New Report: Ins and outs of the lies about Xinjiang

Children have fun on Dove Lane in Hotan City, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, May 27, 2020. (Xinhua/Sadat)

Under the Western media's potent attack and malicious smear, Xinjiang, the beautiful Uygur autonomous region, has long been portrayed as the darkest place in the world. Lies about Xinjiang, often through dirty funding, fact-twisting stories and massive smear campaigns, are made by the anti-China forces in the United States, manipulating and encouraging some truth-bending "academic institutions", rumor-mongering "experts and scholars" and "amateur actors" with no moral scruples.

Their ultimate purpose is to defame Xinjiang, mislead international public discourse and smear China's international image.

However, truth shall not be tainted, the world should not be deceived and narrative about Xinjiang mustn't be distorted.

By completing the report Things to Know about All the Lies on Xinjiang: How Have They Come About? China Watch Institute, China Daily’s communication-led think tank, with abundant facts and figures from independent US news website thegrayzone.com and Australian publication Australian Alert Service, and a series of press conferences held by the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, reveals the truth about the fraudulent Xinjiang-related "databases" and the so-called "witness testimonies", exposed the real mastermind behind them and transparentized the ins and outs of the lies about Xinjiang.

Key findings

The report listed detailed truth behind the lies about Xinjiang that anti-China forces has been spreading. Layered from their objectives, political means, and how they made up the sources, the report included nine points.

1. As early as in the last century, the United States and other Western countries started to support separatist and terrorist activities in Xinjiang out of geopolitical purposes in order to destabilize China and contain its development.

2. Adrian Zenz, by piecing together dubious information, irresponsibly claimed that millions of Uygurs in Xinjiang are under detention. He is a far-right fundamentalist Christian, who bases his research on radical media reports and speculations.

3. The so-called “research findings” published by Zenz and others are full of blatant data faking and fraudulent claims. They confuse speculation with hard facts, blur the lines between propaganda and academic research, and fabricate anti-China narratives based on ideology.

4. A “report” released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) in March 2020 claims that “more than 80,000 Uygurs were transferred out of Xinjiang to work in factories across China between 2017 and 2019”. In fact, this “report” is full of loopholes and lacks the minimum factual basis.

5. When the slanderous claims against China were ready for use, instead of verifying their veracity, some Western media outlets rushed to hype them up. To create fake news, the BBC even went so far as to pay for “evidence”.

6. The Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) is the first organization to propagate that China has detained millions of ethnic Uygurs in Xinjiang. With the support of the US government, the organization used crude and clumsy research methods and the conclusions produced are seriously flawed.

7. The “First Independent Report” on Xinjiang which was widely reported in Western media actually came from an institution funded by a sham university.

8. The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) is an international separatist network. One of WUC’s affiliate organizations, the right-wing Uyghur American Association (UAA), advocates a hardline China policy, and believes in violent activities to achieve its goals. The US government has supported and subsidized Uyghur extremist organizations through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). In the name of promoting and protecting Uygur human rights, these organizations attempt to stoke Western hostility against China, with the aim of subverting China and establishing an “East Turkistan” nation-state in Xinjiang.

9. The so-called “Xinjiang Victims Database” poorly put together by anti-China forces is an ill-motivated and baseless project designed purely for political manipulation.