After more than a century of de facto separation from the Chinese mainland by Japanese colonialism and U.S. intervention, Taiwan remains a rhetorical and military flashpoint of renewed Cold War aggression on China.

This selected timeline and resource compilation provides a deeper look into the forces that have produced “Taiwan independence” as a political consensus shared by U.S. politicians, erstwhile Western leftists, and Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party. Amidst warmongering rhetoric fueled by Western claims of imminent Chinese invasion, this compilation serves as a starting point for understanding China’s aspirations for national reunification and Taiwan’s overdetermined status as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” for Western ideological, economic, and military power in Asia and the Pacific.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

   Notes on Terminology

2. Timeline

   a. Pre-Colonial Taiwan and Early European Colonization

   b. Century of Humiliation, Japanese Colonization, and World War II

   c. Post-World War II, Cold War Containment, and Military Dictatorship

   d. Democratization, De-Sinicization, and the New Cold War

3. Resources

   a. Perspectives from the Pro-Unification Left

   b. Cold War Anti-Communism, Imperialism, and Ideology

   c. Contemporary Economics and Geopolitics

   d. Sinophobia, De-Sinicization, and Classism in Taiwan

   e. Demographics and Public Opinion

   f. Official Government Statements

1. Introduction arrow_upward

In the Western imagination, Taiwan exists as little more than a staging ground for ideological war with the People’s Republic of China—a crossroads of democracy versus authoritarianism, Western values versus Chinese backwardness, and free market capitalism versus closed-door communism. Yet for centuries, the island of Taiwan has played a rich and pivotal role in broader Chinese history. Located just one hundred miles from the mainland’s southeastern coast, Taiwan was linked to the mainland through migration, trade, language and culture long before European and Japanese colonizers seized on its strategic location as a launchpad for economic and military forays against China at large. Today, this history continues as U.S. imperialism positions Taiwan as an ideological and military base for its new Cold War against China.

Taiwan’s separation from the Chinese mainland began in 1895, when the Qing government was forced to cede Taiwan to Japan after its defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War. While Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II legally restored Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan, the Chinese civil war and the global Cold War once again rendered Taiwan an instrument for imperial ambitions against China. For the ascendant postwar United States, the 1949 establishment of the PRC under the Communist Party of China marked the “loss of China”—a blow that was partially recouped by propping up the fleeing Chiang Kai-shek government in Taiwan as “Free China.” In 1950, as the U.S. waged war to prevent the socialist unification of Korea, President Harry Truman dispatched the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait to similarly foreclose the possibility of a unified socialist China. The legacy of that militarized division remains today, as the U.S. enforces the separation of Taiwan from the PRC through multibillion-dollar arms sales, menacing war games, and a concerted propaganda drive which together undermine the possibility of peaceful reunification. This bipartisan campaign of hybrid warfare has intensified over the last fifteen years, following China’s rise as a major power, the corresponding U.S. Pivot to Asia, and the era of “decoupling” pursued by both the Trump and Biden administrations. As the U.S. military declares the Pacific its primary theater of war, successive U.S. administrations have marshaled enormous economic, military, and ideological resources to build up Taiwan as a focal point for this new Cold War. This program violates the letter of the one-China principle and the spirit of the United States’ own “one-China policy,” which together have formed the basis for bilateral relations since 1979. Furthermore, they neglect the centuries-long shared history of Taiwan and its people with their neighbors across the strait.

Just as Western colonialism was once justified as a “civilizing mission,” U.S. imperial designs on Taiwan and China at large march under the banner of promoting “democracy” and defending the international “rules-based order.” The U.S. claim to be acting in defense of Taiwan’s “vibrant democracy” from Chinese authoritarianism is particularly ahistorical, given that the United States is responsible for propping up the Kuomintang (KMT) military dictatorship under Chiang and his successors for almost forty years. Meanwhile, despite grandiose language about U.S. global leadership, the reality is that the majority of the world understands cross-strait relations to be an internal matter for China. Only eleven UN member states maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan (as the Republic of China), and no country recognizes Taiwan as an independent nation. This fact is unsurprising; UN recognition of the PRC as the legitimate representative of China came on the wings of overwhelming support from the Third World. Having experienced the genocidal violence and economic exploitation inherent to the Western imperial system, the Global South, like China itself, adheres to the tenets of sovereignty and non-interference. 

Though ideologically diverse, proponents of Taiwan independence rely on an overlapping revisionist toolkit that elides the historical context of unresolved civil war shaping the cross-strait relationship. Instead, China’s aspirations for national unity are cast in terms of imperialism and expansionism. The era of KMT martial law is counterfactually invoked as precedent for authoritarian Chinese encroachment, obscuring the historical KMT-CPC rivalry and the role of the U.S. in supporting the military dictatorship. Meanwhile, the history of Japanese colonialism has been systematically revised to present a relatively “benign” rule that forms the bedrock for a non-Chinese local identity. Claims that Taiwan’s democracy has “voted out” reunification as a political pathway omit the crucial context that the island’s most vocal left-wing supporters of unification were systematically purged, jailed, and murdered under Japanese colonialism and KMT rule. Efforts to co-opt Taiwan’s yuánzhùmín, or indigenous peoples (see Notes on Terminology #3), into the project of Taiwan independence rely on a similar level of obfuscation; despite the separatist camp’s appropriation of decolonial rhetoric, yuánzhùmín have historically been apathetic towards the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). And in spite of attempts to stake Taiwan separatism to a schema of ethnic difference, official demographics list 95% of Taiwan’s population as being Han Chinese, the majority ethnic group of the Chinese mainland.

While those on the left may be (rightfully) skeptical of elite rhetoric of freedom and democracy, this rhetoric of Chinese imperialism, settler colonialism, and ethnic chauvinism may be harder to parse for those unfamiliar with Taiwan’s history. Yet, whether it is couched in the moralizing language of classic Cold Warriors or self-styled leftists, Taiwan independence ultimately serves the material interests of Western imperialism. Like the European and Japanese imperialists that colonized Taiwan for access to Chinese trade from the 17th through the 20th century, the United States transparently envisions the island as an outpost for efforts to contain China militarily and decouple from it economically. More than 70 years since U.S. military leader Douglas MacArthur described Taiwan as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in the nation’s Cold War against China, Taiwan remains a crude asset for U.S. military realpolitik. It is the linchpin of the so-called first island chain that links the 400 U.S. military bases spread across Asia and the Pacific and, crucially, home to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest advanced semiconductor chip manufacturer. Lofty narratives of Taiwan independence thus ultimately fuel consent for militarization, intervention, and war while marginalizing anti-imperialist voices for diplomacy and peace. They also disguise the true intent of retaining Taiwan as a neocolonial outpost of Western empire to undermine China’s sovereign economic development. There is no “independence” in becoming a U.S. client regime entrapped in a capitalist world order. It would set a precedent for any country, large or small, that challenges U.S. hegemony to be balkanized with impunity. For the left to support such an outcome would be self-sabotage on an epic scale, regardless of the titanic politico-economic shifts on both sides of the strait since the Chinese Revolution of 1949.

The modern-day context around cross-strait relations is complex and evolving, and the lives of Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan strait have been negatively affected by centuries of imperialism. We recognize that there is no perfect, clear-cut path to development after colonization and civil war, but insist on China’s right to defend its sovereign project of socialist construction. Cross-strait relations should be debated and resolved on Chinese terms and in Chinese dialogues only. They should not be used as crude ammunition in the U.S.-led geopolitical assault on China.

This syllabus includes a condensed timeline of Taiwan’s history to provide historical context to contemporary discussions about China, as well as a list of resources that highlight key aspects of cross-strait relations and history. It is not intended to be comprehensive in scope, for Taiwan’s place in Chinese history extends far beyond the recent centuries of Western and Japanese imperialism in Asia. Nor is it intended to offer simple answers to questions about mainland China and Taiwan. It aims only to be a starting point for critical inquiry, and we urge readers to seek a diversity of sources and form their own opinions. A more detailed understanding requires further study into Taiwan’s history, cross-strait relations, Chinese politics, and ongoing geopolitical developments.

Notes on Terminology arrow_upward

1. Since 1949 the de facto governing authority over the islands of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu has retained the official name “Republic of China” (中華民國), or ROC for short. For the sake of clarity and consistency we adhere to this usage throughout the timeline. However, this does not imply recognition of the ROC's claim to legitimacy as a continuation of the pre-1949 government of both mainland China and Taiwan. Official statements from PRC officials and media typically refer to the “Taiwan authorities” (台湾当局), while the pro-independence camp and mainstream Western media usually refer to this de facto state entity simply as “Taiwan” – leading to ahistorical and incorrect formulations like “president of Taiwan,” “flag of Taiwan,” etc. In non-governmental contexts we use the common demonym “Taiwanese” for people residing and/or born and raised in Taiwan, and for entities based there.


2. The political divide between mainland China and Taiwan is also reflected in different writing and romanization systems for the Chinese language. The PRC has used simplified Chinese characters since the 1960s, while Taiwan continues to use traditional characters. With romanization the situation is arguably even more complicated: Hanyu Pinyin (汉语拼音) has been the standard in mainland China since 1958 (and internationally since 1982), while Taiwan has never adopted a standard romanization system. In this timeline and resource list we use pinyin to romanize names of mainland Chinese places and individuals predominantly associated with mainland China after 1949, as well as all pre-1949 Chinese individuals with some exceptions for persons commonly known in English under non-standard romanizations (e.g. Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek). For places under de facto ROC jurisdiction and post-1949 Taiwanese individuals, we default to the most common romanizations of their names in English-language media. When each person is first mentioned we also include their Chinese name in parentheses: in simplified characters for post-1949 mainland individuals, and in traditional characters for post-1949 Taiwanese individuals as well as all pre-1949 Chinese individuals.


3. The term běnshěngrén (本省人, lit. “people of this province”) refers to Chinese people in Taiwan whose ancestors, predominantly Hoklo (福佬) and Hakka (客家) from Fujian and Guangdong provinces, migrated to the island before the end of Japanese colonization in 1945. The term wàishěngrén (外省人, lit. “people from outside the province”) refers to those who moved to Taiwan from the mainland after 1945, as well as their descendants. Běnshěngrén do not include the non-Han peoples whose presence in Taiwan predates Chinese migration; those people are the Taiwanese yuánzhùmín (台湾原住民, lit. “original peoples of Taiwan”). Yuánzhùmín is typically translated into English as “aboriginal” or “indigenous,” both of which can imply a colonial relationality whose applicability in Taiwan is a matter of active debate. We therefore choose to leave the term untranslated, in analogy with wàishěngrén and běnshěngrén, so as to clearly delineate the island’s original inhabitants from those běnshěngrén who (especially in the pro-independence camp) have increasingly taken to describing themselves as "native Taiwanese." arrow_upward

2. Timeline arrow_upward

a. Pre-Colonial Taiwan and Early European Colonization arrow_upward

➤ ~15,000 years ago: Glaciation during the late Pleistocene Ice Age lowers sea levels in the Taiwan Strait, forming a prehistoric land bridge that physically connects the island to mainland Asia until ~10,000 years ago in the early Holocene. Some of the earliest historical evidence of human habitation in Taiwan comes from this period.

➤ ~4000 BCE: A new wave of seaborne migration to Taiwan begins, originating from what is today southeastern China. These people are known to have hunted, fished, performed horticulture, and cultivated rice and millet; they would become the ancestors of today’s yuánzhùmín.

• Historical linguists believe Taiwan to be the origin of the Austronesian expansion. Through their common seafaring ancestors, yuánzhùmín are closely related to peoples that settled as far west as the Malagasy of Madagascar; to modern-day Filipinos, Malays, and Indonesians; and as far south and east as the Polynesians of Aotearoa / New Zealand, Hawai’i, and Easter Island.

• As a result of these migrations, Taiwan became part of the Maritime Silk Road, a network of seabound trade routes spanning from China and Southeast Asia to India, the Arabian Peninsula, and the east coast of Africa.

• Based on the island’s terrain, yuánzhùmín have long been differentiated into two broad groups. One group, inhabiting the western and northern plains, today includes the officially recognized Siraya, Makatao, and Taivoan peoples (along with many unrecognized groups). The other group, inhabiting the mountainous central and eastern highlands, today includes the officially recognized Amis, Atayal, Bunun, Kanakanavu, Kavalan, Paiwan, Puyuma, Rukai, Saaroa, Saisiyat, Sakizaya, Seediq, Taroko, Thao, Tsou, and Yami peoples.

• The Chinese name Taiwan (臺灣 / 台湾) is thought to derive from that of the Taivoan people, who live near modern-day Tainan in the southwestern part of the island and were among the first to come in contact with both Chinese migrants and European colonists.

➤ 230 CE: Records from China’s Three Kingdoms period document an expedition from Eastern Wu that landed on an island referred to as “Yizhou” (夷洲). Most of its members are said to have died of unknown diseases, but the survivors brought back “several thousand” natives. Some historians have identified Yizhou with Taiwan. 

➤ 607-610: The Book of Sui (the official history of the Sui Dynasty) records several expeditions to an island kingdom called “Liuqiu” (琉球) in the East China Sea. Modern historians identify it either as Taiwan or as the Ryukyus, an island chain to the northeast (currently governed by Japan) whose name is written with the same characters.

➤ 1171: Song Dynasty records document the presence of Chinese migrants on Penghu (澎湖), an archipelago just to the west of Taiwan (also known in Western literature as the Pescadores). Beginning that year, Song officials would send annual patrols and build permanent settlements to protect migrants from raids by peoples further to the east, most likely Taiwan or the Philippines.

➤ 1281: Penghu is incorporated into Jiangzhe province (comprising modern-day Fujian and Zhejiang) by the Yuan Dynasty. 

➤ 1349: Chinese explorer Wang Dayuan (汪大淵) provides the first verified written account of Taiwan, documenting his interactions with yuánzhùmín and finding evidence (e.g. pottery) of prior contact but no permanent habitation by Chinese people.

➤ 1371: The newly founded Ming Dynasty institutes a ban on most maritime trade and coastal settlement, including a full withdrawal of Chinese settlers from Penghu. Defying the ban, Chinese merchants would continue traveling to Penghu and Taiwan and trading with the latter’s yuánzhùmín (with some learning their languages) in subsequent centuries. 

➤ 1523: Ming China bans maritime trade with Japan specifically in hopes of stopping the increasing number of Japanese pirate attacks all along the Chinese coast. But the social and political upheaval in Japan during the Sengoku period only makes piracy more lucrative for Japanese and Chinese pirates alike. In particular, Lin Daoqian (林道乾) and Lin Feng (林鳳) would use Taiwan as a base for large-scale raids on the mainland in 1563 and 1574 respectively.

➤ 1542: Portuguese sailors on their way to Japan observe Taiwan and label it on their maps as Ilha Formosa (“beautiful island”), giving rise to the island’s standard name in most Western literature until the mid-20th century.

➤ 1593: Toyotomi Hideyoshi, chancellor and imperial regent of Japan, demands tribute from the “ruler of Taiwan” but finds no one of that description. This occurs just a year after he launched a massive invasion of Joseon Korea with the eventual aim of conquering Ming China as well – a confluence of events that in many ways presaged the First Sino-Japanese War almost exactly three centuries later.

• Under the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan would launch failed invasions of Taiwan in 1609 and 1616 before adopting the isolationist sakoku policy in 1633, ending all interest in occupying the island for another two centuries. 

➤ 1603: Chinese explorer Chen Di (陳第) visits Taiwan on an expedition to suppress Japanese pirates, writing a detailed account of the lives and customs of yuánzhùmín titled Dongfanji (東番記, lit. “Account of the Eastern Barbarians”).

➤ 1624: The Dutch East India Company builds Fort Zeelandia near modern-day Tainan, marking the beginning of formal European colonization on the island. The colony of Dutch Formosa in southwest Taiwan becomes a major entrepot for trade with China, Japan, and the East Indies, aiming to prevent competing European empires (mainly the Spanish and Portuguese) from establishing footholds in East Asia.

• When the Dutch arrive, they find several thousand Chinese residents already present on the island. Under their rule, tens of thousands more migrants would be recruited or kidnapped from Fujian province and brought to Taiwan as agricultural laborers, raising the total Han population to around 40,000. The Dutch would also attempt to forcibly convert large numbers of yuánzhùmín to Christianity, meeting stiff resistance (especially from the Siraya) that would not be quelled until 1636. 

➤ 1628: The Spanish Empire attempts to start another colony in northern Taiwan with the building of Fort Santo Domingo. Compared to the Dutch, they are much less successful in this effort. In 1642, they would destroy the fort themselves after the Dutch defeat them in the Second Battle of San Salvador and expel them from the island.

➤ 1644: The Ming Dynasty loses its capital Beijing, and shortly thereafter most of mainland China, to the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty. Some Ming loyalists retreat to Xiamen in Fujian province and continue resisting the Qing for several decades under the leadership of general Zheng Chenggong (鄭成功), also known in the West as Koxinga. 

➤ 1652: Under the leadership of Guo Huaiyi (郭懷一), Han Chinese peasants in Taiwan launch a large-scale revolt against colonial rule that is suppressed by the Dutch and some of their yuánzhùmín allies. The peasants’ main grievance is a colonial head tax applied to Chinese but not yuánzhùmín. Around 4000 migrants or 10% of the island’s Han population are killed; one historian considers this “the first Chinese antiwestern uprising in modern history.”

