One thing that is missing from this article is how they are doing this? How are they coercing people? Are they literally dragging them out of their homes? Threatening them? Or are they just offering them opportunities that are actually preferable to their current conditions, and the people are accepting them?
I've hiked through regions of Tibet and talked to villagers in relatively remote areas. One thing I saw hiking in the mountains and valleys was abandoned nomad lodges and pastures. My Tibetan guide sadly explained to me that the local officials found the nomads too hard to manage when they were living independently and so used a system of sticks and carrots (fines and subsidies) to move them into villages that were created from scratch and comprised of cookie-cutter cement houses.
One effective incentive to get the nomads to settle down is to threaten their family members with fines or removal of subsidies unless they move into town.
I visited some of those made-ex-nihilo villages and talked to the people there. One immediately obvious thing is there are Chinese national flags flying on almost every single household and big posters of Xi in the households. I asked about those and the residents explained they get fined if they don't fly the flag or hang Xi's photo. They were definitely not acting out of patriotism. The scenes reminded me of a wartime occupation.
Military recruitment posters were also plastered everywhere, as it is a form of employment in a region with relatively few alternatives.
This is the first time I've heard of migration ratios as bureaucratic targets, but it's not surprising at all as it is typical for the government to set clear KPIs for their policies.
This is a great point. An additional aspect to this is developers - while living in China, I spoke with a number of officials who essentially admitted that a major aspect of "relocation" was driven by developers who purchased land from the local governments and then were lent money by the local government. When those buildings weren't filled, and with the pressure to pay back loans mounting, the developers and local officials would conspire to force people from outlying regions to relocate in the town developments. The developers would then receive central/local $$ for "helping" low income citizens "move up." And then the cycle would repeat. This leaves out other aspects - but it certainly plays a role.
What you are saying is definitely true in a general sense; a lot of local gov income comprises of shady land deals. However it is a bit different in 'far border' areas such as Tibet/Xinjiang. Land is not scarce, and development not so attractive. Also as some one grew up in China I would take a pinch of salt on what the 'officials' are admitting. There won't be anything meaningful if you haven't got a real tie with them. Besides after Xi became president, calling out corrupted officials is a such massive effort and that's why Xi (or more precisely the group he may represent) has so many enemies even in the party.
My wife is from Sichuan which is bordering Tibet. It is a bit more complicated than that. Over the years the development has been fast but still far behind the majority of China. The polices to 'encourage' and harness the great overall economic growth were uniquely shaped and had an element of 'outdated' fashion (or USSR style if that's your opinion). And the flags and posters you saw is probably a chicken and egg problem: the gov sees misinformation (or propaganda from west depends on your view) and wants more territorial control (against the largely available chinese language free Tibet tabloids) and people who actually wants to use it as a way to get more support from the gov. It was nothing like that a decade ago, the social media amplification definitely accelerated that as well.
I am partially sympathetic to the idea that this can be a way for people to lead better lives - in the modern, economic sense - instead of subsistence nomading.
At the same time, China has, over the past several years, also demonstrated a trend of new behavior and a clear break away from a previous trend of liberalization that started with Deng. This push in Tibet should be seen in light of what is going on in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, the South China Sea, the East China Sea, Inner Mongolia, and at the Indian border.
I want to agree with you but I too am a bit out of touch (all the information is from friends). I don't like to defend the central gov but there is too much smoke and mirror to see through things. A lot of press reports genuine issues about China but also a mix of unverifiable information. I believe the local governance is actually improving. At central level it might be a very different story. However that said sometimes it is hard to judge. Did it really depart from Deng's approach? Was Deng's method deserving applause? My parents generation (the equivalent of boomers) suffered most throughout their youth and it is only getting better now. So for any long term impact, I'm not sure myself.
There is of course a variety of opinions across any demographic.
My impression is that, aside from people who've studied abroad, Chinese youth today are more conservative and nationalistic than their elders. They've been fed only on a diet of domestic media with external news censored and have grown up only seeing their standards of living rapidly improving with China taking a more central role on the world stage.
The older generations, who suffered through the Cultural Revolution and then saw it end, and those who grew up during Deng's period are more likely to be liberal and sympathetic to the West. Even Jiang Zemin spoke English and liked Western opera.
But I think if you ask people of about any demographic, they will tell you Xi has changed the trajectory that China was previously on. The end of 10-year term limits demonstrated an objective shift towards one-man rule instead of an oligarchy where power was more diffused between elite factions.
I agree with you. However Xi is only one person, there is much larger power structure behind him. And you are absolutely right, Jiang and Deng have much more experience with the west and 'modern' at their times. As for the younger generation I couldn't really blame them; the ones who are interested in the outside world already did so. I believe there are substantial proportions of youth who have a balanced world-view. But given the education structure and absolute large population base you won't see them represented. I couldn't give much credit for chinese students abroad, since large part of them are quite privileged and ignorant(depends on how they were brought up), the rest were the poorer, sponsored students, they would naturally be very nationalistic.
