historical Materialism philosophy is grounded in a radically different perspective of history and concepts of historical memory. Investigative journalist Joshua Phillip spoke of this in an interview on Marxist philosophy; “I’ve heard it described before as a war against memory. The people who live under these systems (say) that there’s a constant war against memory. That they (the party) don’t want you to remember what life was before.”9 In August 1966 Mao launched his infamous campaign against the “Four Olds” – Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, Old Ideas. Legacies of pre-Communist China: temples, books, and old emperors’ bones, were dug up, denounced, and burned to ash during the throes of the Cultural Revolution. Similar events accompanied other Marxist revolutions in the twentieth century, overturning the former bourgeois dialectics, structures, and traditions.

6 The Alpaca, a ‘Grass Mud Horse’, is a near homonym for a Mandarin profanity about mothers. River Crab is a near homonym for harmony; both are symbols of creative digital resistance against Chinese censorship. Ng, Jason. Blocked on Weibo. New York: The New Press. 2013. 203. 7 Custer, C. “What to Expect on June 4, China’s Unofficial and Orwellian ‘Internet Maintenance Day’”. TechinAsia.com. June 2, 2013. https://www.techinasia.com/june-4-china-unofficial-orwellian-internet-maintenance- day 8 Fish, Eric. “Tiananmen Shaped China’s History. But Chinese Millennials Have Mixed Views About Its Legacy” Time Magazine. June 3, 2019. https://time.com/5599060/china-millennials-tiananmen-anniversary/ 9 China Unscripted. “#31 The Origins of Communism and Its Tactics”. Podcast. Season 1, episode 31. May 2, 2019. 1:54. Joshua Phillips is a reporter for , a media organization connected with Gong, a spiritual movement persecuted by the CCP.

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But burning history is also a very old Chinese tradition, going back millennia to the Yellow Emperor; Qin Shi Huang, the man who first unified and took possession of All Under Heaven- Tianxia – China. The great historian Sima Qian of the (which had just supplanted Qin) recorded the edict from the authority of the Yellow Emperor to destroy alternative versions of history:

“…the records of the historians apart from those of Qin should all be burnt. Apart from those copies which the scholars of broad learning are responsible for in their official capacity, anyone in All Under Heaven who dares to possess and hide away the Songs, the Documents, and the Sayings of the Hundred Schools, should hand them over to a governor or commandant and they should be indiscriminately burnt. If there is anyone who dares to mention the Songs or the Documents in private conversation, he should be executed. Those who, using the old, reject the new will be wiped out together with their clans. Officers who see and become aware of such cases but do not report them should be convicted of the same crime with them. If thirty days after the ordinance has been promulgated the books are not burnt, then the culprit should be branded and sent to do forced labor on the walls.”10

Sima Qian later writes that 460 dissenting Confucian scholars “were all buried alive at Xianyang and that the whole Empire was made to know about this to serve as a warning for the future.” It is not uncommon for the factions that are victorious on the battlefield to also win control of historical narratives, especially in the ancient world where writing and records were rarer, more precious, and easier to gather and obliterate. Victorious powers usually want to emphasize their positive traits and favorable perspectives of events. National history curricula are contentious in every country. It should not be assumed that burning books and burying scholars alive is the central element of Chinese history; the was famously interactive with neighboring ideas and philosophies; and the Muslim Ming Admiral Zheng He sailed all the way to Africa on some of the biggest wooden ships ever built and even meddled in local politics and history in places like Sri Lanka.

But Mao has been favorably compared to the Yellow Emperor in recent years, and waging wars against memory resounds through parts of Chinese history- a tradition that is being rejuvenated. It is an understatement to say that Mao was a revolutionary. He even started a revolution against his own revolution for not being revolutionary enough. Mao was also innovative in the incorporation of propaganda into government operations. In democracies, the government derives its legitimacy to rule through elections after a campaign season. In the People’s Dictatorship, state propaganda replaces the function of elections, and the campaign never ends. The CCP considers propaganda to be the “’lifeblood’ of the party-state.”11 With a monopoly on information, CCP propaganda has been able to control the narratives of current

10 Qian, Sima. The First Emperor: Selections from the Historical Records. New York: Oxford University Press. 2009. 74, 78. 11 Brady, Anne-Marie. China’s Thought Management. New York: Routledge. 2014. 8.

5 events, and in the process bend perceptions of reality and the creation of new memory for a fifth of humanity.