➤ 1662: From his base in Xiamen, Zheng Chenggong leads an army that joins forces with both Han migrants and yuánzhùmín (whom he persuaded to turn on their erstwhile allies) and successfully expels the Dutch from Taiwan and Penghu. There he establishes the Kingdom of Tungning (東寧國) with the aim of restoring the Ming Dynasty in alliance with other loyalist strongholds in the south of mainland China. He dies shortly after and is succeeded by his son Zheng Jing (鄭經). At its height, the kingdom would control maritime routes between the East and South China Seas and maintain a trade network spanning from Japan and Korea to Southeast Asia.

• In order to starve out the Tungning Kingdom, the Qing Dynasty issued its own ban on maritime trade and coastal settlement in Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, even as far north as Shandong province – often as far as 25 kilometers inland. With Dutch help, Qing forces finally managed to capture Xiamen and the other Ming loyalist bases on the mainland by 1663 (though Zheng Jing would briefly retake them during the 1673-81 Revolt of the Three Feudatories). Ironically this “Great Clearance” policy had the effect of triggering another wave of migration to Taiwan, bringing its Han population to at least 100,000.

• Zheng Chenggong is widely revered today on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, but for markedly different reasons. In the mainland he is regarded as a hero for liberating Taiwan from Dutch colonial rule and thereby inflicting the first major defeat of a Western imperial power at Chinese hands. In Taiwan on the other hand, the Ming loyalist Kingdom of Tungning is seen by Kuomintang supporters as a forerunner of the post-1949 Republic of China (with the PRC playing an analogous role to the Qing Dynasty), and rather ahistorically by independence supporters as a specifically “Taiwanese” proto-state.

➤ 1683: Qing forces under the command of Admiral Shi Lang (施琅), a former Zheng loyalist, take advantage of political turmoil after the death of Zheng Jing to mount an invasion of Penghu and Taiwan. They force the Kingdom of Tungning to surrender, putting an end to the last major outpost of Ming restorationism. (Small pockets of Ming loyalist resistance would sporadically arise for another century or so.) The length and severity of the conflict underscored Taiwan’s strategic location and importance as a base for foreign and domestic attacks on mainland China.

➤ 1684 May: The Qing Dynasty incorporates Taiwan as a prefecture of Fujian province, located right across the strait from the island. 

• During the next two centuries, the population of Taiwan grew to around three million as the rice, sugar, and fishing industries expanded. Significant numbers of Chinese merchants and laborers would also migrate seasonally between Taiwan and their home villages on the mainland, cultivating cross-strait trade without necessarily settling permanently. 

• Qing authorities generally placed high importance on maintaining order and preventing conflict between Chinese migrants and yuánzhùmín. Early on they repatriated many soldiers and refugees who had left the mainland for Taiwan during the war. They also imposed a permit system to restrict migration from the mainland (especially of full families), though it was often ignored by local officials and would be fully lifted in 1875. Most notably, from 1739-1875 Chinese migrants were banned from entering or acquiring land in the mountains of central and eastern Taiwan; during that period no uprisings by highland yuánzhùmín were recorded. On the other hand the lowland yuánzhùmín were largely sinicized and/or assimilated into Han culture, often through intermarriage when only single Chinese men were allowed to migrate.

• That said, intra-ethnic tensions among Han Taiwanese erupted into violence so often that they inspired the phrase “三年一小反, 五年一大乱” (lit. “every three years a minor uprising, every five years a major rebellion”). Many migrants tended to identify with their original hometowns, religious sects, or language groups and were suspicious of those from different locales. When they arrived, they brought with them clan feuds and other rivalries from the Chinese mainland. Residual Ming loyalist sentiment also contributed to the unrest, most notably in the large-scale rebellions of Zhu Yigui (朱一貴) in 1721 and Lin Shuangwen (林爽文) in 1786. Yuánzhùmín often served as reliable allies and auxiliaries of the Qing government during such intra-ethnic conflict.

b. Century of Humiliation, Japanese Colonization, and World War II arrow_upward

➤ 1839 September 4: Qing viceroy Lin Zexu (林則徐) seizes and destroys thousands of tons of opium in Guangzhou, much of it belonging to private British merchants, in accordance with an edict banning the narcotic. He also orders a naval blockade on foreign shipping in the Pearl River. In response Britain launches the First Opium War, destroying the blockade and thoroughly outgunning the much larger but technologically inferior Qing forces. China is defeated and forced to sign the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, which requires it to compensate Britain for the war, cede Hong Kong as a British colony, and open five additional ports to foreign trade. Britain also gains “most favored nation” trading status. 

• Prior to the war, China had remained mostly closed to foreign trade. Highly sought-after Chinese goods could only be exchanged for European silver through the port of Guangzhou, causing a massive trade imbalance between Britain and China. Defying the official Chinese ban, the British cultivated huge quantities of opium in India to sell to Chinese smugglers to reverse the imbalance. 

• In the last year of the war, two British ships (the Nerbudda and the Ann) were shipwrecked on the coast of Taiwan. Local Qing officials detained and executed most of their surviving crews in Tainan, notwithstanding a failed rescue attempt and bombardment of Keelung by the warship HMS Nimrod.

• The Opium War marked China’s first-ever defeat by a Western colonial power, inaugurating the so-called Century of Humiliation. The United States, France, and Russia would soon extract similar concessions from China in the “unequal treaties” of Wangxia (1844), Huangpu (1844), and Aigun (1858) respectively.

➤ 1850 December: The Taiping Rebellion erupts with an anti-Qing uprising in Guangxi province that rapidly spreads to large swathes of southern China. At its peak, Hong Xiuquan’s (洪秀全) Taiping Heavenly Kingdom would govern around 30 million people from its capital in Nanjing under a program of radical land reform, social egalitarianism, syncretic Christianity, and anti-Manchu agitation. A comparable number would die in the Qing’s 14-year war to put down the rebellion, which forced the ailing dynasty to enlist the aid of Britain and France despite having just fought them in the Second Opium War.

• Liu Mingchuan (劉銘傳), who would later help repel French forces from Taiwan and serve as the first governor of Taiwan province, first made his name as a vice commander of the Huai Army which was created by future statesman and diplomat Li Hongzhang (李鴻章) to help suppress the Taiping Rebellion.

• The large-scale unrest throughout south China severely impacted the supply of rice to the southeastern coast, increasing demand for rice from Taiwan and inducing U.S. traders to forcibly reopen the island to foreign trade.

➤ 1856 October 8: Dissatisfied with the outcome of the First Opium War, Britain and France (with some U.S. and Russian support) launch the Second Opium War in order to force more trade concessions and increase Chinese opium imports. The war ends with the signing of the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin and the 1860 Convention of Beijing. Major consequences of the Chinese defeat include (1) establishment of British, French, U.S., and Russian embassies in the closed city of Beijing, (2) compensation for the war paid to Britain and France, (3) the opening of ten more ports and expanded rights in China for foreign merchants and missionaries, (4) forced legalization of the opium trade in China, and (5) Russian annexation of Outer Manchuria. 

• British forces used Hong Kong as a base throughout the war, establishing a historical precedent for imperialist powers to carve colonial footholds out of China and turn them into launchpads for further expansion.

• British and French troops infamously looted and burned Yuanming Yuan (圆明园, also known as the Old Summer Palace) at the end of the war, nominally in retaliation for China’s mistreatment of opium smugglers from those countries.

• In the aftermath of the Second Opium War, Portugal took the opportunity to formally cement its colonization of Macau with the Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Beijing (1887).

➤ 1857: U.S. commissioner to China Peter Parker submits a proposal to Washington, D.C. calling on the U.S. to annex Taiwan. Cajoled by U.S. merchants who had established commercial outposts on the island, Parker argued that it was unlikely for the Qing Empire to retain sovereignty over Taiwan for long, and that “the world will be better for [Taiwan] coming under a civilized power.”

➤ 1867: The Rover, a U.S. merchant ship, is shipwrecked off the coast of Taiwan and its crew killed by local Paiwan people in retaliation for earlier massacres by white intruders. U.S. consul Charles Le Gendre organizes a failed punitive expedition against the Paiwan in which a Marine commander is killed. He would later condemn Qing China as “semi-civilized” for its refusal to control the yuánzhùmín, and advise the Japanese government to colonize Ryukyu and Taiwan instead.

➤ 1870s: The 1868 Meiji Restoration leads the Japanese Empire into a headlong drive for Western-style colonial modernization. As a first step, it progressively colonizes the Kingdom of Ryukyu. 

• Ryukyu (琉球) was an independent kingdom located on an island chain stretching northeast of Taiwan towards Japan. It had long been a tributary state of Ming China, routinely serving as a conduit for indirect trade with Japan during their respective periods of isolation. The Tokugawa shogunate first invaded Ryukyu in 1609, forcing it to become a vassal state of Japan while it nominally continued to pay tribute to China. 

• 1871: Fifty-four Ryukyuan sailors are shipwrecked in southeastern Taiwan and killed by local Paiwan people. Local Hakka Taiwanese rescue twelve survivors who eventually manage to escape the island. The reason for the massacre (now known as the Mudan Incident) is unknown, but historians suspect it was due to cultural miscommunication.

• 1874: Japan launches a large punitive expedition to invade southern Taiwan, claiming that the slain Ryukyuan sailors were “Japanese nationals” and that yuánzhùmín territory is “terra nullius,” being outside effective Qing control. It withdraws its forces only after China pays a large indemnity and recognizes Japanese suzerainty over Ryukyu.

• 1879: Ryukyu is fully annexed and incorporated into the Japanese Empire as Okinawa Prefecture. To this day, local resistance continues to Japanese rule and (since 1945) the heavy U.S. military presence imposed on Okinawa.

➤ 1875: After the Mudan Incident and subsequent Japanese invasion, the Qing government decides that its previous policy toward yuánzhùmín land claims had left large parts of Taiwan too “empty” and vulnerable to foreign encroachment. Restrictions on both internal movement and external migration of Han Chinese from the mainland are fully lifted, but attempts to settle them in mountain areas are half-hearted and ineffective. In the next two decades over 100,000 highland yuánzhùmín formally submit to Qing rule but their ways of life remain largely unaffected.

➤ 1884 August–1885 April: The French Empire intensifies its colonial aggression against Vietnam. The ruling Nguyễn dynasty requests Chinese aid and the Qing government sends armies from several provinces to fight in what becomes known as the Sino-French or Tonkin War. In response, French forces destroy a large part of the Chinese navy in Fuzhou and later invade Taiwan.

• General Tang Jingsong (唐景崧) of the Yunnan Army persuades Chinese warlord Liu Yongfu (劉永福), leader of the private Black Flag Army, to join the war against the French on the mainland. Liu Mingchuan leads the Huai (or Anhui) Army against French troops in Taiwan, over two decades after it was first famously deployed to help crush the Taiping Rebellion. These armies play decisive roles in defeating French forces on land, but China is forced to negotiate a peace settlement due to the relative weakness of its navy.

• The partial French blockade and occupation of Taiwan is arguably the main pressure point that forces China to sue for peace, due to the threat it poses to the entire southeast coast. The Qing government places the utmost importance on securing France’s withdrawal from the island, and in exchange it recognizes French colonial rule over northern Vietnam in the 1885 Treaty of Tianjin.

➤ 1887: Taiwan becomes a full province of China. Liu Mingchuan, who commanded the Huai/Anhui Army against French forces in Taiwan in the Sino-French War, is appointed the first governor. He lays significant groundwork for Taiwan’s defense, infrastructure, and development, but resigns in 1891 for health reasons and many of his projects are subsequently abandoned.

➤ 1893: Taipei becomes the permanent capital of the province of Taiwan.

➤ 1894: Tang Jingsong, who commanded the Yunnan Army during the Sino-French War, becomes the governor of Taiwan. 

➤ 1894 July 25–1895 April 17: Japan defeats China in the First Sino-Japanese War, fought primarily in Korea and Manchuria over the question of Joseon Korea’s tributary relationship with the Qing. The Treaty of Shimonoseki forces China to cede Taiwan and Penghu to Japan, give up suzerainty over Korea, pay compensation for the war, and grant Japan “most favored nation” status in foreign trade.

• The Treaty of Shimonoseki originally ceded the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan as well, but Russia, Germany, and France launched the Triple Intervention, which forced Japan to give it up in exchange for more compensation from China. In particular, Russia’s competing designs on Manchuria and Korea would later lead directly to the 1904 Russo-Japanese War.

• Li Hongzhang, the former leader of the Huai Army during the Taiping Rebellion and close friend of former Taiwan governor Liu Mingchuan, commanded most Chinese military forces during the war. He was primarily responsible for negotiating and signing the Treaty of Shimonoseki, and only acquiesced to the loss of Taiwan and Penghu under threat of renewed war.

• When news of the treaty reached Taiwan, there was extremely fierce local resistance to the Japanese takeover. In fact, the formal ceremony to cede Chinese sovereignty was originally slated to take place in Taipei with Li Hongzhang’s son presiding, but Li and his family were so hated in Taiwan due to his association with the treaty that the ceremony had to be held at sea.

➤ 1895 May 23: Governor Tang Jingsong, with the support of local officials, declares independence in defiance of Japan’s claims on the island. They proclaim the short-lived Republic of Formosa (臺灣民主國), with Tang inaugurated in Taipei as its first president. Their national motto, “Forever Qing” (永清), reflects their loyalty to Qing China. Tang hopes that the formation of the republic will delay the Japanese takeover and perhaps even start inter-imperialist conflict over Taiwan.

• Tang Jingsong invites his friend Liu Yongfu (commander of the Black Flag Army in the Sino-French War) to lead Qing troops in Taiwan against the Japanese invasion. Tang and Liu organize a Chinese resistance force but are swiftly overwhelmed at Keelung, prompting Tang to abandon Taiwan and immediately flee to the mainland. A month later, Liu Yongfu assumes the presidency of the Republic of Formosa in Tainan.

• Many of the Qing troops in Taiwan are unmotivated to fight the Japanese and surrender quickly. However, the invaders would face stubborn local Taiwanese militias and civilian insurgencies for decades afterwards, responding with ruthless slaughter of villagers and complete destruction of towns. This would only strengthen Taiwanese support for the resistance. 

• 1895 October 10: Liu Yongfu offers to surrender on the condition that Taiwanese locals and Chinese troops be spared from punishment, but the Japanese refuse.

• 1895 October 21: Liu Yongfu flees Taiwan on a British merchant ship, the Republic of Formosa is overthrown, and Japanese governor-general Kabayama Sukenori is installed as the new authority. In the next two years, many Taiwanese residents flee to mainland China or into the mountains.

➤ 1896 March: In response to continued Taiwanese resistance, the Japanese imperial government enacts Law 63, a controversial law that gives governor-general Kabayama’s executive ordinances the same weight as Japanese law and effectively grants him supreme legislative authority over Taiwan. Kabayama uses the law to enforce strict military measures for controlling the Taiwanese population. Although Kabayama’s rule lasts just over a year, Law 63 would continue to be extended in increments until 1906 and allow his successors the same degree of authority over Taiwan.

• For Japan, Taiwan served as a source of raw materials and agricultural exports and a captive market for manufactured goods from the metropole. The island’s strategic location could also be used to defend the Ryukyus and serve as a base for further expansion into China and Southeast Asia. Finally it was held up as a poster child for Japan’s supposedly more beneficent and enlightened model of colonization compared to Western imperial powers. All of these plans required rapid and effective suppression of Taiwanese resistance.

• Over the next few decades, Taiwan’s economy would be completely reoriented to serve Japanese imperial development. Infrastructural advances like road and rail construction, port building, electrification, and the establishment of financial and communication services served primarily to benefit Japanese industry. Agricultural products like sugar, rice, opium, tobacco, and camphor were monopolized and exported to the metropole by Japanese companies that controlled almost all shipping in Taiwan. 

• To raise money for Taiwanese development, Japan relied in large part on land tax revenues. By 1901, the colonial government had completed a land reinvestigation project and redrawn the Qing-era boundaries that had safeguarded yuánzhùmín land claims, opening up significantly more land to taxation. 

• Some Japanese-language schools were opened for Taiwanese students, but education remained largely segregated and few students had opportunities to pursue secondary school or college. As a result, most Taiwanese students continued to attend Chinese schools established under the Qing government.

➤ 1896 April: The Opium Production Office, which would later build the first modern laboratories and factories in Taiwan, is opened in Taipei to establish and enforce a Japanese monopoly on the production, distribution, and sale of opium. 

➤ 1896 June: Despite the collapse of the Republic of Formosa, resistance fighters in Yunlin county refuse to give up and continue to attack the Japanese occupation. In retaliation Japanese forces massacre an estimated 6000 people and burn thousands of homes. The resistance continues to fight for almost seven years until May 1902, when more than 250 fighters are persuaded to surrender at a formal ceremony. They are massacred with machine guns as soon as they lay down their arms.

➤ 1897: Japanese imperialists institute the shinshō award system to promote Taiwanese residents with unique wealth, social status, or community service into colonial management positions (local police, household surveillance, etc.). The policy is instrumental in building a cadre of Taiwanese collaborators that would help Japan manage the island.

