More friends are welcome to visit Xinjiang, see its charm, harmony: spokesperson

BEIJING, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Friday that Xinjiang will keep its door open to the world, adding China sincerely welcomes more friends from all countries to visit Xinjiang and see its charm, harmony and prosperity for themselves.

Spokesperson Wang Wenbin made the remarks at a daily press briefing, in response to recent comments by Moiz Farooq, an executive editor of Daily Ittehad Media Group about his visit to Xinjiang.

Wang said in 2023 alone, Xinjiang received nearly 400 delegations and groups that consist of over 4,300 visitors from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Egypt, France, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and other countries and international organizations.

Some of them are government officials, diplomats, religious figures, experts, scholars, journalists and ordinary travelers, Wang said. "They visited many places there. They listened to clergies giving sermons at mosques and the Islamic institutes and visited cultural heritage sites to see how Xinjiang's traditional culture is protected. They went to local factories, businesses and farms to learn about Xinjiang's production and development, and visited ordinary households where they saw the happy life of people of various ethnic groups."

He went on to quote relevant remarks about Xinjiang from those who have visited the region. Wang said Japanese tourists who traveled to Xinjiang said that they witnessed the happy life of Xinjiang people and began to know that many ethnic groups live side by side in the region and they are united like pomegranate seeds. A Pakistani journalist said that everywhere he went in Xinjiang, he could see people living a normal, peaceful and contented life, and what he saw in Xinjiang is different from the horrifying reports he had read about. Maxime Vivas, a French writer who visited Xinjiang for the third time last year, said that tranquility and harmony can be seen everywhere in the region.

"Seeing is believing. People are not blind to the truth," the spokesperson said. "For certain countries, they are comfortable telling lies and rumors about so-called 'genocide' and 'forced labor' in Xinjiang, but it takes them forever to acknowledge the humanitarian tragedies in places such as Gaza. This is plain hypocrisy."