Mao’s Cultural Revolution produced an overabundance of Marxist revolutionary propaganda to the point of nausea. The excess of that period, the ‘reform and opening up’ that followed, and the accelerating demise of the Soviet Bloc all left a difficult position for the CCP Propaganda Departments in June of 1989. When workers, student protesters, and people of Beijing took over Tiananmen Square, there were apparently disagreements among CCP leadership. Some officials in the Propaganda Department even supported the protesters or at least advocated for covering the protests in official news sources and publications instead of obeying censorship directives.12

On the morning of June 4th, the People’s Liberation Army began slaughtering the people in the streets of Beijing; killing or wounding thousands.13 Deng Xiaoping concluded that the loss of focus on ideological indoctrination had caused the massacre; “…our biggest mistake was made in the field of education, primarily in ideological and political education- not just of students but of the people in general. We didn’t tell them enough about the need for hard struggle, about what China was like in the old days and what kind of country it was to become. It was a serious error on our part.”14 After 1989, the CCP conducted a spiritual revival upon itself, manifesting in the Patriotic Education Campaign.

The Patriotic Education Campaign that rolled out in 1994 under Jiang Zemin was a clear shift in the CCP’s foundation of legitimacy. No longer the zealous proletarian, global- revolutionary, Marxist-Maoist Party that it was in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, the Chinese Communist Party in the 1990s was the establishment. It was the Party in power and so it began to assert its legitimacy based on the self-evident effectiveness of its rule. Just as important was the shift from a promoted identity based on being a part of international socialism to an identity of reinvigorated Chinese hyper-nationalism. A central part of this is a revival of Chinese history with a special focus on national humiliation. Chinese Patriotic Education scholar Zheng Wang summarizes that instead of “emphasizing a class-struggle narrative as the leadership had done in the past, Jiang focused on the struggles with outside forces.”15 Patriotic Education is a comprehensive national propaganda effort in China, and since its launch the government has

“increased investment in building public monuments, patriotic education in schools, commemorative events such as the build up to the return of Hong Kong and Macau to Chinese control, the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the PRC, and the eightieth anniversary of the

12 Ibid. 42. 13 Lim, Louisa. The People’s Republic of Amnesia. New York: Oxford University Press. 2014. 7. Also- Mitter, Rana. A Bitter Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press. 2004. 280. 14 Wang, Zheng. Never Forget National Humiliation. New York: Colombia University Press. 2012. 96. 15 Ibid, 98.

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founding of the CCP. Patriotic Education was designated as ‘the main task of spiritual civilization work.’”16

The basis of domestic legitimacy is that the Party is in power because the Chinese people have been bullied victims of foreign forces and will “Never Forget National Humiliation”- and only the Party can ensure a stable, strong, prosperous China, with its proper place at the center of the world. In mainland China, history education has become “an instrument for the glorification of the party, for the consolidation of national identity, and for the justification of the political system of the CCP’s one-party rule in the post-Tiananmen and post-Cold War eras.”17

The magnum opus of Patriotic Education was undoubtedly the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, one of the most spectacular propaganda events in human history. Viewed as a priceless opportunity to display the glory of a risen China to the world; former deputy-director of the Central Propaganda Department Liu Peng was chosen to head the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games.18 The opening ceremony, which included 14,000 performers (over half of whom were PLA soldiers), was directed by Zhang Jigang, deputy head of the PLA Propaganda Department19. In the midst of the 2007-2008 Financial Crisis in the West, the success of the 2008 Olympics and the roaring Chinese economy seemed to have instilled a new confidence in party leadership to bring China and China’s story more vigorously out into the world.

Having now achieved international economic success, international ideological success is becoming a Party obsession. Massive state investments in “telling China’s story well”20 have dramatically increased the reach of CCP propaganda in international print, television, radio, and online. State media have made new investments in international offices, and Confucius Institutes (under the supervision of the CCP Central Propaganda Department) have blossomed across university campuses around the world. Hollywood producers proactively scrub their films of content that might offend the Party so that they may have the chance of being one of the few foreign films authorized to be shown in the booming Chinese cinemas.

PRC authorities and citizens have increasingly linked their business affairs with a demand that foreigners adopt a “correct understanding” (CCP understanding) of Chinese history and international relations. This international propaganda campaign has had some often unnoticed but nonetheless fantastic successes in coercing international businesses, governments, educational institutions, and even media organizations to bend towards CCP “correct understanding” on several key issues; notably Tibet, its farcical Taiwan narrative, and

16 Brady, Anne-Marie. Marketing Dictatorship. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. 2008. 50. 17 Wang, 9. 18 Brady, 16. 19 Ibid, 27. 20 Lim, Lisa. “Inside China's audacious global propaganda campaign”. The Guardian. February 11, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/dec/07/china-plan-for-global-media-dominance-propaganda-xi-jinping

7 the cultural genocide it is conducting upon the Uighur people in . Despite early victories, however, the CCP is finding less success in selling its charade about what is happening in Hong Kong, evidence perhaps of an international press awakening to Chinese propaganda, or a more intimate connection with the struggle happening today in that international city.