➤ 1899-1900: U.S. Secretary of State John Hay suggests the non-binding Open Door Policy to establish an open market in all of China that would safeguard the economic interests of all imperial powers there, rather than carving the country at large into directly administered colonial spheres of influence.

➤ 1899 October 18–1901 September 7: Fierce popular resentment of foreign domination in China (especially by Christian missionaries) explodes in the so-called Boxer Rebellion. For 55 days, the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists – known in the West as the “Boxers” – besiege the Beijing Legation Quarter, where the embassies of western imperialist powers were forcibly opened after the Second Opium War. The rebellion is suppressed by the invading Eight Nation Alliance, a military coalition between the United States, Britain, France, Japan, Russia, Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary. After defeating the Qing army and ending the siege, invading troops embark on a year-long punitive expedition in the capital and the surrounding countryside. The rebellion comes to an end with the signing of the Boxer Protocol, which decrees a massive compensation payment in gold to the foreign powers, execution of any Chinese person found to be participating in anti-foreign societies, and expanded military occupation rights for imperial powers. 

➤ 1907 November: In an anti-colonial uprising known as the Beipu Incident, a group of Han and yuánzhùmín revolutionaries kill 57 Japanese officers and their families in the small Taiwanese coal mining town of Beipu. In response, the Japanese military massacres over a hundred people and decimates the town, leaving many children orphaned and families too afraid to look for the bodies of their loved ones.

➤ 1911 October 10–1912 February 12: A decade of anti-Qing uprisings culminates in the Xinhai Revolution, putting an end to the ruling dynasty and with it two millennia of dynastic rule in China. The Republic of China (中華民國, ROC) is proclaimed with Sun Yat-sen (better known in Chinese as Sun Zhongshan 孫中山) as its first president. Sun’s esteemed reputation derived from his leadership of the Tongmenghui, which had coordinated anti-Qing activity throughout China and among diasporic Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, Japan, and the West. While he was not actively involved in the revolution itself, virtually all political tendencies on both sides of the Taiwan Strait continue to revere him as a “Father of the Nation” and lay claim to his legacy.

• After just two months Sun cedes the presidency of the ROC to the opportunistic Qing general Yuan Shikai (袁世凱), who in return secures the abdication of the last Qing emperor Puyi (溥儀). Yuan’s dictatorial rule would result in an abortive Second Revolution in 1913, the dissolution of the National Assembly, and his self-proclamation as emperor in 1915 (which would trigger yet another civil war). After his abdication and death in 1916, central state authority as vested in the so-called Beiyang government collapses through much of China. This marks the beginning of the Warlord Era (1916-28), when (often foreign-backed) military despots wage near-constant regional civil wars for territorial control.

➤ 1913–1914: In a bitter two-year campaign of land invasion, aerial attack, and naval bombardment, Japanese forces quell fierce resistance by Bunun and Atayal yuánzhùmín to encroachment on their land. The colonial government had established a mountainous reservation (significantly smaller than during the Qing era) to limit direct conflict with highland peoples, but Japanese settlers repeatedly violated its boundaries as they sought to extract ever-expanding quantities of timber.

➤ 1915 January 18: Expecting Western powers to be primarily focused on European affairs during World War I, Japan secretly issues Twenty-One Demands to Yuan Shikai that would entail a massive expansion of Japanese control in China while curtailing the growth of Western colonial holdings. The demands are divided into five groups; the seven most aggressive ones in Group V would give Japan such extensive control over finance and policing as to reduce China to a de facto protectorate. One of the Group V demands would create a virtual Japanese monopoly on investment in Fujian, effectively extending its colonial rule from Taiwan to the mainland.

• Wary of potential conflict with Western powers, Japan orders China to keep the details of the demands secret. China ignores the threat, leaks the text to the press after negotiations break down, and uses the ensuing inter-imperialist conflict to eliminate all the Group V demands before signing the agreement.

• The United States and Britain in particular are displeased with what they see as Japanese attempts to supplant Western imperialism as the dominant power in Asia, a violation of the Open Door Policy that was first proposed and informally adopted in 1899.

➤ 1915: Han Chinese and yuánzhùmín unite under the leadership of Yu Qingfang (余清芳) to launch the largest armed uprising against Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan, known as the Tapani or Xilai’an Incident. Inspired by a mixture of anti-colonial and quasi-socialist aspirations with religious millenarianism (reminiscent of the Taiping and Boxer uprisings), the rebels storm numerous police stations and briefly declare an independent state (the Tai Republic) before the revolt is suppressed.

• The estimated number of Taiwanese casualties during the initial Japanese colonization period (1895 to 1915) ranges from 40,000 to 90,000 people killed.

➤ 1919 May 4: The May Fourth Movement begins with anti-imperialist student protests in Beijing and expands into a nationwide student-worker uprising against the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and its transfer of German colonies in China to Japan. This betrayal by China’s nominal Western allies severely discredits liberal democracy and Wilsonian “self-determination,” to the benefit of Marxism and the Soviet model of national liberation. A number of revolutionary formations emerging out of this movement would later cohere into the Communist Party of China (CPC).

• China had joined World War I on the side of the Allied Powers in 1917 on the condition that after the war, foreign privileges in China would be abolished, the German colony of Shandong would be returned, and the Twenty-One Demands would be annulled. When these promises were not fulfilled, China refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles and negotiated a separate peace with Germany.

• China’s main contribution to the war effort was the 140,000-strong Chinese Labor Corps, the largest and longest-serving non-European labor contingent in WWI. CLC veterans who stayed in France after the war later hosted future CPC leaders Zhou Enlai (周恩来) and Deng Xiaoping (邓小平).

• The May Fourth Movement grew out of the earlier New Culture Movement, a progressive anti-traditionalist revolt that had cohered around the magazine New Youth (started in 1915 by future CPC co-founder Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀).

➤ 1919 October 10: After returning from exile in Japan, Sun Yat-sen founds the Kuomintang (中國國民黨, KMT) or Nationalist Party in Shanghai. He had previously founded a parliamentary party of the same name in 1912, which won the first National Assembly election and was soon banned by Yuan Shikai. This newer iteration of the KMT – the same one which survives to this day – is built not to contest elections but to wage a military campaign to liberate China from warlord and imperialist rule, starting from its base in Guangzhou. It would be guided ideologically by Sun’s “Three Principles of the People” (三民主義, commonly translated as nationalism, democracy, and people’s livelihood or socialism) and enjoy generous assistance from the USSR as a progressive bourgeois-nationalist liberation movement.

➤ 1920 July 16: Influenced by the revolutionary political consciousness among mainland Chinese youth, Taiwanese students studying in Japan start Taiwan Youth, a publication inspired by the mainland’s New Youth magazine. They advocate for rebellion against feudalism and Japanese colonial rule.

➤ 1921 July 1: The Communist Party of China (中国共产党) is founded under the leadership of Li Dazhao (李大釗) and Chen Duxiu. Neither is able to attend the first National Congress in Shanghai, but 27-year-old Mao Zedong (毛泽东) is there to represent the Hunan party branch.

➤ 1921 October 17: Some founders of the Taiwan Youth magazine establish the Taiwanese Cultural Association (臺灣文化協會, TCA), which becomes for a time the leading force agitating against Japanese colonialism and for democratic self-rule in Taiwan.

• One of the younger TCA members, Cai Xiaoqian (蔡孝乾, born 1908), would later join the CPC while studying in mainland China. He would become the only Taiwanese party member to participate in the Red Army’s Long March and would later return to organize the underground communist movement in Taiwan.

➤ 1923–27: Under strong pressure from their Soviet sponsors, the KMT and CPC form their First United Front in order to wage a national democratic revolution against warlordism and imperial rule. This uneasy cross-class alliance at first survives the death of Sun Yat-sen and his succession by his far more conservative, anti-communist, and U.S.-influenced lieutenant Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) in 1926. That same year the United Front launches its long-anticipated Northern Expedition from Guangzhou, advancing rapidly through south China before coming to a sudden and bloody end with Chiang’s April 1927 massacre of over 5000 communists in Shanghai.

• Chiang’s anti-communist purge marked the beginning of the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, which in this first phase would rage unabated until 1936. Although the Northern Expedition would overthrow the Beiyang regime in 1928 and nominally reunify China under the KMT’s one-party rule, the latter never secured full and undisputed control over the entire claimed territory of the ROC from its capital in Nanjing. Under Mao Zedong’s leadership the communists would quickly take advantage of local power vacuums to establish revolutionary base areas, guided by the new strategy of “people’s war” rooted in the peasant masses.

➤ 1927 July 10: The Taiwanese People’s Party (臺灣民眾黨, TPP) is founded to advance Taiwanese cultural, educational, and (limited) political autonomy within the Japanese empire under cross-class leadership, gradually adopting a more left-nationalist and socialist program inspired by Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People. 

• Chiang Wei-shui (蔣渭水), a founding member of the TCA and TPP, was especially inspired by Sun Yat-sen. His ideology became more socialist as he grew disillusioned with “legitimate” (i.e. Japanese-approved) political reforms. Before his death in 1931, his final recorded words were: “Taiwan’s social revolution is in its third phase, and the victory of the proletariat is imminent. Our young comrades must fight hard, and our old comrades must band together and help our young comrades to liberate our compatriots.”

• Lin Hsien-tang (林獻堂) was another founding member of the TCA and TPP. He resigned from the party in protest against its socialist turn, believing it would alienate the many wealthy, highly-educated landowners in the TCA. In 1930, he founded the Taiwan Federation for Local Autonomy to advocate for improved colonial management and more Taiwanese autonomy in colonial government. It achieved some limited electoral concessions and was the only group to survive the 1931 crackdown on anticolonial organizations, but quickly became discredited in Taiwanese society. On the advice of the Japanese colonial governor, the federation voluntarily disbanded in 1937 at the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

➤ 1928 April 15: The Taiwanese Communist Party (臺灣共產黨, TCP) is founded – originally as a branch of the Japanese Communist Party – with the aim of full liberation from Japanese rule, under worker-peasant leadership and in coordination with the CPC’s anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle on the mainland. 

• The TCP saw much success in organizing with the Taiwan Peasants’ Union and later heavily influenced the left-wing turn of the Taiwanese Cultural Association and the Taiwanese People’s Party under Chiang Wei-shui.

• Compared to the TPP, Japanese repression of the Communist Party was much more intense from the onset, with the headquarters raided, charter confiscated, and several members arrested just ten days after its formation. Some members fled to China and joined the CPC, but at least 49 were arrested and executed by the Japanese. One party founder, Xie Xuehong (谢雪红), was imprisoned and tortured for 13 years but would continue leading the Taiwanese communist movement after her release, this time against the KMT.

• In 1933 Weng Zesheng (翁澤生), another member of the TCP, was caught by the KMT in mainland China and released to the Japanese, who imprisoned and tortured him until his 1939 release due to illness. He died soon afterwards.

➤ 1930: Seediq yuánzhùmín fighters under the leadership of Mona Rudao (莫那·魯道) launch the last large-scale armed uprising against Japanese rule in Taiwan, known as the Wushe Incident. Colonial authorities brutally suppress it through the use of poison gas – arguably the first known deployment of chemical weapons in East Asia. The Taiwanese People’s Party reports this war crime to the League of Nations, bringing down intensified persecution on the party.

➤ 1931: Amid escalating repression and militarism throughout Japan and its colonial empire, the Taiwanese Cultural Association, Taiwanese People’s Party, and Taiwanese Communist Party are all banned or forcibly disbanded.

➤ 1931 September 18: The Japanese Kwantung Army launches an invasion of Manchuria, using as pretext a false-flag attack known in the West as the Mukden Incident. By February 1932, they complete their conquest of the northeastern Chinese region and establish the puppet state of Manchukuo under the nominal leadership of Puyi, the last Qing emperor.

➤ 1935: Under the control of large Japanese companies, Taiwan undergoes intensive industrialization, transportation, and electrification in preparation for a full-scale invasion of mainland China.

➤ 1936 December 12–26: After a decade of civil war, KMT generals Zhang Xueliang (張學良) and Yang Hucheng (楊虎城) kidnap Chiang Kai-shek in Xi’an and force him to agree to a Second United Front with the CPC to oppose Japanese imperialism. Chiang had long hoped to subdue the CPC before confronting Japan, but this was deeply unpopular among ordinary KMT troops who resented being forced to fight their countrymen and believed that Chiang was ignoring the Japanese threat. Despite the alliance, KMT-CPC clashes would continue throughout the war with Japan and the Second United Front would end with the New Fourth Army Incident of 1941.

➤ 1937: Japanese colonial authorities introduce a new “Japanization” or “imperialization” policy called kōminka (皇民化, lit. “becoming subjects of the emperor”) that aims to forcibly assimilate all Han Chinese and some yuánzhùmín into Japanese society. This entails bans on Chinese-language press and education, to be replaced with Japanese; the adoption of Japanese names; renunciation of Chinese ancestry for the adoption of new Japanese ancestors; and suppression of Han and yuánzhùmín spiritual customs in favor of State Shinto and emperor worship. There was also heavy emphasis on volunteering for the Imperial Japanese military and dying for the Japanese emperor. By some estimates, approximately 7% of Taiwan’s population underwent Japanization.

• Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), who later became the fourth president of the Republic of China, was perhaps the most well-known individual to undergo kōminka. He adopted the Japanese name Iwasato Masao (岩里政男), his family was heavily involved with the Japanese colonial police in Taiwan, and during the war he voluntarily enlisted in the Imperial Japanese Army.

• Japanese cultivation of a “native” Taiwanese elite was essential for a functioning colonial government because colonists were vastly outnumbered, even in the cities. Via the hokō system, the colonial police recruited local headmen and leaders of local community organizations to effectively monitor the lives of all Taiwanese residents. 

• The kōminka policy was an extension and intensification of the Japanese dōka policy (“assimilation”), which aimed to subordinate Chinese / Taiwanese identity beneath a dominant Japanese identity. Japanese colonial officials disagreed on how best to present Taiwan as a model colony compared to Euro-American colonies in Asia. Relative liberals like politician ltagaki Taisuke and governor-general Den Kenjiro saw assimilation and eventual equality as a vehicle for stable Japanese rule in Taiwan. Others such as governor-general Akashi Motojiro supported strict segregation and accepted assimilation only insofar as it served Japan’s military goals. Though there was some relaxation after armed anti-colonial resistance was subdued, the Japanese colonial government enacted increasingly harsh assimilation policies in the prelude to the Second Sino-Japanese War.

• Lin Hsien-tang of the largely discredited Taiwan Federation for Local Autonomy was an ardent assimilationist and friend of ltagaki Taisuke. They together founded the Taiwan Assimilation Society (Taiwan Dōkakai) to advocate for “Japanification” and assimilation, which was met with enthusiastic support among Taiwanese shinshō awardees. However, the organization was fiercely attacked and quickly dissolved by the Japanese government and colonial officials, who opposed the extension of constitutional rights reserved for Japanese colonists.

➤ 1937 July 7: Japan launches a full-scale invasion of China following a skirmish in Beijing known in the West as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, marking the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

• Taiwan became an important logistics and industrial center for Japan during the war. During the war, essential raw materials such as bauxite, iron ore, crude oil, and rubber commandeered from western Southeast Asian colonies would be processed in Taiwan before being shipped to Japan. 

• As in other Japanese colonies, opium production in Taiwan (monopolized by the Opium Production Office) also became a key revenue source for the Japanese empire, which ran massively profitable drug rings in mainland China before and during the war.

• The entire colony was also socially reshaped under the kōminka policy. To power its war machine, the empire employed its Taiwanese subjects first within military and economic support infrastructure, then as volunteer soldiers, and by the final years of the war as conscripts in the Imperial Japanese Army. In total some 200,000 Taiwanese volunteered or were conscripted into the IJA, including about 80,000 in combat roles primarily in the Philippines and mainland China. By 1940 it was common for Taiwanese youths to attach "desires written in [their own] blood" (kessho shigan) to their applications for military service. 

• Taiwanese soldiers often encountered less “Japanized'' colonial subjects during the war and began to believe they deserved greater standing within the empire by virtue of the “imperialization” they had undergone. Civilians confined to the island were less inclined to such ambitions, often turning to Chinese nationalism as even the most moderate anticolonial forces in Taiwan proper had been ruthlessly suppressed. 

• Throughout the war Japan used Taiwan as a launchpad for attacks on Guangdong, Hainan island, and after Pearl Harbor the Philippines as well. From 1944 to 1945 U.S. air raids killed anywhere from 15,000 to 30,000 Taiwanese civilians, and Allied attacks on Japanese shipping effectively isolated the island from the rest of the Japanese empire.

• Japan’s surrender came as a surprise to many in Taiwan. Most of the population celebrated and some even took the opportunity to exact revenge on Japanese colonial officials and Taiwanese collaborators. Some Taiwanese volunteers in the Imperial Japanese military were killed at their stations or committed suicide; Japan would refuse to repatriate or compensate any of them for their service. Huge numbers of people turned out to welcome the Chinese Nationalist forces as they arrived in mid-October.

c. Post-World War II, Cold War Containment, and Military Dictatorship arrow_upward

➤ 1943 November 26: The Republic of China, the United States, and the United Kingdom issue the Cairo Declaration, which calls for the restoration of Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan and Manchuria after Japan’s defeat. 

