{"id":25130,"date":"2019-12-21T12:56:09","date_gmt":"2019-12-21T17:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=25130"},"modified":"2019-12-21T17:42:13","modified_gmt":"2019-12-21T22:42:13","slug":"criticism-of-china-about-uyghurs-will-lead-to-bhutan-style-deportation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/21\/criticism-of-china-about-uyghurs-will-lead-to-bhutan-style-deportation\/","title":{"rendered":"Criticism of China about Uyghurs will lead to Bhutan-style deportation?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A bleak thought for the first day of winter…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whenever I posted a photo of some amazing new piece of Chinese infrastructure, e.g., the Suzhou metro or part of the 24,000-mile high-speed rail<\/a> system (California will catch up soon!), American friends would predictably respond with a complaint about the Chinese government’s treatment of the Uyghurs in response to an ongoing conflict<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(My American Facebook friends who’ve never been to China throw rocks at the sheep-like Chinese for following the party line, but they respond to virtually any mention of China in nearly identical and predictable ways: (a) point out that the government there is “authoritarian”; (b) “what about the Uyghurs?”; (c) “what about Hong Kong?”)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same friends who criticize China regularly celebrate Bhutan, virtuously carbon negative (CNN<\/a>) and using the correct yardstick (“meterstick”) of Gross National Happiness<\/a>. That Bhutan deported one sixth of its population<\/a> in the 1990s is apparently forgotten or not relevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Muslims are only 1.8 percent of China’s population (CIA<\/a>). The Chinese government could reasonably infer that if the Bhutanese can be warmly appreciated by the global righteous after expelling a minority religious group that was 16-30 percent of its population (estimates vary), instead of continuing this draining fight it would make more sense to pay nearby Muslim-majority countries to take them and\/or have an India-Pakistan-style split in which part of western China was given away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, could Western say-gooders concentrating on this theme actually end up harming the Uyghurs whom they purport to be helping?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Separately, we are informed by our media that 1-1.5 million people are being detained in camps (example below). Ghoulish tech question: wouldn’t camps big enough to house this many people be easy to spot via satellite imagery? The U.S. prison gulag<\/a> is easily spotted from space. It is easy to find articles (example<\/a>; example 2<\/a>) showing one or two camps, but not a comprehensive census. In the age of satellite imagery, why are the purported Chinese concentration camps the subject of speculation?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related:<\/p>\n\n\n\n