Controlling Chinese History for the World

Many China watchers were united in their unsurprise in 2018 when the National Congress of the People’s Republic of China overwhelmingly voted to abolish the Deng Xiaoping-era Presidential term limits, allowing the opportunity to serve as PRC “President for life”. The symbolic move was widely covered in foreign press. However, practically none of the English coverage mentioned that there actually is no “President” of the People’s Republic of China.

Xi Jinping holds several titles at the head of the Chinese government. He is General Secretary of the Communist Party, “Core Leader” of the CCP (an honorary category shared with Mao, Deng, and Jiang), the “People’s Leader” (in official press, former Mao honorific title), Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Chairman (Guojia zhǔxí) of the People’s Republic of China. The word for President – Zŏngtŏng; which is the title used to describe Emmanuel Macron of France, Donald Trump of the United States, or even Tsai Ing-wen in Taipei, is not a title of leadership in the Beijing government. So where does “President” Xi Jinping come from? Explained by Quartz, the English version of the 1982 Constitution issued by Beijing used the word “president” instead of “State Chairman” as in previous versions. This change was intended to present the leader of the PRC as being in the same category of legitimacy as democratically elected leaders. The state-run People’s Daily elaborated “that the translation of ‘president’ is used because in English the head of state of a republic is referred to as ‘president’21”.

Though a single instance may seem innocuous, modifying the English lexicon to refer to the dictator of Communist China as “President” is just one of the many tiny triumphs achieved by CCP propaganda for foreign audiences. Those small victories combined have won astounding conquests in the narratives of the English-speaking world, with Party approved (party propaganda) phrases and narratives often being reprinted verbatim in foreign media or adhered to by foreign businesses. The CCP considers itself to be in an ideological war with the West in particular. The leaked Central Party guidance “Communique on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere” (also known as Document Number Nine), published shortly after the ascent of Chairman Xi, warns of the existential dangers of Western journalism and “historical

21 Sonnad, Nikhil. “Xi Jinping is not the ‘president’ of China”. Quartz. November 2, 2017. https://qz.com/1112638/xi- jinping-title-xi-jinping-is-not-the-president-of-china/

8 nihilism” – the rejection of party accepted conclusions on historical events and figures: “By rejecting CCP history and the history of New China, historical nihilism seeks to fundamentally undermine the CCP’s historical purpose, which is tantamount to denying the legitimacy of the CCP’s long-term political dominance. “22

There is no historical narrative whose control is more important for the CCP than the “separatist” “breakaway province” of the inseparable “part of China since ancient times” - Taiwan- an empirically independent country, with a government that predates the PRC by nearly four decades, on an island that during “5000 years” of Chinese history has been directly governed and controlled as a province by a mainland Chinese authority for about 12 years (1887-1895, 1945-1949).

Taiwan- Inseparably Separate

The status of Taiwan is the most complicated feature of international relations because the most populous country in the world has developed a fanatic revulsion to the reality that Taiwan is a separate geo-political entity from the People’s Republic of China. This emotion is not foundational, it has evolved. In the 1930’s, Mao himself spoke in support of eventual independence for Korea and Formosa (Taiwan) after the defeat of the Japanese Empire23, but the unresolved Chinese Civil War and the relocation of Chiang Kai-shek and the Republic of China to Taiwan made it much more than just a peripheral island to the Chinese Communist Party. The transition of Taiwan to a free, prosperous, democratic, alternative Chinese society is seen as a threat to the legitimacy of the Party. The CCP narrative is that in 1949 the Republic of China ceased to exist, and was completely replaced by the People’s Republic of China – now there is only one China, and it is CCP China. The inconvenient reality is that the Republic of China has been governing from Taipei for seventy years. Unable thus far to reconcile that dissonance politically, Beijing has sought to erase the separate existence of Taiwan in the ideological sphere. If that fails it has promised to achieve its goals with military force.

The CCP is having great success on the ideological front. Obsession with correct terms and strict instructions for Chinese journalists and scholars who deal with Taiwan has now permeated foreign media as well. CCP propaganda expert Anne-Marie Brady writes that “Beijing’s preferred terms for discussing the Taiwan issue have entered the international lexicon. It is common for non-Chinese scholars and journalists alike to use the preferred CCP term for resolving the Taiwan issue: ‘reunification’.”24

22 Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s General Office. “Communique on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere” (Document Number Nine). April 22, 2013. 23 Snow, Edgar. Red Star Over China. Toronto: Bantam Books. 1984. 90. 24 Brady. Marketing Dictatorship. 102.