➤ 1945 July 26: The Allied Powers put forward the Potsdam Declaration, which outlines the terms for Japan’s unconditional surrender. These include a commitment that the terms of the Cairo Declaration – including Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan – will be fulfilled.  

➤ 1945 August 14: The Soviet Union and Republic of China conclude the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance. Among other provisions it commits the USSR to “non-interference in the internal affairs” of China – implying the end of direct support to the CPC (though this in fact continued) – and the ROC to formally recognize Mongolia, which had been de facto independent from China since the 1911 revolution.

➤ 1945 September 2: Japan unconditionally surrenders to the Allied Powers after the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and a lightning Soviet offensive that liberates all of Manchuria and northern Korea in under two weeks. The instrument of surrender accepts the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, including retrocession of Taiwan to China. 

➤ 1945 October 10: After several weeks of negotiations in Chongqing, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong (under U.S. and Soviet pressure respectively) sign the Double Tenth peace agreement. On paper it commits the KMT and CPC to recognize each other’s legitimacy, pursue peaceful reconstruction, and work toward multi-party elections. In practice it collapses almost immediately and fighting resumes in early 1946, inaugurating the final and decisive phase of the Chinese Civil War.

• Around the same time, the U.S. began directly intervening in the civil war by deploying 53,000 Marines to Hebei and Shandong provinces as part of Operation Beleaguer. They repatriated around 600,000 Japanese and Korean nationals and ordered occupying Japanese troops to remain at their posts until U.S. or KMT forces could accept their surrender. This was done to prevent the Japanese from surrendering to communist forces and thus strengthening the latter’s position. Over the next few years the CPC would fight several direct skirmishes with the U.S. occupation, which grew increasingly unpopular (including with the soldiers themselves) until the last troops were withdrawn in June 1949.

➤ 1945 October 25: KMT official Chen Yi (陳儀) receives a signed surrender from Japanese forces on Taiwan, proclaims Taiwan Retrocession Day and begins to reorganize the island to return to its original status as a Chinese province. Chiang Kai-shek subsequently appoints him the first ROC governor of Taiwan, but his mismanagement leads to the February 28 massacre and he is dismissed from his position soon after. (Chiang would later accuse him of collaboration with the communists and have him executed in 1950.)

➤ 1946 July: Cai Xiaoqian, formerly of the Taiwanese Cultural Association, returns to Taiwan to organize an underground communist resistance as secretary of the CPC Taiwan Provincial Working Committee. Under his leadership the party begins to grow a mass base through the Changhua peasant rent reduction struggle and the Taipei railway workers' movement. 

➤ 1947 February 28: Growing local discontent with KMT rule in Taiwan leads to open conflict after state officers strike a widow accused of selling contraband cigarettes in Taipei. Witnessing the act, a crowd forms and begins to protest, leading an officer to fire into the crowd and kill one bystander. Protests grow into open rebellion against the KMT government and the creation of de facto civilian government structures and armed militias. The uprising, now known as the 228 Incident or February 28 massacre, was eventually violently suppressed by the ROC military in March 1947. Estimates of civilian casualties range from 18,000 to 28,000, many of the victims poor wàishěngrén who bore the brunt of the anti-KMT anger. 

• One especially notable figure in these events is Xie Xuehong, who had earlier co-founded the short-lived Taiwanese Communist Party (1928-31) and during the rebellion organized a guerrilla force called the 27 Brigade. After the uprising is crushed, she flees to Hong Kong and then to mainland China, where she joins the CPC and establishes the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League (台湾民主自治同盟). Since 1949 the League has been one of eight minor legal parties in the CPC-led United Front. 

• At the time, many anti-KMT protests in Taiwan (particularly those led by the student movement) strongly identified with the communist ideals animating resistance to KMT rule in mainland China. The 228 Incident involved many tendencies and was by no means exclusively communist-led, but underground party cells grew in the wake of its suppression. There were 1300 CPC members in Taiwan by the time their mainland comrades secured victory in 1949.

➤ 1947 November: The ROC adopts a new Constitution (still in effect today) and holds nominally multi-party elections to a new National Assembly, in an effort to legitimize the KMT’s increasingly embattled rule with a façade of constitutional democracy. With large areas of the country under communist control and state legitimacy cratering, the KMT officially wins over 80% of the seats on a voter turnout of just 4-8%. 

• Around half the National Assembly delegates would retreat to Taiwan with the rump ROC government in 1949. With elections suspended under martial law they would continue to serve until 1991 (becoming known as the 萬年國會 or “Ten Thousand Year Assembly”), the vast majority of them nominally “representing” long-lost constituencies on the mainland.

➤ 1948 January 1: Left-wing members of the KMT, increasingly incensed at Chiang Kai-shek’s right-wing politics and dependence on U.S. support, break away and form the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang (中国国民党革命委员会, RCCK). They name Song Qingling (宋庆龄), the third wife of late ROC president Sun Yat-sen, as Honorary Chairwoman of the Revolutionary Committee. Since 1949 the RCCK has been another of the eight minor legal parties in the CPC-led United Front.

➤ 1948 December 2: Chiang Kai-shek, sensing the KMT’s imminent loss of mainland China to the CPC, secretly begins to move China’s currency reserves to Taiwan with the help of lieutenant general Wu Song-ching (吳嵩慶), head of the ROC finance and budget department. Gold, silver, and foreign exchange held by banks throughout mainland China would be secretly shipped or flown to Taiwan over the next 12 months – in total several million taels of precious metals and U.S. dollars that would be used to back the New Taiwan Dollar and stabilize KMT rule in Taiwan. Some of this money had been taken from the Chinese middle class earlier in the war with the promise of currency reform and restoring China’s financial stability. 

➤ 1949 April 6: The KMT starts mass arrests of college students at National Taiwan University who were staging a hunger strike in protest of KMT policies. Ten demonstrating students are shot by police. 

➤ 1949 May 20: The KMT government in Taiwan declares martial law. Utilizing “temporary provisions” for the suppression of the “communist rebellion,” the KMT suspends the ROC Constitution, initiating a period known as the White Terror (白色恐怖). The KMT dictatorship would last until 1987, a period during which an estimated 140,000 people were imprisoned and an estimated 4,000 executed for political reasons, such as criticizing the KMT or suspected communist sympathies. The brutality of KMT rule in Taiwan is in sharp distinction to the representation of the Taiwan regime as “Free China” (often posed against “Red China”) by Cold Warriors in American politics.

• Some Taiwanese communists managed to evade imprisonment and execution by escaping to the mainland. Zhang Kehui (张克辉) left Taiwan after the White Terror began and would later become the last Taiwan-born chairman of the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League and vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. He passed away on January 11, 2024 in Beijing and was buried in the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery.

➤ 1949 October 1: With the defeat of KMT forces in mainland China all but guaranteed, Mao Zedong proclaims the founding of the People’s Republic of China (中华人民共和国, PRC) in Beijing. Over the next several months the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) establishes control over the last remaining KMT-held areas of mainland China as well as Hainan island.

• The rural land reforms carried out by the CPC inspired millions of Chinese peasants to join the PLA and accelerated the defection of KMT conscripts. Hyperinflation due to KMT economic mismanagement and corruption was a major factor in their downfall, compounded by their failure to establish full territorial control over China either before or after the war.

• The communist victory was an especially severe blow to the United States, which considered the ROC its preferred junior partner in Asia (a role instead played since 1949 by its former enemy Japan). As one of the Big Four Allies in World War II, China enjoyed more respect from Western powers than it had in the era of unequal treaties; its elevated status had helped neutralize Japanese propaganda about “liberating” Asia from white imperialist rule. Though U.S. officials regularly grumbled about Chiang Kai-shek’s corruption and insistence on large loans, they gave significant monetary and logistical support to the ROC. In addition to their aforementioned direct intervention through Operation Beleaguer, they airlifted KMT troops to occupy key cities and provided at least $2 billion in aid (about half of it military, much of which the PLA captured). Blame for the “loss of China” quickly became a subject of intense debate in U.S. politics, leading directly to the rise of McCarthyism. 

➤ 1949 December 7: Defeated KMT forces retreat to Taiwan, where Chiang Kai-shek declares Taipei the provisional capital of the ROC and continues to claim authority over all of China. Around a million soldiers and civilians relocate to Taiwan, greatly expanding Taiwan’s population of Mandarin-speaking, mainland-born wàishěngrén.

• Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) together outlined three main goals for stabilizing the ROC regime: maintaining political control in Taiwan by eradicating communist agents and suppressing Taiwanese dissidents, organizing efficient military defense against future PLA attack, and ensuring economic stability and growth. To these ends, they proposed a regional anti-communist alliance that later evolved into the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and informal bilateral U.S. security agreements with Japan, South Korea, and the ROC.

• As director of the secret police from 1950 to 1965, Chiang Ching-kuo used his control of internal security, intelligence, and paramilitary organizations to surveil the entire ROC general staff with the aim of eliminating CPC spies and moles. In just the first half of 1950, more than 3,000 people were arrested and about 15% of them were executed as alleged communist spies. Chiang Ching-kuo claimed that almost all communist infiltration had been eliminated by 1951.

• KMT officials tended to distrust běnshěngrén due to the lingering influences of the kōminka policy and the not insignificant degree of collaboration with Japan during its fifty-year rule. They also insisted on suspending National Assembly elections until the mainland was recovered, replacing běnshěngrén civil servants and government officials with wàishěngrén, diverting much of Taiwan’s resources into war preparations, and forcibly instituting Mandarin education to the detriment of local languages.

• As a result, discontent with the KMT was common especially during the early years of their rule in Taiwan for varied different reasons. KMT conscripts from the mainland were some of the poorest people on the island and wanted to return to their families and homes; poor běnshěngrén who had suffered under Japanese rule for decades found the KMT unsympathetic to their plight; and the běnshěngrén (petty-)bourgeoisie keenly felt their loss of political power, especially those who had collaborated with the Japanese. Such class divisions were often masked by the wàishěngrén-běnshěngrén dichotomy.

➤ 1950 January 5: In his “Statement on Formosa,” U.S. President Harry Truman indicates his intention not to intervene militarily in any cross-strait conflict between the PRC and ROC and to withhold additional military aid from the latter.

➤ 1950 June 10: KMT lieutenant general and deputy defense minister General Wu Shi (​​吴石), his two deputies Chen Baocang (陈宝仓) and Nie Xi (聂曦), and CPC officer Zhu Feng (朱枫) are executed by firing squad for spying for the CPC. Wu had been a secret CPC informant since April 1947 and was instrumental in helping defeat the KMT on the mainland, but chose to go to Taiwan because he felt he had not done enough for the people. While in Taiwan, he passed key confidential military information to Zhu Feng, who passed it to the CPC.

• In early 1950, an underground party member named Wang Mingde defected to the KMT and exposed Cai Xiaoqian, the Taiwanese CPC cadre who was leading the underground communist movement on the island. Cai was captured, but as a seasoned intelligence officer he first pretended to defect by agreeing to lure in his higher-ups and managed to escape. The KMT then re-captured, tortured, and blackmailed him by threatening the life of his sister-in-law. This time Cai actually defected, revealing the names of thousands of Taiwanese communists and decimating the entire underground party organization. A search of Cai’s possessions uncovered Wu Shi and Zhu Feng’s contact information, leading to the arrests, torture, and martyring of the four CPC spies.

• After his betrayal, Cai Xiaoqian would join the Kuomintang and assist its anti-communist counterintelligence work, eventually rising to the post of deputy director of the ROC’s Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau and dying in Taipei in 1982 at the age of 75.

➤ 1950 June 14: Writing from Tokyo, Douglas MacArthur (Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers) issues a top secret memorandum on the strategic importance of Taiwan. MacArthur observes that Taiwan represents a key link in the U.S. “western strategic frontier” comprising Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines. In an infamous turn of phrase, MacArthur describes Taiwan as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” whose loss to a U.S. adversary would put U.S. interests in “serious jeopardy.” 

➤ 1950 June 25: The Korean War begins. The UN Security Council condemns the "armed attack on the Republic of Korea by forces from North Korea” (Res. 82) and calls on member states to supply military support to south Korea (Res. 83). Both resolutions pass unanimously because the veto-wielding Soviet Union is boycotting the Security Council to protest the ROC’s continued occupation of China’s UN seat. 

• The outbreak of the war also leads President Truman to reverse his earlier position and order the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait, to “prevent any [PRC] attack on Formosa” while also nominally urging Chiang Kai-shek’s regime “to cease all air and sea operations against the mainland.” Chiang offers to contribute 33,000 ROC troops to the invasion of Korea in hopes of expanding the war into the Chinese mainland and retaking power from the CPC, though the U.S. declines his proposal. A few hours after the war begins, Chiang also orders an end to all military negotiations with the PRC regarding Taiwan (which he had initiated a few months earlier out of frustration with lack of U.S. military support).

➤ 1951 May: The ROC government enacts a law that caps arable land rent for Taiwanese tenant farmers at 37.5% of crop yield. (Interestingly, this was the exact same percentage cap that the CPC instituted during the Second Sino-Japanese War in an effort to build a cross-class united front with “patriotic” landlords.) This marks the first stage of the KMT’s top-down land reform in Taiwan which would eventually see large estates broken up and redistributed to tenant farmers. Formerly Japanese-owned properties, which at one point constituted 66.7% of all land in Taiwan, are the first to be expropriated and sold on cheap credit to poor Taiwanese farmers under Premier Chen Cheng (陳誠). While far less sweeping and participatory than Communist land reform on the mainland, these policies stoke resentment among dispossessed běnshěngrén landlords who go on to form an early social base for Taiwanese separatism. They also help to undercut popular support for the CPC underground and win part of its rural base to the KMT instead.  

• To tackle hyperinflation, the government issues the New Taiwan Dollar and pegs it to gold. The state avoids large-scale privatization and retains the commanding heights of the economy (particularly finance, heavy industry, and infrastructure) to ensure stability and prepare for eventual reconquest of the mainland. This model of state-guided developmentalism (tolerated and encouraged by the United States due to its secure neocolonial position) becomes the basis for Taiwan’s strong economic growth in subsequent decades. It would also establish a sizable base of KMT supporters among both běnshěngrén and wàishěngrén. 

• Many of these early 1950s KMT reforms were inspired by CPC policies. Chiang Kai-shek underscored the importance of mobilizing and inspiring the youth by establishing organizations like the National Salvation Anti-Communist Youth Corps and Academy of Revolutionary Study and Practice (both managed by Chiang Ching-kuo). Party journals cited the CPC when proposing the integration of KMT cells into the government, military, private corporations, factories, schools, and nonprofits to carry out party policies and ensure alignment with national goals. Again following the CPC example, KMT members were expected to be loyal, self-critical, honest, and dedicated to party principles.

➤ 1951: The KMT government re-designates highland yuánzhùmín in Taiwan as “mountain compatriots” (山地同胞) and initiates an assimilationist policy called 山地平地化 (lit. “making the mountains into the plains”). This policy involves compulsory Mandarin-only education, the introduction of capitalist social relations and Han Chinese cultural customs, and nationalization of traditional yuánzhùmín lands.

➤ 1952 April 28: The Treaty of San Francisco comes into effect, restoring peaceful relations between Japan and the United States as well as most WWII Allied Powers – with some notable exceptions. In particular the Soviet Union rejects the final text, and owing to sovereignty disputes no Chinese or Korean delegates are even invited despite being the foremost victims of Japanese imperialism. Both the PRC and ROC strongly object to the treaty on the grounds that it leaves the final status of Taiwan undetermined, rather than explicitly affirming its retrocession to China.

• On the same day the Treaty of Taipei is signed (later ratified on August 5) as a separate peace treaty between Japan and the ROC, the latter under significant U.S. pressure. The text states that “nationals of the Republic of China shall be deemed to include all the inhabitants and former inhabitants of Taiwan and Penghu … who are of the Chinese nationality.” Modern-day Taiwan separatists argue that this too was not an explicit territorial cession.

➤ 1953 February: More than three years after the founding of the PRC and its immediate recognition by the USSR, the ROC regime in Taiwan officially abrogates the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance. In particular this means rescinding its recognition of Mongolia, which it would officially claim as part of its territory (along with all of mainland China) until 2002. The only veto ever exercised by the ROC in the UN Security Council was to block Mongolia’s admission in 1955; to this day the emblem of the ROC Marine Corps shows a map of China that includes outer Mongolia and parts of Russia.

• This is just one example of why critiques of Chinese territorial “expansionism” are fundamentally misplaced, as the PRC has simply inherited the territorial claims of the ROC and in fact asserts strictly more modest ones. Another example is the South China Sea dispute, where the PRC’s “nine-dash line” modified the ROC’s original “eleven-dash line” so as to recognize Vietnam’s claim to the Gulf of Tonkin. PRC and ROC claims in the South China Sea otherwise mirror each other almost exactly; both firmly rejected a 2016 arbitration ruling against China in its dispute with the Philippines.

➤ 1954 March 22: Xu Fulin (徐傅霖) of the China Democratic Socialist Party (中國民主社會黨, CDSP) unsuccessfully runs against Chiang Kai-shek for ROC president, winning 3% of the votes in the National Assembly. (The CDSP was founded in Shanghai in 1946 and became one of two minor legal parties in KMT-ruled Taiwan.) Chiang would subsequently run unopposed until his death, with term limits suspended under the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist Rebellion. 

