by Brian Hioe

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Photo Credit: Screenshot

A RECENT ARTICLE by Vijay Prashad and Tings Chak in the Monthly Review proves another attempt by the campist left to whitewash the ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs by the Chinese government.

In the first section of their article, Prashad and Chak try to wave away the allegations of the “reeducation” of Muslim majority Uyghurs by casting doubt on the credibility of some of the scholars who have researched the topic. Adrian Zenz, as a conservative, makes an easy target for Prashad and Chak. Prashad and Chak smear the affiliations of individuals as Zenz, while never mentioning who it is that currently funds them, either.

To this end, Prashad and Chak conveniently ignore the many other scholars who have researched the system of detentions, or the Xinjiang Victims Database, which is primarily open-source Chinese-language materials. Prashad and Chak could even look at Chinese state-run media, which has positioned the treatment of Uyghurs as part of a US-style War on Terror. They could look at videos of signs in Uyghur being removed, or even satellite images showing the existence of the camps where Uyghurs are kept.

To tout that the Uyghur genocide is false, Prashad and Chak argue that China is supported by a number of Muslim countries. However, it seems to have never occurred to the two authors of the article that such countries may merely have thrown their fellow Muslim Uyghurs under the bus in the interests of maintaining relationships with China–which is much more economically and politically significant as a whole for any nation-state than just Xinjiang. This is tokenization in its worst form, which fails to understand that nation-states such as those the two authors list routinely act to maximize their national interest, while throwing persecuted minorities under the bus.

Next, Prashad and Chak turn to dynastic history to suggest that Xinjiang was always part of China. Prashad and Chak cite culturalist notions such as “Tianxia” (天下) before turning to a discussion of the Western Han (202 BC to 9 CE) to show Xinjiang as being a quintessential part of China since ancient history.

Yet one wonders what, if anything, is radical about such claims. Indeed, going by Prashad and Chak’s logic, we might as well turn back all of time to the time of the Western Han and maintain today’s borders based on antiquity. Perhaps we should restore the borders of the Holy Roman Empire, while we are at it. The notion of “Pax Romana”–the ancestor of today’s western imperialist notions as “Pax Americana”–is not so different from “Tianxia,” after all.

Sounding not so different from US War on Terror rhetoric might, Prashad and Chak then dovetail their discussion of premodern history to an attempt to paint contemporary Uyghurs as terrorists and China as responding in a legitimate fashion to extremism. Although Prashad and Chak claim that, when it comes to Xinjiang, “it was insufficient to simply see this as terrorism. There was a social problem that needed a much wider assessment and solution”, what they describe is not different in the slightest from US counter-terrorism discourse about terrorist Muslims. Apparently, when China targets Muslims in the name of counter-terrorism, it is fine, but when the US carries out such actions, this is considered imperialism. One need merely to swap out a few words and term it “socialist.”

From there, Prashad and Chak go on to paint the Belt and Road Initiative in the rosiest of terms, as their ultimate proof that China means well for Uyghurs and that this is not a project of cultural extermination. And yet, in literally referring to the term “Go West” without any irony, one notes that almost every project of genocide against an Indigenous peoples has been justified as for the sake of economic development, while touted as benefiting Indigenous peoples through civilizing them and saving them from barbarity, the so-called civilizing mission. So, too, with what Prashad and Chak claim. Again, Prashad and Chak whitewash actions they would otherwise criticize if carried out by Western countries.

It proves disappointing that Monthly Review is apparently unable to distinguish boilerplate colonialism from leftism, when disguised as leftism in only the barest of terms. Prashad and Chak sound like any apologist for a state might; their argumentation mostly consists of extolling various CCP policies.

In fact, at points in their argument, Prashad and Chak barely attempt to flesh out any details, except to demonstrate that they are asserting a set of “alternative facts.” Indeed, to address satellite imagery showing the destruction of mosques in Xinjiang, Prashad and Chak claim that “the Australian report is largely without details, it is difficult to go mosque by mosque to verify its claims.”

From this, one wonders if Prashad and Chak understand the concept of, say, object permanence, that they believe they can dismiss satellite imagery by simply claiming it is too difficult to check on each and every mosque. Surely, Prashad and Chak are aware that the world continues to exist even when it is not directly in front of their eyes. Useful idiots–or perhaps just idiots–abound.

Prashad and Chak’s article has received much criticism in past days after the discovery by David Brophy that several of its citations appeared to have been hallucinated by AI, including citations of Wang Hui and of Max Blumenthal for articles that do not exist. Prashad has since apologized, while claiming that the issues with the article’s citations do not distract from the larger argument.

But the controversy about citations aside, it is probable that Prashad and Chak’s facile argumentation will still gain circulation among those elements of the left with a vested interest in denying Uyghur genocide. The existence of Uyghurs is inconvenient to their narrative of a socialist, anti-imperialist China, hence why they must be erased, and the two authors feel more accountable to academic integrity than they do to 12 million lives whose erasure they are active participants in.
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