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“Reunification”: This is a propaganda term promoted by the CCP to support its position that Taiwan is part of China- specifically the One China governed by Beijing authorities, that it was taken from China by the Japanese, infiltrated by separatists, protected by the Americans, but wants desperately to be ‘reunified’ with mainland China under CCP rule. Similar to Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner , and peripheral areas that have only been occasionally controlled by Chinese states, the government declares that Taiwan “has belonged to China since ancient times.”25 Much of that is historical nonsense, but nonetheless, “reunification” is a propaganda term that is organically disseminated by most major Western media organizations and is featured in almost every English language report on Taiwan-China relations. The most accurate word to use is “”, but simply “unification by force”, “occupation”, or even “conquest” would better describe the ambitions of Beijing.

“Breakaway Province”: Another of Beijing’s historical fantasies that is widely propagated by the Western press is that Taiwan is a “Breakaway province” of China. There is not solid evidence that Chinese were aware of the existence of Taiwan through the majority of recorded history.26 It was inhabited for thousands of years by aboriginal Austronesian-speaking peoples, and in the 17th century it began receiving a variety of unwelcome visitors from Spain, the Netherlands, and China. Though claimed and conquered by the in 1683, and incorporated as a prefecture of Fujian in 1887, the island was in near constant rebellion, and the actual control of the Qing over Taiwan is historically suspect. Ceded to Japan in 1895, it was a prized colony for fifty years until the Japanese surrender in 1945. Taiwan was then increasingly occupied by Chiang Kai-shek’s forces as the mainland was lost, the PRC was proclaimed in Beijing, and the Republic of China moved its government to Taipei. Interestingly, the People’s Republic of China is a breakaway state that emerged from the Republic of China, so it is China (PRC) that is a breakaway of Taiwan (ROC) rather than the other way around. The relationship of Taiwan to the Asian mainland is extremely complicated. The one thing that is clear is that “breakaway province” is a totally inaccurate description; but it is effective propaganda.

China has “not renounced the use of force”: Perhaps the most pernicious parroting of CCP propaganda in Western media sources is the phrase that China “has not renounced the use of force” to “compel reunification” with Taiwan in the event of a move toward Taiwanese independence. This is taken from PRC officials and the PRC anti-secession law which gave itself legal authority to conquer Taiwan with military force. The “Anti-Secession” Law passed in 2005 clearly states the intent of Beijing to start a war of conquest against Taiwan if it proclaims the reality of its independence from mainland China. And yet, this blatant threat of military aggression against a free and democratic country is most frequently described as not having “renounced the use of force.” Perhaps the implications are harsh and uncomfortable, or perhaps

25 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. “What is the Reason for Saying ‘Taiwan is an Inalienable Part of China’?”. Accessed 9/4/2019. Fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/ljzg_665465/3568_665529/t17798.shtml 26 Knapp, Ronald. China’s Island Frontier: Studies in the Historical Geography of Taiwan. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii. 1980, 6.

10 it is too hard for even journalists to imagine that the PRC would actually start a catastrophic war to support its perversion of history, despite the clearly stated intent and the fact that the PRC has started a war with nearly all of its neighbors since its founding. Regardless, “not renounced the use of military force” is an unacceptably saccharine phrase to describe the ambition of a bellicose state with the intent and capability to unilaterally ignite a catastrophe. After all, this is a capable regime which is currently in the process of obliterating the Uighur people and culture in what has become Western China.

Xinjiang – ‘Vocational Training Centers’ and Genocide

Xinjiang’s literal meaning is ‘New Frontier’ in . The name references its recent acquisition to China. Now the largest province-level region of the PRC, this region of had been inhabited by the Turco- and speakers of the most Eastern branches of Indo-European languages for thousands of years before it was finally conquered and annexed by the Qing Dynasty in the 1880s after a brutal war of extermination against the Dzungar and people.27 It was the heart of the Silk Road, a vibrant center of Buddhism and Nestorian Christianity; the home of the , the Kushans, the Sogdians, and the Chagatai. It is a desert basin with a rich, diverse, and ancient history of languages and cultures that are distinctly not Chinese.28 And it is because of their un-Chineseness that the native Uighur people can no longer exist in a newly nationalistic China.