• Later that year, the KMT expels liberal anti-Chiang dissident Lei Chen (雷震) for advocating term limits and a strong opposition party in Free China, a party publication he had co-founded. Lei and other anti-KMT liberal politicians found the China Democratic Party (中國民主黨) to oppose the KMT’s increasing stranglehold on power. After publishing more anti-KMT criticisms in Free China, Lei and several others are arrested and imprisoned. Other members of the China Democratic Party would go on to start the dǎngwài (黨外, “outside the party”) movement to oppose the KMT.

➤ 1954 June 15: Chiang Kai-shek meets with his south Korean and Filipino counterparts in Jinhae, Korea to announce the formation of the Asian Peoples’ Anti-Communist League. In 1966 this international network of far-right forces would expand to become the World Anti-Communist League. At its height it would include the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon, the Nicaraguan Contras and other U.S.-backed Central American death squads, and a rogues’ gallery of Western neo-Nazis and fascists. It still exists today and has been headquartered in Taipei since its founding.

➤ 1954 September 3: In what becomes known as the First Taiwan Strait Crisis, the PLA attempts to dislodge ROC forces from the Kinmen (金門), Matsu (馬祖), and Dachen (大陈) islands after they were garrisoned with over 70,000 KMT troops, posing a direct threat to the mainland. These island groups are located across the strait from Taiwan, just a few miles off the coast of mainland China; they were still in ROC hands because the PLA had failed to take them by amphibious landing in 1949. After several months of shelling, ROC forces are forced to evacuate Dachen on May 1, 1955, but they retain the other two island groups to this day. 

➤ 1954 December 2: The United States and Republic of China sign the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, which commits each party to provide military support in the event that the other comes under attack. Specifically, it commits U.S. military forces to defend the Taiwan and Penghu islands (but not Kinmen or Matsu). As part of its formal military commitment to Taiwan, the U.S. forms the United States Taiwan Defense Command. Headquartered in Taipei, the Command would host an estimated 19,000 U.S. troops at its peak in 1958 and later serve as a support base for the U.S. war on Vietnam.

• Taiwan quickly became the principal U.S. base for intelligence gathering and clandestine hybrid war against the PRC. The CIA was the most reliable patron for the ROC government within the U.S. state apparatus (regularly bypassing even the U.S. ambassador) and provided “a cornucopia of money, arms, equipment, and training.” For the next several decades, CIA and military personnel and their families constituted the majority of U.S. nationals in Taiwan.  

➤ 1955 January 29: In response to the First Taiwan Strait Crisis, the U.S. government adopts the 1955 Formosa Resolution, which extends the mutual defense treaty to include other offshore islands that may be targeted by the PRC (specifically Kinmen and Matsu).

➤ 1955 August 20: With the help of his son, Chiang Kai-shek, who is quite reasonably suspicious of potential U.S.-backed coup plots against him, has senior KMT general and ROC military commander Sun Li-jen (孫立人) arrested for plotting with the CIA to unseat him. 

• Chiang Ching-kuo, who was made head of the secret police in 1950, had earlier initiated Soviet-style restructuring of the ROC military to reassert the KMT’s political and ideological control and eliminate threats to his father’s authority. By 1954, more than a third of the armed forces were KMT members. Sun Li-jen complained to his U.S. counterparts that such politicization created “an almost insuperable barrier to the achievement of good military discipline, high morale, and effective combat potential.” Neither Chiang had any intention of acquiescing to U.S. demands on this matter, but Chiang Ching-kuo eventually made a few superficial concessions.

• Chiang Kai-shek had a complex relationship with the United States. He had strong connections with Washington’s China lobby (funded by his brother-in-law) and welcomed U.S. aid in fighting the CPC and reclaiming the mainland, but cared very little for U.S. advice on how to govern Taiwan and prosecute the civil war. He firmly believed that Taiwan was part of China and was extremely hostile to U.S. schemes that would codify its political separation from the mainland (e.g. independence, UN trusteeship over Taiwan, and a “two Chinas” arrangement with UN seats for both the PRC and ROC).

➤ 1957 May 24: U.S. Army Sgt. Robert Reynolds kills ROC Army Major Liu Ziran (劉自然) outside Reynolds’ home, sparking a mass protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Taipei known as the May 24 Incident (五二四事件). The protests, which result in destruction of government property in and around the Embassy, reflect growing disenchantment with the U.S. military presence in Taiwan and resentment at the diplomatic immunity afforded to U.S. troops who commit crimes in Taiwan. 

➤ 1958 August 23–December 2: The Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, a renewed attempt by the PLA to force ROC withdrawal from Kinmen and Matsu, culminates in a ceasefire and an informal arrangement where PRC and ROC forces would fire non-lethal shells at each other on alternating days until 1979 (symbolically signaling to the United States that the Chinese Civil War remained an internal affair). In response, the U.S. covertly deploys nuclear-capable missiles to Taiwan, which would be stationed at Tainan Air Base until 1974. In 2021, declassified documents revealed that U.S. military leaders pushed for a first-use nuclear strike on China. (See also Where They Were, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 1999). 

• During the conflict, Chiang Kai-shek sends Zhou Enlai a message indicating that if the PLA did not stop shelling, he would have to submit to U.S. pressure and withdraw from Kinmen and Matsu. This would in turn threaten both sides’ shared commitment to the indivisibility of China, because Taiwan’s geographical separation from the mainland would then correspond exactly to the political separation between PRC- and ROC-held territory.

➤ 1961 February: Ngô Đình Cẩn (brother of South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm) visits Taiwan to arrange for the Chiang regime to provide military training to South Vietnamese forces. Twenty ROC instructors would go on to train the Liên Đội Người Nhái (LDNN, literally “frogman unit”). By 1964, the CIA reported that “several hundred military and paramilitary personnel” from Taiwan were operating in South Vietnam.

➤ 1961 April: Chiang Kai-shek launches Project Guoguang (National Glory), a large-scale mobilization to prepare for the military reconquest of mainland China. Concrete plans are limited to the invasion of Fujian province, with a vague combination of U.S. military support and domestic political instability in the PRC expected to finish the job. On at least three occasions (1961 during the Great Leap Forward and early Sino-Soviet split; 1965 at the start of the U.S. war on Vietnam; and 1967 at the height of the Cultural Revolution), Chiang seeks U.S. approval to invade but is denied every time. In 1972, the Guoguang planning office is abolished, though the ROC would not formally renounce the aim of military reunification until 1991.

➤ 1964 September 20: Liberal anti-KMT activist and political science professor Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) and his students Hsieh Tsung-min (謝聰敏) and Wei Ting-chao (魏廷朝) call for Taiwanese independence in the Declaration of Formosan Self-Salvation, but they are arrested before the declaration can be published. The declaration advocates for a centrist third path between the “extreme right” of the KMT and the “extreme left” of the CPC, calls for the overthrow of Chiang Kai-shek, and criticizes the KMT policies of land reform, state-enforced Mandarin education, and wàishěngrén domination in government.

• Under U.S. pressure, Peng was released soon after his arrest and remained under heavy surveillance until his eventual exile in the U.S. He returned to Taiwan after the lifting of martial law and ran as the Democratic Progressive Party's presidential candidate in the 1996 election. 

➤ 1965 March 8: 3,500 U.S. Marines land near Da Nang, marking the beginning of the U.S. ground war in Vietnam. Besides providing covert military training, Taiwan under the ROC was also a major destination for U.S. servicemen on “R & R” (rest and relaxation) during the U.S. war on Vietnam. The New York Times reported in 1967 that some 5,000 U.S. servicemen arrived in Taipei each month; this influx of visiting soldiers built on the presence of some 13,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Taiwan. 

➤ 1965 June: Chiang Kai-shek orders ROC atomic weapons research (which began in 1958) to move into the development phase. Following the PRC’s successful detonation of a nuclear bomb in October 1964, there was a renewed push in the ROC to demonstrate a similar capability. 

• In 1974, Chiang Ching-kuo suggests moving forward with production but Chiang Kai-shek vetoes the proposal, firmly declaring that the ROC would never use nuclear weapons “to hurt our own countrymen.” 

• In 1988, Chang Hsien-yi (張憲義), deputy director of Taiwan's Institute of Nuclear Energy Research and long-time CIA spy, defects to the U.S. with top-secret documents, leading to immediate U.S. demands to shut down the program.

➤ 1966 March: Chiang Kai-shek is re-elected unopposed to his fourth and final term as president. Chiang Ching-kuo also pushes for a constitutional amendment that provides for elections to some new seats in the National Assembly and another chamber called the Legislative Yuan (立法院). This move is intended to court more political participation from běnshěngrén, though it still leaves in place all delegates who had served since 1947 until “the Chinese mainland is recovered.”

➤ 1966 November 12: On the centenary of Sun Yat-sen’s birth, and with the Cultural Revolution sweeping the mainland, Chiang Kai-shek initiates the “Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement” (中華文化復興運動) to safeguard traditional Chinese culture from the supposed threat of eradication by the communists. Through this initiative, Chiang’s fusion of neo-Confucian morality, Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People, and rhetorical commitment to “science” is promoted through state educational and cultural policy as well as a new Code of Youth Conduct. 

• The “movement” was overseen by a Promotion Council formed in July 1967 and helmed by Chiang himself. His son Chiang Ching-kuo declined to take up this position when he became ROC president in 1978. Eventually the younger Chiang’s successor Lee Teng-hui would downsize it, rename it as the General Association of Chinese Culture (中華文化總會), and ironically convert it into a vehicle to “enhance and cultivate Taiwan’s cultural power” in distinction to mainland China.

➤ 1971 October 25: The United Nations issues General Assembly Resolution 2758, which recognizes the People’s Republic of China as “the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations” and “expel[s] forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek from the place which they unlawfully occupy.” The vote passes with 76 votes in favor, 35 votes against, and 17 abstentions. (Earlier that day, the General Assembly had rejected a U.S.-backed “compromise” proposal that would have deleted the second quoted passage, thus allowing the ROC some form of separate representation.) 

➤ 1972 February 27: Following U.S. President Richard Nixon’s watershed visit to Beijing, the U.S. and PRC governments issue the Shanghai Communiqué, intended to de-escalate tensions and increase cultural and economic contact between the U.S. and China. Within the Communiqué, the U.S. declares that it “acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.” It also affirms that the withdrawal of U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan is part of the “ultimate objective” of a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese people themselves. 

➤ 1972 May 15: The United States returns the Ryukyu Islands to Japan, having occupied and administered them since the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. Controversially, the territory returned to Japan includes the Diaoyu Islands, an uninhabited archipelago northeast of Taiwan that was annexed by Japan in 1895 (and administered as the “Senkaku Islands”) but also claimed by both the PRC and ROC. The Diaoyu Islands Protection Movement erupts among ROC students in the U.S. and Taiwan to demand the islands’ return to Chinese sovereignty. This soon becomes a common rallying cry for Chinese people on both sides of the strait and a favored cause for multiple generations of Taiwan’s pro-unification left.

➤ 1972 May 26: Chiang Ching-kuo becomes ROC premier.

➤ 1974 September 7: The World Federation of Taiwanese Associations (WFTA), an alliance of pro-independence groups based in Western and Western-aligned countries, is founded in Vienna, Austria.

➤ 1975 April 5: Chiang Kai-shek dies. After a month of official mourning his body is “temporarily” entombed in a mausoleum in Taoyuan, awaiting final burial in his hometown of Fenghua, Zhejiang province (pending “recovery” of mainland China from the CPC). Chiang is succeeded as ROC president by his vice president Yen Chia-kan (嚴家淦) and as KMT chairman by his son Chiang Ching-kuo. 

• Reaction is muted on the mainland, where Mao is said to have reacted simply by saying “understood.” U.S. obituaries tend to be critical of Chiang, while the Japanese government praises its former wartime enemy as “a great benefactor in the reconstruction of Japan … repaying evil with kindness.” 

➤ 1976 September 9: Mao Zedong dies in Beijing. Chiang Ching-kuo responds with a “Message to Mainland Compatriots” calling on the people of mainland China to “rise up against the communists and retake our freedom.” This message is broadcast to the mainland using radio and balloon-dropped leaflets, to no discernible effect.

➤ 1978 May 20: Chiang Ching-kuo officially assumes the ROC presidency, two months after being almost unanimously elected by the National Assembly and after Yen Chia-kan finishes serving out his father’s final term. 

• Many of the White Terror policies that the younger Chiang helped implement during his father’s presidency were phased out during his own. Having thoroughly destroyed the communists as a political force, he could safely increase běnshěngrén representation in government and lift many restrictions on liberal anti-KMT activism, allowing the dǎngwài movement to flourish. 

• Economic policies such as the “Ten Major Construction Projects,” focused high-tech development, and price controls on food and other key commodities helped ensure sustained economic growth through the 1980s. Chiang’s government also implemented labor reforms that repealed anti-strike laws, limited union-busting, strengthened occupational safety codes, and promoted women’s employment and maternal leave. These policies helped maintain a firm KMT support base even with the growth of the dǎngwài movement.

➤ 1978 December 18-22: At the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the CPC, Deng Xiaoping (邓小平) consolidates his status as paramount leader of the People’s Republic of China. This also marks the beginning of his landmark “Reform and Opening Up” (改革开放) policy, which entails a shift toward economic liberalization under “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (中国特色社会主义).

➤ 1979 January 1: The United States and People’s Republic of China normalize diplomatic relations for the first time since 1949, opening embassies in Beijing and Washington, D.C. In the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations, the U.S. recognizes the PRC as the sole government of China and acknowledges that Taiwan is a part of China. As a consequence, the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty expires.

• The National People’s Congress issues a Message to Compatriots on Taiwan, calling for cross-strait reconciliation, the re-establishment of transportation and postal services, and the promotion of familial, academic, cultural, sports, and technological exchanges. Thousands of people in mainland China, many of whom were former KMT members or soldiers, write letters to friends and family in Taiwan and the greater Chinese diaspora.

• Chiang Ching-kuo believes that cross-strait social, cultural, and economic engagement will inevitably erode communist rule in the mainland, a perspective with which U.S. officials agree. But with the stinging loss of U.S. recognition he decides to focus on consolidating power in Taiwan instead, issuing a policy of “three no’s” (no compromise, no contact, and no negotiations with the CPC). Later he quietly begins to allow private individuals and businesses in Taiwan to connect with their mainland counterparts with the aim of facilitating gradual, peaceful reunification under the ROC.

➤ 1979 January 25: James Soong Chu-yu (宋楚瑜), longtime personal secretary and trusted friend to Chiang Ching-kuo, is promoted to head of the Government Information Office where he manages censorship and propaganda. 

➤ 1979 April 10: The United States Congress passes the Taiwan Relations Act, assuring its commitments to the KMT regime in Taiwan despite the normalization of relations with China. The act allows for the continuation of de facto diplomatic relations with Taiwan through the American Institute in Taiwan, a non-profit organization created to serve the functions of the former U.S. embassy. The act also allows for the continued sale of military armaments to Taiwan.

➤ 1979 November 26: The International Olympic Committee approves the Nagoya Resolution, which would allow athletes from Taiwan to compete in international sporting events separately from mainland China under the English name “Chinese Taipei.” The former ROC Olympic Committee initially protests but ultimately accepts the name change in 1981.

• See Qiao Collective’s article “Beijing 2022 and China’s Challenge to Sports Imperialism” for a more detailed history of cross-strait sovereignty disputes in the context of international sport.

• The ROC/Taiwan has also participated in some non-sporting international organizations under the name Chinese Taipei, for example Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

• Interestingly the two sides of the strait use different Chinese translations of this name: 中華台北 in Taiwan (中華 Zhōnghuá referring to the Chinese cultural sphere), and 中国台北 in the mainland (中国 Zhōngguó referring to the Chinese state, a more literal translation being “Taipei, China”).

➤ 1979 December 10: Anti-KMT liberal activists from underground dǎngwài newspaper Formosa Magazine hold a demonstration to celebrate Human Rights Day in Kaohsiung, precipitating the so-called Kaohsiung Incident. A major trigger for the demonstration was Chiang Ching-kuo’s suspension of planned elections after the U.S. withdrew diplomatic recognition from the ROC. The KMT government arrests and imprisons most of the dǎngwài leadership after protestors clash with the police and military. 

• The main group of activists arrested for the incident are known as the “Kaohsiung Eight”: Annette Lu Hsu-lien (呂秀蓮, 2000–2008 ROC vice president), Chen Chu (陳菊), Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文), Huang Hsin-chieh (黃信介), Lin Hung-hsuan (林弘宣), Shih Ming-teh (施明德), Chang Chun-hung (張俊宏), and Lin Yi-hsiung (林義雄). Each of them would go on to serve at some point as chair of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), other than Lin Hung-hsuan who never formally joined the party.

• Several of their defense lawyers also go on to become major figures in the DPP, including Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁, 2000–2008 ROC president), Frank Hsieh (謝長廷, 2008 DPP presidential candidate), and Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌, 2008 DPP vice presidential candidate).

➤ 1981 September–December: Chiang Ching-kuo appoints Taiwanese lawyer Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) as deputy director of the First Bureau of the Presidential Office, luring him away from a lucrative position at a bank in Boston. Ma, who would become ROC president in 2008, first caught Chiang’s attention through an essay affirming the latter’s opinion that communism in mainland China would naturally and inevitably collapse.