The article says they are pushing them off the land and into factory jobs, so that implies to me that they don't want to leave, otherwise they wouldn't have to "push" them.
Why would the author use the word "pushing" if they don't know how this is actually happening? And if they know how it is actually happening, why leave it out of the article?
The how part doesn't seem that difficult to me. It's like military conscription.
They offer you 'stable pay' and a 'chance to learn some useful skills' and a 'pension' if you accept and fines or jailtime for your whole family if you refuse.
Basically, it's work in a factory as an "employee" or work in a factory as an inmate.
People really have no other option than to accept.
Slavery is what it is, and it's good for business (in a 18th/19th century sort of way). If you can enslave people and force them to create wealth for you, you can spend the money on other things such as enslaving more people or convincing the rest of your population this is a good thing they should support.
Chinese history however is riddled with empires who eventually overreached their attempts to control everything and failed. All it takes is to mess up the economy so bad that most people suddenly are poorer, and some internal/external entity offers a better deal. A billion starving people can overcome any obstacle if necessary. Thus enslaving people to create wealth for you is another hedge to failure if you are a government.
These things are always conveniently missing or deliberately misreported for manufactured consent. TL;DR: there's no clear evidence of coercion, also no evidence of no coercion, but China bad so ergo it's coercive. Western media: it's forced labour despite forced labour not being mentioned at all. But that's expected with another Zenz media push:
Conclusion: In both Xinjiang and Tibet, state-mandated poverty alleviation consists of a top-down scheme that extends the government’s social control deep into family units. The state’s preferred method to increase the disposable incomes of rural surplus laborers in these restive minority regions is through vocational training and labor transfer. Both regions have by now implemented a comprehensive scheme that relies heavily on centralized administrative mechanisms; quota fulfilment; job matching prior to training; and a militarized training process that involves thought transformation, patriotic and legal education, and Chinese language teaching.
Important differences remain between Beijing’s approaches in Xinjiang and Tibet. Presently, there is no evidence that the TAR’s scheme is linked to extrajudicial internment, and aspects of its labor transfer mechanisms are potentially less coercive. However, in a system where the transition between securitization and poverty alleviation is seamless, there is no telling where coercion stops and where genuinely voluntary local agency begins. While some Tibetans may voluntarily participate in some or all aspects of the scheme, and while their incomes may indeed increase as a result, the systemic presence of clear indicators of coercion and indoctrination, coupled with profound and potentially permanent change in modes of livelihood, is highly problematic. In the context of Beijing’s increasingly assimilatory ethnic minority policy, it is likely that these policies will promote a long-term loss of linguistic, cultural and spiritual heritage.
It's not very hard to imagine someplace like India getting praise for a nearly identical program. "Country offers job placement training to poorest rural workers" sounds like it would be popular everywhere.
It also reminds me that the US still has internment schools, where poor Native American children "voluntarily" live in Catholic foster homes and attend US public school.
Is this a genuine question? I don’t want to be snarky, but you are aware of the fact that government-imposed “mass labour” has almost always meant “forced labor” (I’m sure there might be some punctual exceptions, but the conclusion is the same), no?
> The government documents reviewed by Reuters put a strong emphasis on ideological education to correct the “thinking concepts” of laborers. “There is the assertion that minorities are low in discipline, that their minds must be changed, that they must be convinced to participate,” said Zenz, the Tibet-Xinjiang researcher based in Minnesota.
> One policy document, posted on the website of the Nagqu City government in Tibet’s east in December 2018, reveals early goals for the plan and sheds light on the approach. It describes how officials visited villages to collect data on 57,800 laborers. Their aim was to tackle “can’t do, don’t want to do and don’t dare to do” attitudes toward work, the document says. It calls for unspecified measures to “effectively eliminate ‘lazy people.’”
I don't remember the bit in history class where Roosevelt discussed forceful re-education.
I don't think you'd want to whitewash Zenz as a Tibet-Xinjiang researcher when he is known to have said that he is on a religious mission against China.
Ok, so maybe the Zenz quote is out of place - I don't know his history, but I don't know think you can disregard the government documents by discrediting Zenz, especially as Reuters explicitly says it's investigated and corroborated some of those claims.
> Reuters corroborated Zenz’s findings and found additional policy documents, company reports, procurement filings and state media reports that describe the program.
What's interesting is that there is censorship in r/worldnews.
After many people exposed Adrian Zenz's background and history, this post with 4k+ comments and nearly 50k upvotes got removed from r/worldnews front page and replaced by a new one with <200 comments and 1k upvotes which nobody got a chance to mention Adrian Zenz yet.
One thing that is missing from this article is how they are doing this? How are they coercing people? Are they literally dragging them out of their homes? Threatening them? Or are they just offering them opportunities that are actually preferable to their current conditions, and the people are accepting them?