Over the past few years under the banner of “counter-terrorism”, the Chinese Party- state has rapidly constructed dozens of internment camps where an estimated million Uighurs have been forcibly detained without charge or trial and subjected to cultural elimination training.29 PRC authorities are even taking Uighur children, who are forcibly enrolled in schools behind barbed wire and armed guards where they are taught to be Chinese and to love the Chinese Communist Party. With years of experience in efforts to eliminate the Tibetan language, the state has turned on the Turkic Uighur language and the Arabic alphabet.30 A white paper published by the State Council Information Office in July denied that Uighurs are Turkic, and declared that “hostile forces in and outside China, especially separatists, religious extremists and terrorists, have tried to split China and break it apart by distorting history and

27 Dikotter, Frank. The Tragedy of Liberation. New York: Bloomsbury Press. 2013. 33. 28 Frankopan, Peter. The Silk Roads. New York: Vintage Books, 2017. 12 29 Auyezov, Olzhas. “Tracking china’s Muslim Gulag”. Reuters. November 29, 2018. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-camps-china/ 30 Wu, Huizhong. “Sign of the times: China's capital orders Arabic, Muslim symbols taken down”. Reuters. July 30, 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-religion-islam/sign-of-the-times-chinas-capital-orders-arabic-muslim- symbols-taken-down-idUSKCN1UQ0JF

11 facts” and those “that have colluded to distort history ... will be cast aside by history and the people.”31 Destroy the language, destroy the identity, destroy the history.

Outside media has been rigorously prohibited from the region, and only a few reports have emerged, but those that have are utterly chilling. Fortunately, the international media seems to have begun to doubt the accuracy of PRC officials’ statements over what is happening in Xinjiang. Qatar-owned Al Jazeera for example, in 2015 was mostly citing Chinese state-media sources when reporting on Xinjiang, but that began to shift along with many other media outlets as more horrific stories began to emerge in 2017 and 2018. When official statements about the Uighur oppression in Xinjiang are cited recently, they are usually refuted by primary sources in the following paragraphs. The egregiously soft terms used by the Party-state have contributed to the growing skepticism of Orwellian nonsense such as “Vocational Training Centers”.

“Vocational Training Centers”: The Party now seems to prefer this new term over “Re- education Camps.” First, officials denied their existence, but after satellite imagery made their recent construction obvious, the state propaganda apparatus launched a public relations campaign to message that that these centers were a “pioneering” solution to combatting extremism. They have been promoted as “vocational centers” where “trainees” receive correct instruction in the law, Mandarin , and “workplace skills”. Closely chaperoned observers have indeed noticed classrooms for teaching skills such as sewing and botany. CCP officials recently made the widely unbelieved claim that 90% of the “graduates” (detainees) have now signed work contracts and gone home. Compared by officials to “Boarding Schools”, the prison camps are also thought of as mental health hospitals where the mental disease of religion, Islam in this case,32 is treated through intensive therapy- or brutal torture, according to those who have been released from the prison camps. Every instance of the use of “Vocational Training Center” in English media found in this research also included a critical analysis of the situation in Xinjiang. Xinjiang is a case where the Party narrative does not seem to have traction outside of Chinese state-owned media, and scrolling through various international media outlets can reveal when the official narrative lost its credibility.

“Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism”: Initiated in 2014, this is the official reasoning behind the subjugation of the Uighurs of Xinjiang. Though there had been small separatist organizations linked to terror attacks, the Party-state has elected to pacify the entire ethnic group through Sinification. According the CCP, they are terrorists. The women are terrorists, the children are terrorists, and of course, Uighur men are terrorists. At least that is

31 The Guardian. “China denies Uighurs' Turkic descent and says 'hostile forces' trying to split country”. 22 July, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/22/china-denies-uighurs-turkic-descent-and-says-hostile-forces- trying-to-split-country 32 Samuel, Sigal. “China Is Treating Islam Like a Mental Illness”. The Atlantic. August 28, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/china-pathologizing-uighur-muslims-mental- illness/568525/

12 what they are repeatedly told to repeat in the ‘voluntary’ camps that they are not allowed to leave. Peter Martin, a journalist writing for Bloomberg, participated on a government sponsored, tightly controlled tour of three cities in Xinjiang in April. With CCP chaperones present, he was able to ask several detainees; “What crime have you committed?”

“Each time we asked them what crimes they had committed, and each time we received similar answers with the same key phrases. They had been infected by “extremist thought” and sought to “infect” others before realizing the error of their ways in the camps. Many included the phrase: “I want to say that I am here voluntarily.” Even more striking, the same detainees could repeat their answers word for word when asked.”33

In early July of 2019, twenty-two democratic nations sent a letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council condemning the PRC’s practices in Xinjiang. A week later 37 countries, including many Muslim countries, sent a rebuttal letter to the U.N., commending China’s achievements in human rights, and defending the PRC’s handling of Xinjiang; parroting much of the Party’s preferred lingo. An important signatory was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, whose Crown Prince had been quoted as defending the efforts to eradicate Uighur identity and Islam in state media during a visit to China in February; “China has the right to take anti-terrorism and de-extremism measures to safeguard national security."34