➤ 1982 February 14: The Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA) is founded in Los Angeles by anti-KMT liberal activists and later moves to Washington, D.C. FAPA maintains close ties with U.S. officials and has consistently lobbied for Taiwan independence since its founding, arguing that it would serve U.S. interests in the region. 

• Liberal anti-KMT independence activist and future DPP presidential candidate Peng Ming-min became president of FAPA in 1983.

➤ 1982 August 17: The United States and China issue the U.S.–PRC Joint Communiqué, in which they pledge to deepen economic, cultural, educational, scientific, and technological connections between the two countries. The U.S. also promises to reduce arms sales to the ROC provided that the Taiwan Strait remains peaceful. After strong backlash from conservatives, U.S. President Ronald Reagan then relays Six Assurances to the ROC government regarding arms sales, cross-strait negotiations, and the sovereignty question. These assurances would be formally adopted as non-binding resolutions by both houses of Congress in 2016.

➤ 1983 June 26: On a visit to Seton Hall University in New Jersey, Deng Xiaoping articulates six points regarding Taiwan's peaceful reunification with the mainland as a “special administrative region.” They include a degree of autonomy far outstripping any other administrative unit in China, with “the party, governmental and military systems of Taiwan … administered by the Taiwan authorities themselves.” Though he does not explicitly use the phrase, this proposal for Taiwan becomes the core of the “one country, two systems” (一国两制) schema through which Hong Kong and Macau would eventually return to Chinese sovereignty.

➤ 1984 October 15: Henry Liu (劉宜良), a Chinese-born writer and critic of the KMT, is murdered by members of the KMT-affiliated Bamboo Union gang in Daly City, California. Liu had previously worked as a U.S. State Department interpreter and written an unofficial biography of Chiang Ching-kuo which drew the gang’s ire. His murder sparks outrage in overseas Chinese communities over the long arm of KMT repression and sours relations between Chiang and the U.S. government.

➤ 1985: The Taipei Credit Affair (also known as the Tenth Credit Affair), in which the government-owned Tenth Credit Cooperative collapses due to illegal banking practices and unbacked loans, becomes a major scandal for the government and leads to the resignation of several KMT officials. Because it is the largest organization of its kind in Taiwan, the cooperative’s 100,000 members see their savings disappear and many companies go bankrupt or face significant financial difficulties.

➤ 1986 September 28: The Democratic Progressive Party (民主進步黨, DPP) is founded in Taipei. Still technically illegal until the lifting of martial law, the DPP drew from the dǎngwài movement, which since the 1970s had contested martial law and KMT one-party rule. The DPP would grow to become the primary political alternative to the KMT, with a platform emphasizing Taiwan localism and nominal independence.

➤ 1987 February: After returning to Taiwan from a 25-year career at Texas Instruments, electrical engineer Morris Chang (張忠謀) founds the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) with generous support from the ROC government, including 48% of the startup capital. TSMC is the world’s first dedicated semiconductor foundry, meaning that it primarily manufactures chips based on other firms’ design specifications. Today it is possibly the most important node in the entire globe-spanning semiconductor supply chain, producing around 60% of the world’s chips including a commanding 90% share of the most advanced chips.

➤ 1987 July: Chiang Ching-kuo lifts martial law. A few months later, KMT officials also end the ban on travel to the Chinese mainland, ending thirty-eight years of cross-strait isolation. 

d. Democratization, De-Sinicization, and the New Cold War arrow_upward

➤ 1988 January 1: Chiang Ching-kuo ends the ban on independent newspapers and non-KMT parties in Taiwan. Within a few days, ~200 new publications are registered and more than 60 political groups applied to register as parties, although only 20 would actually follow through.

➤ 1988 January 13: Chiang Ching-kuo dies and is succeeded as ROC president and KMT chairman by his handpicked successor Lee Teng-hui (李登輝). Lee is the first Taiwan-born běnshěngrén to serve in either position, and hardline wàishěngrén cadres in the KMT almost block his ascent. They are persuaded to back down by James Soong, Chiang Ching-kuo’s former personal secretary and head of the Government Information Office. (Lee would in turn promote Soong to KMT Secretary-General in 1989.)

➤ 1988: Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer Foxconn opens its first mainland factory in Shenzhen, kicking off the first wave of “foreign” direct investment led by Taiwanese capital, known as Táishāng (台商). As part of Deng Xiaoping’s reform policy, investment from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and the Chinese diaspora would be essential in developing mainland China's historically neglected light manufacturing sector.

➤ 1989 March 29: The Labor Party of Taiwan (勞動黨) is founded by striking trade unionists in Hsinchu County. They initially consider naming it the “Taiwanese Communist Party” in homage to the island’s last organized pro-unification left force, but decide against it given the still-prevailing atmosphere of anti-communism. Nonetheless, many high-profile communists imprisoned during the White Terror join the party, making it in many ways the ideological and spiritual successor to the TCP of 1928-31.

• See “Perspectives from the Pro-Unification Left” in the Resources section for more about the party and their perspective on Taiwan.

➤ 1989 June 4: Lee Teng-hui condemns the Chinese government’s response to the Tiananmen Square protests as a “mad action” that “moved us to incomparable grief, indignation and shock.” The New York Times reports actual popular reaction in Taiwan as considerably more “muted and controlled,” especially with raw memories from four decades of martial law under the KMT.

➤ 1990 March 16–20: The six-day Wild Lily movement takes place, with student protestors advocating for direct elections for ROC president and vice president as well as new popular elections for all National Assembly seats. The day after the protests, Lee Teng-hui welcomes some protestors to the Presidential Office Building and expresses his support for the movement.

➤ 1991 May 1: In one of its final acts, the National Assembly “elected” in 1947 finally repeals the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist Rebellion. It also adopts a number of Additional Articles to the ROC Constitution which provide for fresh elections to the National Assembly and Legislative Yuan. These are explicitly limited to the “Free Area” under de facto ROC jurisdiction, finally ending the legal fiction of “representation” for constituencies in mainland China.

• 1992 May 28: Another set of Additional Articles introduce direct elections to the offices of ROC president and vice president, starting in 1996. They also guarantee yuánzhùmín “legal protection of their status and the right to political par­ticipation,” including three reserved seats each for highland and lowland peoples in both the National Assembly and the Legislative Yuan.

• Further constitutional amendments transfer more and more responsibilities from the National Assembly to the Legislative Yuan (or to direct popular vote), until the former becomes completely moribund starting in 2000. The last National Assembly is elected in 2005, for the sole purpose of approving an amendment to abolish itself until “national unification.”

➤ 1992 November: Cross-strait talks between the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (PRC) and the Straits Exchange Foundation (ROC) take place in Hong Kong. The talks result in what became known as the “1992 Consensus,” which states that both the PRC and ROC recognize that Taiwan and the Chinese mainland are part of “One China.” Each side recognizes that the other has different interpretations of this One China principle, with the PRC claiming sovereignty over both the Chinese mainland and Taiwan as a Special Administrative Region (SAR), and the ROC claiming de jure jurisdiction over the Chinese mainland, and practical jurisdiction over Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu. While succeeding governments in Taiwan have contested the agreement, the PRC considers the 1992 Consensus to be the precondition for continued cross-strait dialogue. 

➤ 1992 September 2: In violation of the 1982 U.S.–PRC Joint Communiqué, the U.S. sells 150 F-16 fighter planes to the ROC government.

➤ 1993: A mass grave for hundreds of victims of the Kuomintang’s White Terror is discovered at the Liuzhangli Cemetery in Taipei. Public discussion of this event is muted for another two decades or so, since the majority of these victims were mainland-born communists (including members of underground CPC cells that survived the 228 uprising and subsequent White Terror) – a fact that sits uneasily with both KMT and separatist historical narratives.

➤ 1993 March 20: Lee Teng-hui appoints James Soong as Chairman of the Provincial Government, i.e. the government of Taiwan province within the ROC.

➤ 1993 August 22: The New Party (新黨) is founded by members of the New Kuomintang Alliance, which broke away from the KMT in protest of Lee Teng-hui’s moves away from Chinese unification. 

• The New Party lost all parliamentary representation in 2008 but still exists to this day. In 2019, they announced a "one country, two systems" proposal that includes an end to US arms purchases; a ban on separatist political activity; inclusion of Taiwanese firms in the Belt and Road Initiative; and positive references to the CPC, Xi Jinping, and the "rejuvenation of the Chinese nation." Labor Party chairman Wu Rong-yuan (吳榮元) was in attendance at the event.

➤ 1993 September: At the request of Lee Teng-hui’s government, seven Central American countries that still recognize the ROC request that it be readmitted to the United Nations under its official name; the General Assembly refuses even to consider the proposal. This has since been an annual exercise. 

➤ 1994: The U.S. government upgrades the protocol level for treatment of “unofficial” ROC officials and diplomats. 

➤ 1994 January: In an effort to limit and counterbalance Taiwan’s growing economic integration with mainland China, Lee Teng-hui launches a “Go South” strategy to develop trade, investment, and political ties with various Southeast Asian countries. While it does not prove particularly effective, subsequent ROC administrations under Chen Shui-bian and Tsai Ing-wen would enact similar policies.

➤ 1994 December 20: James Soong is directly elected by voters as Governor of Taiwan Province. He proves to be a widely popular politician among wàishěngrén, běnshěngrén, and yuánzhùmín voters alike, garnering approval ratings upwards of 80%. 

➤ 1995 April–June: U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher assures Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen that granting a U.S. visa to Lee Teng-hui would be “inconsistent with [the United States’] unofficial relationship” with the ROC. However, the Clinton administration issues the visa anyway so Lee can speak about Taiwan’s “transition to democracy” at a Cornell University alumni event, claiming this is “completely consistent with the…three communiqués that form the basis” of U.S.-China relations. Lee’s speech advocates for Taiwan to “break out of diplomatic isolation” and “enhance mutually beneficial relations” with the U.S..

➤ 1995 June 26: ROC officials offer to pay $1 billion into a “special fund for developing countries” in exchange for readmission to the United Nations.

➤ 1995 July 21–1996 March 23: The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis occurs. Responding to moves by Lee Teng-hui and the U.S. to undermine the one-China principle and the 1992 Consensus in the lead-up to the 1996 ROC presidential election, China conducts a series of military exercises and missile tests in the Taiwan Strait

• 1995 August 1: U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and PRC Foreign Minister Qian Qichen (钱其琛) meet in Brunei. China asks for the U.S. to reaffirm its commitment to the one-China principle and commit to no further visits from Taiwan officials. The U.S. presents a confidential letter from Clinton reiterating its own one-China policy, but pledges only that future visits “would be considered on a case-by-case basis.” Christopher also states that China's military exercises in the strait “do not contribute to peace and stability.”

• 1995 August 25: U.S. officials rebuff China’s request for a fourth U.S.-China communiqué that would categorically rule out Taiwan independence and future visits to the U.S. by ROC officials. 

• 1995 September–October: The ROC armed forces conduct missile tests as well as ground, naval, and air exercises meant to simulate a response to a hypothetical PLA landing in Taiwan. This is repeated in early 1996.  

• 1996 March: In response to further PLA missile tests and military exercises, the U.S. deploys two carrier battle groups to areas around Taiwan.

➤ 1996 March 23: Incumbent Lee Teng-Hui wins the first-ever direct election for president of the ROC, defeating Peng Ming-min who runs for the DPP on a platform of open support for Taiwan independence. Lee also supports Taiwanese localism in defiance of the KMT line on reunification, for which the party would eventually expel him in 2001. 

• Throughout his career Lee would also endorse rightwing revisionist narratives about Japanese militarism in World War II, boasting of his voluntary service in the Imperial Japanese Army and denying such atrocities as the Nanjing massacre and enslavement of “comfort women.”

• Lee’s brother Teng-chin (李登欽) had voluntarily enlisted in the Imperial Japanese Navy and been killed in the Battle of Manila, later being enshrined alongside over a thousand war criminals in Japan’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine. Lee visited Yasukuni in 2007, where he was greeted by flag-waving Japanese supporters shouting banzai (long life) and “Taiwan forever.”

• Following the 2012 protests in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan over Japan’s occupation of the Diaoyu Islands, Lee expressed support for Japan's territorial claims in open defiance of the official ROC position. He has reiterated this stance multiple times since, eliciting widespread outrage on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

• In 2015, Lee condemned celebrations of Japan's defeat in World War II as excessively pro-mainland, claiming Taiwanese people were loyal subjects who fought for their “motherland” Japan.

• Bizarrely, Lee was also the only ROC president to have joined the Communist Party of China, which he briefly did twice in 1946 and 1947. He claimed to have done so because it was the leading opposition to KMT rule (a rare admission from the localist camp), but considerable evidence suggests that he was in fact a mole who betrayed dozens of his erstwhile party comrades.

➤ 1996 December: During the National Development Conference, Lee Teng-hui and other officials decide to dissolve the Provincial Government and thus eliminate the position of Governor of Taiwan starting in 1998. This is widely suspected to be an attempt by Lee to limit James Soong’s political power and undermine his popularity in Taiwan, a conflict that would come to a head in the 2000 presidential elections.

➤ 1997: Historian Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) systematically revises school textbooks to suggest that every previous government in Taiwan, including that of the KMT itself, was colonial in nature. He recasts the Republic of China as a brutal foreign occupation, comparing it unfavorably with Japan’s supposedly more “benign” colonial rule.

• The campaign of cultural de-sinicization begins with the support of Lee Teng-hui and accelerates under his DPP successor, forming the ideological foundation for Taiwanese localism and pro-independence agitation. This narrative claims European and Japanese colonialism as positive contributions to Taiwan’s history while denigrating China’s “backwards” culture as antithetical to Taiwanese modernity. It also artificially separates Taiwan’s history from its Chinese context and characterizes Mandarin as an oppressive import from mainland China, promoting instead the use of “Taiwanese” Hokkien (a dialect that also originates in mainland China).

• In historical study and research, the terms “Japanese occupation” (日据) and “Japanese colonization” (日本殖民统治) are systematically edited to “Japanese rule” (日治). Japan’s ostensible contributions to Taiwan’s industrialization are uncritically lauded, erasing their basis in colonial extraction and militarism. Some organizations like the Taiwan History Association consider Taiwan’s history to be part of Japanese rather than Chinese history, while others like the Taiwan Historical Study Association vehemently disagree.

➤ 1997 July 1: Hong Kong returns to Chinese sovereignty after 156 years of British colonial rule dating back to the First Opium War. Under the terms of the 1984 Sino-British Declaration, its existing political and economic systems are to remain substantially unaffected during a 50-year transitional period. Alongside the 1999 handover of Macau after 442 years of Portuguese colonial rule, this marks the first practical implementation of a “one country, two systems” reunification scheme along the lines of what the PRC has offered to Taiwan since 1979.

➤ 1998 July: During talks with PRC President Jiang Zemin (江泽民), U.S. President Bill Clinton promises that the U.S. will adhere to “three no’s” on the question of Taiwan: that the U.S. would not support Taiwan independence, a "two Chinas" or "one China, one Taiwan" system, nor support Taiwan's membership in any international organization of which statehood is a requirement.

➤ 1999 May: The DPP ratifies the “Resolution on Taiwan’s Future,” outlining a sharp break from the 1992 Consensus. The document states that Taiwan “is an independent and sovereign state,” rejects the “One China” or “One Country, Two Systems” principles, and calls for Taiwan to seek international recognition, including admission to the UN.

➤ 1999 July 9: In an interview with German journalists, Lee Teng-hui claims that there is a “special state-to-state relationship” between mainland China and Taiwan, a statement that other officials quickly confirm to be the government position.

➤ 1999 November: James Soong is expelled from the KMT when he announces an independent presidential campaign after losing the party’s nomination to Lien Chan (連戰). The KMT also launches a three-month smear campaign accusing Soong of embezzling party funds. During the campaign Lee Teng-hui supports the accusations; after the election he admits that he had in fact authorized Soong’s transfer of the funds. Soong is ultimately vindicated by internal KMT documents signed by Lee himself.

➤ 2000 March 18: Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic Progressive Party is elected ROC president, ending 55 years of uninterrupted KMT rule in Taiwan. He goes on to govern for two terms, during which cross-strait relations are consistently strained.

• It is widely suspected that Lee Teng-hui engineered a split in the KMT by endorsing Lien Chan over the far more popular James Soong, thus intentionally enabling Chen to win with only 39% of the vote in a three-way race.

• In his inauguration speech, Chen Shui-bian makes his famous “Four Noes and One Without” pledge, claiming that he will not (1) declare independence, (2) change the national title “Republic of China,” (3) amend the constitution to describe cross-strait relations as “state-to-state relations,” (4) push for a referendum on unification or independence, or (5) abolish the Guidelines for National Unification with mainland China.

• Chen appoints lifelong independence activist and 1996 DPP presidential candidate Peng Ming-min as senior presidential advisor shortly after his inauguration.

➤ 2000 March 31: James Soong and his supporters leave the KMT and form the People First Party (親民黨, PFP) after his loss. He would later repair relations with Lien Chan to become his running mate in 2004, and subsequently run as the PFP’s own presidential candidate in 2012, 2016, and 2020 (garnering between 3% and 13% of the vote). The PFP still exists to this day but lost all parliamentary representation in 2016.