“Stability Maintenance Measures”: Nothing concerns the Chinese Communist Party more than domestic stability. The foundation of their modern foreign policy is that China does not “meddle in the internal affairs” of any other country, and therefore no other country should “meddle in the internal affairs” of their China. Even if their governance directly results in the deaths of millions of people; it is none of the world’s business if it happens inside PRC territory. A similar logic has been promoted by many historical programs of genocide, which the United Nations was founded in part to prevent. The human rights abuses of the Maoist regime are the reasons it was an international pariah for decades. That did not end with Mao, they just became economically prudent to ignore. The argument that the Party-state “does not meddle in the affairs of other countries” is of course an obvious lie. Billions of dollars and thousands of workers are dedicated specifically to foreign propaganda, the “One Belt, One Road” program has seized economic sovereignty and inundated dozens of countries with corruption and debt, and PRC security personnel have harassed and threatened Uighur family members in France, Canada, and even the United States. Much like Mao, the current regime in Beijing seems to be totally incapable of acknowledging any form of criticism, alleging that all charges are politically motivated and intended to weaken and divide China. The rebuttal against charges of human rights violations at the UN by Chinese officials was: “We will not accept the politically driven

33 Martin, Peter. “How China Is Defending Its Detention of Muslims to the World”. Bloomberg. April 18, 2019. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-19/how-china-is-defending-its-detention-of-muslims-to-the- world 34 Al Jazeera. “Saudi crown prince defends China's right to fight 'terrorism'”. February 23, 2019. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/saudi-crown-prince-defends-china-fight-terrorism-190223104647149.html

13 accusations from a few countries that are fraught with biases, with total disregard for facts,” said vice foreign minister Le Yucheng. “No country shall dictate the definition of democracy and human rights.”35 The statement from the vice foreign minister gained a greater tragic irony in the summer of 2019 as millions of Hong Kong people took to the streets to define for Beijing what democracy and human rights really mean. The CCP is facing its greatest challenge in 30 years because Hongkongers were born beyond the Firewall, they know that they were promised democracy, liberty, and rule of law, and for that they are willing to stand and fight Beijing.

Hong Kong- Two Systems, Two Narratives

If Beijing has made steady progress in bending the world toward its Taiwan historical narrative, and is still battling for control over the Xinjiang narrative, it has so far been dealt a surprising blow by the world perception of what is happening in Hong Kong. Beijing backed authorities have made an enemy of the free press in Hong Kong, and so their narrative was only presented with skepticism by international media from the beginning. More perilous than merely losing the narrative, Beijing seems to be losing Hong Kong itself, as the people there increasingly feel that the suffocation of their one system of “two systems” means that Beijing can never be trusted. Hong Kong is different from every other city in China. It is a truly an international city, and has been for hundreds of years. Built outside the Great Firewall, it has been a bastion (or infection vector) of free press, free speech, freedom of religion, and rule of law. One legacy of colonialism is that many Hongkongers speak English, and so their voices can be heard without translation by sympathetic ears around the world.

A proposed extradition bill, which among other things would allow Beijing authorities to demand the turnover of suspects of mainland ‘thought crime’ with crudely fabricated evidence, sparked a wave of weekend protests in Hong Kong that have intensified since June and brought millions out in the streets to denounce the increasing stranglehold of the CCP over their city. Hong Kong is now in a fight for survival against a tyrannical regime. It was promised democracy, but that has been withheld by Beijing. Since the turnover of Hong Kong from Great Britain to the PRC in 1997, the government has done its best to decapitate leaders and organizations that promote democracy or a broader perspective of autonomy. The decapitation tactic removed some leaders but turned Hong Kong society into a hydra, forcing the citizens to develop alternative ways to organize society and achieve collective aims. Through the internet and social media, a new, organic democracy is being born in Hong Kong, and all the propaganda of China is failing to contain it.

35 Kuo, Lily. “China says UN criticism of human rights record is 'politically driven'”. The Guardian. November 6, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/06/china-un-criticism-human-rights-record

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“Black Hand” of “Hostile Foreign Forces”: At a July press briefing, PRC Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying regurgitated a common propaganda theme of hostile foreign forces dedicated to weaken China; “We can see that U.S. officials are even behind such incidents… The U.S. should know one thing, that Hong Kong is China’s Hong Kong, and we do not allow any foreign interference…We advise the U.S. to withdraw their black hands.”36 In August the PRC Foreign Ministry sent 43 pages of a letter and supporting documents to senior editors at international media outlets outlining their position on the Hong Kong protests. The letter described the protests as: “’violent activities that are aimed to trample the rule of law’ and have caused ‘mayhem in Hong Kong.’ It cites news articles, largely from Chinese state media, detailing links between ‘foreign forces’ and protesters.”37 Bloomberg, which received the letter and is banned in the PRC, wrote that:

The rhetoric is in line with China’s previous efforts to highlight the city’s chaos, portray the protesters as rioters and blame the “black hand” of the U.S. for fomenting violence amid clashes between demonstrators and police… In each of these cases the government has sought to finesse the international narrative. In June, it countered the U.S. account of how trade talks broke down between the two countries with a White Paper blaming the U.S. for its “beggar-thy-neighbor unilateralism.” It’s also released reports defending its policies in Xinjiang and began hosting foreign journalists on carefully choreographed tours of detention camps holding Uighurs in the far western region.”

The Black Hand narrative has not gained traction outside of the PRC. It simply gives the United States far too much credit to be credible. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam has even admitted herself that the protests are a sign of domestic discontent. Only in mainland China- where Patriotic Education has ensured that everyone is raised to believe the conspiracy that the United States has been constantly striving to ‘contain China’ - is the population primed enough to believe the U.S. government is capable of convincing millions of Hong Kong people to go into the streets and fight for democracy even if it had the inclination to do so. Beijing’s attempts to portray the protestors as “cockroaches” and “terrorists” are also failing to find a receptive audience in the international press.

“Cockroaches, Terrorists, Separatists”: On August 27, a Hong Kong assistant police commander instructed his department to stop referring to protesters as “cockroaches” in response to several instances of police being filmed using the term and police officers’ associations using it in official documents.38 Beijing supporters and state media have also

36 Cadell, Catharine. “China tells U.S. to remove 'black hands' from Hong Kong”. July 22, 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-extradition-usa/china-tells-u-s-to-remove-black-hands-from-hong- kong-idUSKCN1UI0QJ 37 Bloomberg News. “China Seeks to Shape Hong Kong Narrative with Letter to Media”. August 20, 2019. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-21/china-seeks-to-shape-hong-kong-narrative-with-letter-to- media 38 Dixon, Robyn and Kilpatrick, Ryan. “News Analysis: ‘Cockroaches’ vs. ‘terrorists': Can Hong Kong protesters and police dial down the rage?” Los Angeles Times. September 1, 2019. https://www.latimes.com/world-

15 referred to Hong Kong activists as “scum”, “violent radicals”, and compared them to ISIS.39 Facebook and Twitter recently announced that they had shut down accounts and groups that appeared to be established by the Chinese government to spread disinformation about the Honk Kong Protests. Both companies said they will no longer accept advertising from state- controlled media outlets.

The pest control strategy used by government authorities to exterminate potential leaders of popular discontent has forced the Hong Kong people into organizing a de- centralized, native democracy through social media, notably LIHKG, a platform similar to Reddit. 40 Users can up vote or down vote comments, allowing popular, timely posts to rise to the top. LIHKG has been used to plan and organize demonstrations, spread information, and even make decisions on crafting cohesive messages for international audiences. LIHKG was used to decide what to include on a crowdsourced advertisement that was placed in several major international newspapers with the intent of making Hong Kong a topic of the recent G20 Summit in Osaka.41 Hong Kong already has a democratic institution strong enough to develop an international information operations campaign. Its intended effect was achieved; apparently Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe was the first to bring up Hong Kong to the PRC delegation, despite the PRC assistant minister for Foreign Affairs asserting that: “I can tell you for sure that the G20 will not discuss the affairs of Hong Kong. We will not allow the G20 to talk about Hong Kong matters.”42

There were few pundit predictions that the Hong Kong people would start an international information war against the propagandists of Beijing in 2019 and would be winning. The pressure of Beijing is galvanizing Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and the coercion of the CCP has pushed them closer together and farther from the CCP. In a panel an Australian university in early September, academic Clive Hamilton said of the historical narrative being formed about Hong Kong;

“Now many young activists in Hong Kong have said that for them this battle is life or death. The choice is to be free or to live under Beijing’s oppressive yoke. Beijing will, they know, deprive them of their liberty, of their individuality, it will force them to live a lie, to be silent, to conform to the Party’s dictates. They know that they will be watched, they will have their words taken nation/story/2019-09-01/news-analysis-cockroaches-vs-terrorists-can-hong-kong-police-and-protesters-dial-down- the-rage 39 Matsakis, Louise. “China Attacks Hong Kong Protesters With Fake Social Posts”. Wired. August 19, 2019. https://www.wired.com/story/china-twitter-facebook-hong-kong-protests-disinformation/ 40 Reddit is a social; news aggregation and discussion website that allows users to collectively vote and promote comments and content. 41 Zhou, Viola. “How Hong Kong Activists Crowdfunded a Global Ad Campaign.” Inkstone. June 28, 2019. https://www.inkstonenews.com/politics/hong-kong-protesters-launch-anti-extradition-newspaper-ad- campaign/article/3016500 42 Lam, Jeffie. “Discussion of Hong Kong extradition bill will not be allowed at G20 summit in Osaka, Beijing says”. South China Morning Post. 24 June, 2019. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong- kong/politics/article/3015792/discussion-hong-kong-extradition-bill-will-not-be-allowed

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away, they will have their thoughts monitored and shaped and they will be punished for any infraction of the Party’s ideology.