➤ 2001 August 12: After the KMT expels Lee Teng-hui for his pro-independence stance, his supporters form a new party called the Taiwan Solidarity Union (台灣團結聯盟, TSU). They consider Chen Shui-bian and the DPP too moderate and instead call for outright independence as the “Republic of Taiwan.” Lee later campaigns for TSU candidates as the party’s “spiritual leader,” though he never formally joins. 

• In 2005, TSU chairman Shu Chin-chiang (蘇進強) visited the controversial Yasukuni shrine to pay respects to Taiwanese soldiers who “sacrificed their lives for Japan” and was greeted by Japanese supporters waving TSU and Japanese flags. Pro-unification yuánzhùmín legislator Kao Chin Su-mei (高金素梅) sharply condemned the visit because Imperial Japan “launched over 160 battles to destroy Taiwan's [yuánzhùmín] tribes.” A few months later, she and other yuánzhùmín protested at Yasukuni to demand that the names of their ancestors be removed from the shrine.

• The TSU lost all parliamentary representation in 2016 but still exists to this day. In 2020 it notably urged Taiwanese-Americans to support Donald Trump for re-election as U.S. president, calling him “the most Taiwan-friendly U.S. leader since World War II.” 

➤ 2001 December 2: The World Taiwanese Congress is founded in Washington, D.C. to coordinate Taiwan independence organizations like FAPA and WFTA.

➤ 2002 August 3: Speaking to the pro-independence World Federation of Taiwanese Associations, Chen Shui-bian declares that “Taiwan has always been a sovereign state” and calls for a referendum to enshrine this claim in law. He also sends Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), then head of the ROC’s Mainland Affairs Council, to the United States to assure nervous officials that this does not represent a serious departure from the one-China policy. When asked by journalists, she confirms that the ROC government is following a policy of “doing it but not saying it” with regard to independence.

➤ 2003: Lee Teng-hui campaigns for the removal of “China” from the names of government agencies, businesses, and other organizations. He also advocates for Taiwan independence and the adoption of a new constitution. Chen Shui-bian also supports these proposals, requiring various government organizations and overseas offices to comply and report back on progress. 

➤ 2003 September: Following a year of bitter debate between the status-quo and pro-independence camps, Chen’s administration adds “Taiwan” to the official ROC passport. In 2020, the English term “Republic of China” (though not the Chinese name 中華民國) would be removed from the passport entirely after lobbying from overseas independence supporters.

➤ 2004 March 19: Chen Shui-bian and his running mate Annette Lu survive an assassination attempt while campaigning in Tainan the day before the 2004 election. DPP supporters claim that the shooting was planned by mainland Chinese officials to disrupt the election while others suspect that it was faked to garner sympathy votes for Chen, who had been trailing in the polls. KMT candidates Lien Chan and James Soong would lose the election by only ~30,000 votes (a margin of only 0.2%), sparking large protests in Taipei; they would never formally concede.

• Chen Yi-hsiung (陳義雄), the prime suspect, is found drowned in Tainan ten days after the assassination attempt. His death is ruled a suicide, but his family allegedly burned the suicide notes that may have clarified the situation.

• A consultative referendum is held on the same day as the presidential election, asking voters to approve (1) the acquisition of “advanced anti-missile weapons” and (2) a “‘peace and stability’ framework” for cross-strait negotiations. Due to a KMT boycott, neither question reaches the required 50% turnout threshold and thus both proposals fail to pass.

➤ 2005 March 14: The National People’s Congress of the PRC passes an “Anti-Secession Law” that reiterates the one-China principle, lays out a pathway to peaceful reunification that affords Taiwan “a high degree of autonomy,” and – most controversially in Taiwan and the West – explicitly sanctions the use of “non-peaceful means” should the island unilaterally secede or otherwise render peaceful reunification impossible.

➤ 2005 April 26: Kuomintang chairman Lien Chan leads a 70-member delegation on the party’s first visit to mainland China since 1949. Pro-independence rioters affiliated with the DPP and TSU attempt to prevent their flight from leaving the Taipei airport, triggering a massive brawl with KMT supporters. The delegation first visits the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing, then flies to Beijing where Lien meets with PRC President and CPC General Secretary Hu Jintao (胡锦涛) – the first such meeting between KMT and CPC leaders since 1945. Lee Teng-hui and the DPP condemn the visit, with Chen Shui-bian initially claiming it violated ROC law.

➤ 2006 February 27: In violation of his inauguration pledge, Chen Shui-bian dissolves the National Unification Council and the associated Guidelines for National Unification.

➤ 2007: Tu Cheng-sheng, the historian who had previously revised history textbooks to whitewash Japanese imperialism, is appointed Minister of Education in Chen Shui-bian’s second term. He aims to “clear away the ‘remnants of Greater China consciousness’ (大中國意識的沉屙)” by removing references to “mainland China” and introducing separate textbooks for Taiwanese and Chinese history. The textbook revisions also recast Han migration to Taiwan during the Qing dynasty as a colonial process.

➤ 2007 March 4: In a speech for a FAPA event, Chen Shui-bian proposes the “Four Wants and One Without,” advocating for Taiwan to seek independence, ratify a new name, revise the constitution, and seek further development. He also claims that Taiwanese politics is divided not along left-right lines but only on the question of unification vs. independence.

➤ 2007 September 7: Chen Shui-bian’s government applies for UN membership, for the first time ever under the name “Taiwan” rather than “Republic of China.” As usual, the General Assembly overwhelmingly refuses to even consider the bid. 

➤ 2008 March 22: Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the KMT is elected ROC president in a landslide, bringing eight years of DPP rule to an end and overseeing a marked improvement in cross-strait relations. In his inauguration speech, Ma highlights his "three no's" policy -- no unification with mainland China, no declaration of independence from China, and no use of force to resolve differences across the Taiwan Strait.

• Two referendums on UN membership are held concurrently with this election: one from the DPP proposing to apply “under the name ‘Taiwan,’” and a rival one from the KMT proposing to apply “under the name ‘Republic of China,’ or ‘Taiwan,’ or [any] other name that is conducive to success and preserves our nation’s dignity.” Neither comes close to meeting the 50% turnout threshold.

➤ 2008: The first and second Cross-Strait High-Level Talks take place in June in Beijing and in November in Taipei. Chen Yunlin (陈云林) of the PRC Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) of the ROC Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) sign agreements concerning cross-strait commercial flights, tourism, and trade.

➤ 2009 May 16–22: The first annual Straits Forum commences in Xiamen, Fujian province. The forum aims to promote grassroots interaction, economic exchange, and cultural integration between the people of mainland China and Taiwan. 

• The leaders of the Labor Party of Taiwan, who represent the pro-unification left in modern Taiwanese politics, participated in the 2023 Straits Forum. 

➤ 2009 September 11: Chen Shui-bian is sentenced to life in prison, receives a fine of NT$200 million (US$6.1 million), and has his political rights annulled for life after a series of financial corruption scandals centering on him and his family came to light during his last two years in office. The sentence is later reduced to 20 years, but after a 2013 suicide attempt and insufficient prison treatment of his neurological illness, Chen is released on medical parole in 2015.

➤ 2010 June 29: Ma Ying-jeou signs the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) to increase bilateral trade between Taiwan and mainland China. 

➤ 2011 November: In a speech to the Australian parliament, U.S. President Barack Obama announces a repositioning of U.S. diplomatic and military assets away from the Middle East and towards East Asia and the Pacific in order to counter China’s growing influence – a landmark policy shift known as the Pivot to Asia. 

➤ 2012 September 25: Amid large protests in mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong over Japan’s moves to nationalize the disputed Diaoyu (“Senkaku”) Islands, the Japanese coast guard attacks Taiwanese fishing vessels off the islands with water cannons.

➤ 2014 March–April: The Sunflower Student Movement erupts against Ma Ying-jeou’s proposed Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement, which is intended to expand the 2010 ECFA free trade deal into the service sector. Motivated by a combination of anti-mainland xenophobia and grievances about neoliberal globalization, the protests escalate into an occupation of the Legislative Yuan (a scene repeated with Hong Kong’s Legislative Council in 2019) and lead to the eventual scrapping of the agreement. 

• Leaders of the movement later become major figures in the DPP and the New Power Party (時代力量, NPP), which is founded in 2015 as an alternative pro-independence force. The NPP would displace the PFP as the third-largest party in the 2016 legislative election but eventually lose all its seats by 2024.

➤ 2015 July 23: Ma Ying-jeou’s modest attempts to partially reverse the de-Sinicization of history textbooks draw strong protests from separatists. His curriculum guidelines would be repealed by the DPP shortly after the end of his presidency.

➤ 2015 November 7: Ma Ying-jeou and PRC President Xi Jinping (习近平) meet and shake hands in Singapore, the first meeting between leaders on both sides of the Taiwan Strait since 1949.

➤ 2016 January 16: Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of the DPP is elected president of the ROC, four years after her first unsuccessful run against Ma Ying-jeou in 2012. Her inauguration brings the eight years of relatively warm cross-strait relations under her predecessor to an almost immediate end.

➤ 2016 December: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump breaks diplomatic protocol by accepting a congratulatory call from Tsai Ing-wen. He asserts that he will not be “dictated to” by China and later questions why the U.S. should be bound by the one-China policy. 

➤ 2017 April 6–7: After affirming the United States’ commitment to the one-China policy in a February phone call, Trump invites Xi Jinping to a summit at Mar-a-Lago.  

➤ 2018 March 16: Trump signs the Taiwan Travel Act, which allows U.S. officials at all levels to travel to Taiwan to meet their ROC counterparts and vice versa.

➤ 2018 June 12: The American Institute in Taiwan (the de facto U.S. “embassy” in Taipei) opens a new office compound.

➤ 2018 November 24: The DPP loses local elections to the KMT in a landslide.

➤ 2019 August 6: Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) founds the Taiwan People’s Party (台灣民眾黨, TPP), which is named in explicit homage to the 1927-31 anticolonial party – indeed the founding date is chosen to coincide with the birthday Ko shares with Chiang Wei-shui, co-founder of the original TPP. The party adopts turquoise as its color to symbolize the “middle road” it purports to pursue between the blue (KMT) and green (TPP) camps. Since 2020 it has been the third-largest party in the Legislative Yuan.

➤ 2019–2020: Under Trump the number of U.S. Navy incursions into the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait more than doubles compared with previous years.

➤ 2020 January 11: Tsai Ing-wen is re-elected ROC president with 57% of the vote, despite having presided over massive DPP losses in the 2018 local elections. In the presidential campaign she had also trailed to her KMT challenger until summer 2019, when the first large-scale anti-extradition bill protests erupted in Hong Kong. 

• Notably, the government of Hong Kong had introduced said bill because it was legally unable to extradite city resident Chan Tong-kai (陳同佳) to Taiwan to stand trial for murdering his pregnant girlfriend there in 2018. Considerable evidence suggests that Tsai stalled law enforcement cooperation in this case (even refusing Chan’s offer to surrender in October 2019) in a largely successful effort to discredit Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” framework to Taiwanese voters for her own electoral gain.

➤ 2020 March 26: Trump signs the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative (TAIPEI) Act, which directs the State Department to strengthen Taiwan's diplomatic relationships and partnerships around the world.

➤ 2021 January 22: The European Parliament passes two resolutions calling on EU members to “revisit their engagement policies with Taiwan” and to “protect democratic Taiwan from foreign threats.” 

➤ 2021 June 29: The U.S. and Taiwan hold the eleventh Trade and Investment Framework Agreement Council meeting, which is intended to lead to a full free-trade agreement. However this is considered unlikely given increasing U.S. protectionism.

➤ 2022 August 2: Nancy Pelosi, the U.S. Speaker of the House and second in the presidential line of succession, visits Taiwan with a congressional delegation to give a speech to the Legislative Yuan and meet with Tsai Ing-wen. At the same time, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command conducts RIMPAC naval exercises in Hawai’i with forces from all the G7 countries. China strongly condemns the visit and conducts a series of military drills around Taiwan reminiscent of the 1995-96 Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. The visit draws large crowds from both pro- and anti-U.S. groups. Several other groups of U.S. officials visit Taiwan in the weeks and months after.

➤ 2022 September 18: In an interview with 60 Minutes, U.S. President Joe Biden promises that U.S. forces would defend Taiwan militarily from any attempt at armed reunification with the mainland. Coming amidst the escalating proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, this statement appears to break with decades of official “strategic ambiguity” on the question of committing U.S. troops to defend Taiwan. Biden had previously made similar remarks in August 2021, October 2021, and May 2022. (In an effort at damage control the White House has consistently walked back these comments, claiming they do not represent a change in U.S. policy.)

➤ 2022 December 6: TSMC breaks ground on a new chip fabrication facility in Arizona, which the U.S. government strong-armed the company into opening despite much higher production costs than in Taiwan. This “re-shoring” of U.S. semiconductor supply chains strikes many in Taiwan as an attempt to weaken the island’s “silicon shield” – the protection that TSMC’s key position supposedly affords against armed reunification (see “Contemporary Economics and Geopolitics” for a more detailed discussion). Such fears are not assuaged when U.S. congressman Seth Moulton later publicly muses about “making it very clear to the Chinese that if you invade Taiwan, we’re going to blow up TSMC.” This elicits an angry pledge from ROC Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) to defend the company militarily from U.S. attack in such a scenario.

➤ 2022 December 23: In a continuation of decades of U.S. arms sales and military support to Taiwan, Biden signs the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. The spending bill includes for the first time a "Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act,” which would further militarize Taiwan by authorizing up to $10 billion in security assistance and fast-tracked weapons procurement for the island. 

➤ 2022 December 27: Tsai Ing-wen announces that mandatory military service will be lengthened from four months to one year starting in 2024, warning that “Taiwan stands on the frontlines of authoritarian expansion, at the vanguard of the global defense of democracy. Only by preparing for war can we avoid it – only by being capable of fighting a war can we stop one.”

➤ 2023 August 7: Biden signs the United States-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade First Agreement Implementation Act to bolster trade ties and guide future negotiations. 

➤ 2023 February 1: Newly elected President of the Philippines Bongbong Marcos announces the locations of four new bases to be used by the U.S. military under the U.S.-Philippines Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. They will be built on the island of Luzon, noted for its “strategic location” facing north towards Taiwan.  

➤ 2023 March 27: Ma Ying-jeou becomes the first current or former leader of the ROC to visit mainland China since 1949. In public remarks at the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing, he asserts that Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are “descendants of the Yan and Yellow Emperors” (炎黄子孙). His use of this phrase, while considered antiquated in both Taiwan and the mainland for its perceived exclusion of non-Han ethnicities, constitutes an impassioned plea for de-escalation, peace, and eventual reunification.

➤ 2024 January 13: Lai Ching-te (賴清德) of the DPP, a self-described “pragmatic worker for Taiwan independence,” is elected president of the ROC. He wins with only 40% of the vote, prevailing over an opposition split between KMT candidate Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) and TPP candidate Ko Wen-je after the latter two failed to agree on a joint ticket. Even this failed attempt to unite opposition forces had drawn threats of prosecution from DPP authorities.

• Notably, Lai’s running mate Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) has a biography laden with symbolism for the independence camp’s geopolitical alignments. She was born in Japan to a Taiwanese father and American mother; attended high school, college, and graduate school in the United States; retained U.S. citizenship until 2002; and served as the ROC’s representative to the United States from 2020-23. Lai himself has also claimed that “Taiwan and Japan are like a family.”

• In concurrent elections to the Legislative Yuan, the TPP increases its representation and denies both the KMT and DPP a parliamentary majority. Although the DPP wins a plurality of the popular vote, the KMT secures a plurality of seats largely due to the continued strength of the yuánzhùmín vote for the pan-Blue camp.

➤ 2024 February 8: The U.S. confirms that it has begun permanently stationing Army Green Berets in a “training” capacity on ROC-held Kinmen island, just 10 kilometers from the coast of mainland China.  

3. Resources arrow_upward

The following linked readings and resources provide further context and analysis on the history of Taiwan as outlined in the above timeline. While not every included resource comports fully with Qiao’s analysis of Taiwan, each contains useful context that we hope will inform readers’ further investigation.  

a. Perspectives from the Pro-Unification Left arrow_upward

Chen Mingzhong (陳明忠). “A Taiwanese Person’s Path For ‘Left-Unification’.” Interview by Lu Zhenghui (呂正惠) and Chen Yizhong (陈宜中), originally published in Chinese on Taihainet.com, June 26, 2008. English translation by R. Huang published August 6, 2022.

• Wide-ranging interview with a veteran of the Taiwanese pro-unification left, who was imprisoned under the KMT’s White Terror from 1950-60 and went on to co-found the Labor Party of Taiwan. He strongly rejects the separatist camp’s historical revisionism regarding the 228 uprising of 1947, insisting that it was not a conflict between “Taiwanese” běnshěngrén and “mainland” wàishěngrén but a united struggle against KMT despotism in which communists played a leading role. Chen further points out that the White Terror’s victims were disproportionately wàishěngrén, and that the social base of early Taiwan separatism was the běnshěngrén landlord class which lost out from KMT land reforms. He decries the domination of modern Taiwanese politics by the pan-blue (KMT) and pan-green (DPP) camps as well as the historical amnesia surrounding Japanese colonialism and U.S. neocolonialism.