Because that’s China under the iron rule of Xi Jinping today. So, many young people in Hong Kong, we’ve heard them, say that they would give up their lives if they have to, they would rather die than live under Beijing’s tyranny. For the protesters, especially those on the front lines, these months in 2019 will define their lives. Nothing they will ever do will matter more than (what) they are doing in these months now. They are being forged in this battle. They will remember it always. However it turns out, they will look back on what they have done with enormous pride. If they fail, they will have tried. They will have risked their futures, risked their lives, and we cannot ask more of anyone than that. They are the heroic generation. They are the young lions of Hong Kong, and history will remember them.”43

Conclusion

Here in the free world, we have this luxury of knowing, and remembering. Freedom to speak, to think, to write, freedom of belief, freedom to consider multiple sources and multiple perspectives of history. Those freedoms are also responsibilities. For those things to survive, they must be maintained. Fortunately there is still good journalism being done. Much of the initial reporting on the heinous oppression in Xinjiang has come from Radio Free Asia, which has a heroic Uighur language staff; continuing the tradition started by broadcasting in the outlawed Tibetan language to another tyrannized population. HBO’s Vice News has done fantastic work as well on Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and HBO’s John Oliver has made investigative journalism entertaining with pieces on Xi Jinping, One Belt One Road, Hong Kong, and interviews with the Dalai . John Oliver’s program has earned him the privilege of having his name censored from mainland search engines. HBO was already banned. Most of those HBO main segments are posted for public access on YouTube. There is also China Uncensored, an arguably humorous current events YouTube channel that features weekly critical reporting on the CCP. China Uncensored even livestreamed from Hong Kong at the protests in early June. Other new media has responded admirably, with several websites and online conglomerates dedicated to ridiculing, exposing, and circumventing CCP propaganda and censorship. There are also several high-quality weekly podcasts such as the Sinica Group, CSIS’ China Power, or Little Red Podcast, which regularly feature academics, journalists, and other China experts and provide nuanced, contemporary information about the emergence of the PRC as a global power.

43 Hamilton, Clive. “Be Water: Hong Kong vs China, with , Badiucao and Clive Hamilton”. Hosted by Louisa Lim. Little Red Podcast. September 5, 2019.

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So what can we do? First, as speakers of English, we can reclaim our language and speak with purpose. We have the same power to use words to shape the narrative, and we can choose to more accurately describe the leader of China as a “Chairman” instead of a “President”. We can stop saying “reunification” and say instead forced “annexation”. We have the freedom to learn a more complete version of Chinese history than the hollow narrative propagated by the CCP, and in this war on memory, we have the ability to remember.

30 years after the People's Liberation Army mowed down students in the ancient capital; that event is still vigorously censored by the most pernicious system of thought control in human history. The CCP has spared no expense to purge that memory from the conscious of China and the outside world. It has similar objectives with the aberrations of Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan. They want you to forget. But the world remembers what happened at Tiananmen. We remember Tibet. We have recently been reminded of CCP policies by the hideous oppression which is being wrought today in Xinjiang. We know the relentless assault that the CCP is conducting to consume Hong Kong and the people of Taiwan- and we cannot forget them; our histories are intertwined.

The most important historical narrative for the CCP is to make the world believe that it is China. The One China. A ‘five thousand year’ old country, whose ‘inalienable’ parts have included Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Tibet, , Arunachal Pradesh, the South China Sea, The Diaoyu Islands, and Taiwan- “since ancient times”. One China, with One Voice, emanating on down from Zhongnanhai, the Imperial Gardens in Beijing, modern headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party. That is their narrative, but it isn’t the only narrative.

The history of China is indescribably ancient, diverse, and fascinating. More humans have lived and died there than any other place on Earth. Empires and dynasties have come and gone but for thousands of years China has endured. On October 1st, the PRC celebrated the 70th anniversary of its founding. It is still a young country. It is not the Qing Dynasty, that is gone. It is not the Republic of China either because that remains. It is not the only way of being Chinese, as proven in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, California, Hawaii, and around the world. China is so much more than the Chinese Communist Party and its PRC. Let us not ascribe to them a historical legitimacy they have neither attained nor deserve.

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