Chen Yingzhen (陳映真, under the pseudonym Xu Nancun). “Back alleys: the creative journey of Chen Yingzhen.” Originally published 2001. Translation by Petrus Liu published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Vol. 15, Issue 3, November 3, 2014.

• A short personal and political autobiography by the doyen of Taiwan’s pro-unification left, often considered to be the island’s greatest 20th century writer. Chen recalls the 1947 anti-KMT uprising and subsequent White Terror as formative childhood traumas, which led him to take solace first in Lu Xun and then the whole body of Chinese communist literature. His own blossoming literary career was temporarily cut short by his arrest and imprisonment from 1968-75, during which he encountered hundreds of other political prisoners. Later he became involved in Taiwan’s xiangtu (native/rural) literature movement and actively combated separatism as a co-founder of the Labor Party and the Alliance for the Unification of China, eventually passing away in Beijing in 2016. As he succinctly put it, “the division between Taiwan and mainland China was the combined result of a rapacious Japanese imperialism and the rise of American imperialist interventions in the post-Korean War period. The political left-wing in Taiwan should focus on overcoming ethnic tensions created by imperialism, and prioritize the peaceful unification of the people under the principle of national self-determination.”

Chen Yingzhen. “台湾的美国化改造” [The Americanization of Taiwan]. Originally published in 回歸的旅途 [The Journey Back], 1997. Republished in 爱思想 (Aisixiang), July 10, 2013. 

• Chen Yingzhen contributed this foreword for the Taiwanese publication of Dan Yang’s The Journey Back (回歸的旅途), a memoir recounting the Shanghai-born author’s disillusionment with Western cultural hegemony during her experience as a graduate student and academic in the United States. Chen provides a historical survey of Japanese and U.S. imperialism in Taiwan and its impacts on local culture, politics, and ideology. As Chen puts it, the lingering historical structures of the unfinished Chinese Civil War and the global Cold War produced Taiwan independence as “essentially a pro-imperialist, anti-China, anti-communist, and de-Sinicizing movement.”

Chung, Lawrence. “Memorial in Beijing sheds light on Communist spies executed in Taiwan.” South China Morning Post. February 16, 2014.  

• On June 10, 1950, KMT lieutenant general and deputy defense minister General Wu Shi, his two deputies Chen Baocang and Nie Xi, and CPC officer Zhu Feng were executed by firing squad for spying for the CPC. Along with hundreds of other underground CPC agents they had been betrayed under torture by Cai Xiaoqian, who had founded and led the party’s Taiwan Provincial Working Committee since shortly after the island’s retrocession in 1945. In 2013, a monument in Beijing’s Unsung Heroes Memorial Square was built to honor the underground communists’ memory and sacrifice, including statues of the four martyrs of June 10, 1950 and names of 846 others.

de Ceukelaire, Wim. “‘Stop U.S. interference’: Interview with the Labour Party of Taiwan.” Interview with Wu Rong-yuan (吳榮元). Originally published by No Cold War. Republished by Friends of Socialist China, January 25, 2023.

• Wu Rong-yuan is the current chairman of the Labor Party of Taiwan and longtime comrade of Chen Yingzhen, Chen Mingzhong and other veteran pro-unification leftists, many of whom he met as fellow political prisoners at the infamous Green Island Prison. In this interview with Wim de Ceukelaire of the Workers’ Party of Belgium, he discusses the Labor Party’s (pre)history, rejects facile comparisons between Taiwan and Ukraine, and denounces the rise in both U.S. interference and anticommunist repression under the current DPP regime.

de Ceukelaire, Wim. “Will Taiwan voters choose further confrontation with China?” Interview with Wu Rong-yuan (吳榮元), published in Asia Times. January 7, 2024.

• In the lead-up to the January 2024 election in Taiwan, Wim de Ceukelaire conducted a follow-up interview with Labor Party chairman Wu Rong-yuan. Regarding the ruling DPP, Wu asserts that “Since they came to power 23 years ago, they managed to create a distinct Taiwanese identity out of nothing.” He concludes by endorsing reunification under a “one country, two systems” framework and assures that this arrangement must necessarily afford Taiwan more autonomy than Hong Kong due to its historically unique situation.

Kao Chin Su-mei (高金素梅). “赴北京看阅兵，来去都光明正大” [“I visited Beijing for the military parade, and all my travels were aboveboard”]. Interview with Guancha. September 7, 2015.

• Kao Chin Su-mei (also known by her Atayal name Ciwas Ali) is a lifelong advocate for Taiwanese yuánzhùmín rights who holds one of the six seats in the Legislative Yuan reserved for yuánzhùmín representatives. In this interview she discusses her motivations for visiting Beijing to join China’s 70th anniversary celebrations of victory over Japan, for which she was severely (and as she notes, hypocritically) criticized by both pan-Blue and pan-Green politicians. In particular she decries the DPP’s historical revisionism regarding Japanese colonialism in Taiwan, especially its whitewashing of the especially severe oppression and land theft suffered by yuánzhùmín peoples. The Guancha interviewers also note her previous meeting in 2009 with then-President of the PRC Hu Jintao, as well as the 2005 protests she led at Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine against the involuntary enshrinement of Taiwanese yuánzhùmín conscripts alongside Japanese Class A war criminals.

Lin Shiwei (林世偉). “原住民立委候選人狂飆髒話　罵蔡英文政府” [“Yuánzhùmín legislative candidate hurls obscenities, mocks Tsai Ing-wen’s government”]. YouTube video, 15:43. January 5, 2024. 

• In this extraordinary invective-filled speech, an ethnic Atayal legislative candidate excoriates the DPP, the KMT, and the entire ROC government for their treatment of Taiwan’s yuánzhùmín. Unfortunately there are no English subtitles, so we provide here a translation of the key passage starting at 11:05: “Taiwan’s ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ trample on us yuánzhùmín’s heads and bodies. I tell you, the Japanese were so cruel. We Atayal people were the best at headhunting the Japanese! Under my home are buried some two hundred Japanese heads; did you [Han people] dare behead them? The Tsai Ing-wen government wants to sell us out to Japan and the United States, is that right? Why can’t we be brothers with mainland China? Aren’t your ancestors from mainland China? … This is the politicians’ trap: provoking ethnic antagonism … War will go on indefinitely and it won’t care about your ‘human rights.’”

Lan Bozhou (藍博洲). “我从小接受“反共”教育，后来发现杀台湾人的不是共产党” [I was raised anti-communist, but later realized it wasn’t the communists who killed Taiwanese people]. YouTube video interview with China Content Creator, 24:28. October 7, 2023.

• Taiwanese writer Lan Bozhou explains how uncovering the long-buried stories of Taiwan’s underground communists and combating “pro-independence” historical revisionism became his life’s work. He relates the extreme anti-communist indoctrination his generation underwent as children in the 60s, then the disorienting introduction of Western liberalism in the 80s as an “alternative” ideology unmoored from Taiwan’s realities. Right as four decades of martial law came to an end in 1987, he began working for Chen Yingzhen’s magazine Renjian and was assigned to gather firsthand accounts of the 228 uprising. Unsurprisingly he found that participants and survivors of that event were largely unwilling to talk, until he finally secured an interview with the widow of communist martyr Guo Xiucong (郭琇琮).

Lan Bozhou (藍博洲). “A Beautiful Century.” Originally published as “美好的世紀” in 人間 (Renjian), July 1987. English translation by Kevin Li published February 7, 2024.

• Qiao Collective is pleased to present Lan Bozhou’s “A Beautiful Century”, a landmark investigative piece originally published just weeks after the end of 40 years of brutal martial law in the short-lived left-leaning magazine Renjian. One the first journalists to publicly detail the 228 Incident in Taiwan (news of the incident had spread across Mainland China as events unfolded), Lan Bozhou profiles Dr. Guo Xiucong, a martyr of the White Terror period through the lens of his widow, Chen Zhihui [pseudonym], and comrade-in-arms Cai Hanting [pseudonym], survivors of the same period. Recounting the lives of Guo and his family, comrades Chen Zhihui and Cai Hanting piece together the components of post-colonial Taiwanese identity and resistance rooted firmly in the legacies of the Chinese May Fourth Movement, Marxism, and the CPC.

Lin Shuyang (林書揚). “苦澀的台灣五四精神──60年代到70年代台灣知青五案的啟迪” [The Bitter Spirit of May Fourth in Taiwan: The Inspiration of the Five Cases of Taiwan's Intellectual Youth in the 1960s and 1970s]. Originally published 1990. Republished in 兩岸犇報 (Chaiwan Ben Post). October 7, 2022. 

• In 1950, Lin Shuyang was sentenced to life imprisonment for his work as a member of the Taiwan Provincial Working Committee of the Communist Party of China. This article, written six years after his release in 1984, studies the emergence of five left-wing Taiwanese youth movements in the 1960-70s after the decimation of the White Terror and analyzes the neocolonial structure of contemporary Taiwanese society in hopes of helping young people develop a conscious and progressive perspective on the future.

Qin Feng (秦风). “台湾地下共产党员的命运” [The fate of Taiwan’s underground communists]. 光明网 (Guangming Online). December 10, 2001.

• An article synthesizing oral histories collected from underground CPC members in Taiwan who endured the KMT’s White Terror in the early 1950s. Among other interesting details, it shows the close level of coordination between the Taiwanese Communist Party and CPC dating from the 1930s; the crushing impact of the Korean War (and the U.S. 7th Fleet’s entry into the Taiwan Strait) on underground communists’ hopes for liberation by the PLA; the role of KMT land reform in undercutting their rural support base; and their success in “turning” high-ranking officers in the ROC military, such as deputy chief of staff Wu Shi. The article also discusses the 1993 discovery of a mass grave of White Terror victims at Liuzhangli Cemetery in Taipei, facilitated by the Mutual Aid Association for Former Political Prisoners in the Taiwan Area.

Wang Hui (汪晖). “两岸历史中的失踪者——《台共党人的悲歌》与台湾的历史记忆” [Missing Persons in Cross-Strait History—‘The Elegy of the Taiwan Communists’ and Taiwan's Historical Memory]. 爱思想 (Aisixiang). August 19, 2014.

• Tsinghua University scholar Wang Hui explores the buried stories uncovered by Lan Bozhou in “Elegy of the Taiwan Communists,” which undermine the separatist narrative that reduces the island’s history to an unbroken succession of “colonial” regimes. Ironically this narrative erases the historical memory not just of Taiwanese communism (and its close partnership with the CPC), but also of previous “independence” movements that sought to liberate the island from Japanese rule and reunify with the mainland in 1895, 1915, and 1928-31. Instead it cultivates anti-mainland chauvinism and nostalgia for Japanese colonialism, while intentionally severing the fight against KMT dictatorship from contemporaneous anti-imperialist struggles.

b. Cold War Anti-Communism, Imperialism, and Ideology arrow_upward

Chen Kuang-Hsing (陳光興). “Deimperialization: Club 51 and the Imperialist Assumption of Democracy.” In Asia As Method, 161-285. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.  

• In Chen Kuang-Hsing’s influential book Asia As Method, the Taiwanese cultural studies scholar examines the influence of U.S. ideology in Taiwan through the case of Club 51, a political organization founded to seek U.S. statehood for Taiwan as the 51st state. Though a relatively fringe group, Chen argues that Club 51 reflects the internationalization of imperialist culture and ideology and the need for a process Chen refers to as “deimperialization.”

Chiang Min-Hua (江敏華). "The U.S. Aid and Taiwan’s Post-War Economic Development, 1951-1965.” African and Asian Studies, Vol. 13, Issue 1-2 (2014): 100-120. 

• Chiang documents the extent of U.S. military and economic aid to Taiwan, arguing that “massive U.S. military and economic aid actually formed the critical basis of state capacity.” As Chiang shows, Taiwan’s entrance into the Western-led capitalist system was shaped by the ideological and geopolitical imperatives of Cold War anti-communism.  See also: Wayne Robert Hugar.

Cox, Thomas R. “Harbingers of Change: American Merchants and the Formosa Annexation Scheme.” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 42, No. 2 (May 1973): 163-184.

• Cox traces the forgotten efforts of U.S. merchants in China, and later of U.S. commissioner to China Peter Parker, to annex Taiwan as a U.S. colony in the mid-19th century. Though the scheme was never formally pursued, the motivations for U.S. control over Taiwan – specifically its strategic location in proximity to mainland China’s coast – were clearly antecedents for U.S. strategy during the Cold War. 

Craft, Stephen G. American Justice in Taiwan: The 1957 Riots and Cold War Foreign Policy. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015.

• This book examines the May 24th Incident in the broader historical context of U.S.-Taiwan Cold War relations and the U.S. military presence in Taiwan. As Craft argues, the murder of Liu Ziran revealed fissures in the U.S.-ROC relationship, public distrust of U.S. military personnel, and the extent of U.S. extraterritorial power in Taiwan.

Hugar, Robert Wayne. “Cold War Economic Ideology and U.S. Aid to Taiwan, 1950-1965.” PhD diss. Liberty University, 2022.

• Robert Wayne Hugar tracks the economic and ideological relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan during the early decades of the Cold War, emphasizing that anti-communism undergirded a massive transfer of foreign aid ($1.4 billion between 1950-1965 alone) . As Hugar notes, the “Taiwan miracle” of sustained economic growth rested on a foundation not of neoliberal policy but of statist developmentalism, Cold War militarism, and U.S. largesse. See also: Min-Hua Chiang.

International Relations Center / Interhemispheric Resource Center. “World Anti-Communist League.” Militarist Monitor. January 9, 1990.

• Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT regime in Taiwan was instrumental in the 1954 formation of the Asian Peoples’ Anti-Communist League, which expanded into the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) in 1966. Since its founding, the international network of far-right forces (now renamed as the World League for Freedom and Democracy) has been headquartered in Taipei. This article details the sordid role played by the WACL, and in particular the Political Warfare Cadres Academy in Beitou, Taiwan, in funding and training the Nicaraguan Contras as well as Salvadoran and Guatemalan death squads.

Naya, Seiji. "The Vietnam War and some aspects of its economic impact on Asian countries." The Developing Economies, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1971): 31-57.

• Historians have shown how U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia provided a critical market for industrial goods from south Korea and Japan, spurring economic modernization in both key U.S. allies. Similarly, the Vietnam War opened a critical export market for Taiwan, as the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese exports in commodities such as chemical fertilizer, concrete, iron and steel went to south Vietnam. As of 1966-1967, exports to south Vietnam represented 13.4 percent of Taiwan’s total exports, making Taiwan’s export economy more dependent on Vietnam than south Korea, Japan, and Singapore.

Wu Xiuquan (伍修权). “People's China stands for peace: Speech at the United Nations Security Council.” Translated by the Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy. November 28, 1950.

• PRC diplomat Wu Xiuquan addressed the UN Security Council a month after China’s intervention in the Korean War, though the ROC regime in Taiwan would continue occupying the country’s seat for 21 more years. His speech linked the United States’ intervention in the Taiwan Strait to its simultaneous aggressions against Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines, charging that “American imperialism … follows the beaten path of the Japanese imperialist aggressors” (including by restoring Japanese war criminals to positions of authority in Taiwan). Notably, Wu accused the U.S. of already stoking Taiwan separatism and claimed the February 28, 1947 anti-KMT uprising as a patriotic Chinese movement against U.S. imperialism.

c. Contemporary Economics and Geopolitics arrow_upward

“Briefing: The U.S. Tech War Against China.” No Cold War. 2023. 

• This briefing explains why the semiconductor industry is so central to the United States’ efforts to kneecap mainland China’s technological progress by “decoupling” it from Taiwan and other U.S. vassals. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have conducted a multifront assault on China’s access to (and ability to domestically produce) semiconducting chips, through sweeping export restrictions and strong-arming of TSMC and other key players in the semiconductor supply chain.

Lee, Peter. “Taiwan’s Silicon Shield Collides with its Silicon Lance.” Peter Lee’s China Threat Report. February 12, 2021.

• Peter Lee analyzes the DPP government’s support for the United States’ tech war on China, and its use of TSMC as a geopolitical bargaining chip – which has spurred not just China but also Europe and the U.S. itself to attempt to “re-shore” domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Though the analysis is a bit dated (here is an update from October 2022) and does not cover 2023 industry developments, the articles provide a good overview of the economic angle of American neocolonialism in Taiwan. It is also worth noting that SMIC, the PRC’s domestic chip foundry, was founded and co-managed by Chinese engineers from Taiwan who once worked for TSMC.

Varman, Rahul. “What Do We Learn about Capitalism from Chip War?” Monthly Review. November 2023.  

• Rahul Varman of the Indian Institute of Technology reads between the lines of economic historian Chris Miller’s recent book Chip War, detailing how U.S. hegemony over the semiconductor supply chain is a key arm of its imperial project in Asia. The U.S. has played an outsize role in shaping the differential industrialization of its client regimes in Japan, south Korea, and Taiwan; China’s rapid advances in the field threaten to upend this carefully constructed order, leading directly to the current tech war.

Griffith, Rasheed. “The Taiwanese Debt Trap.” China in the Caribbean. May 24, 2021.

• Amid unsubstantiated claims of “Chinese debt-trap diplomacy”, a real case of weaponized loan contracts by the Taiwan government has gone overlooked. Rasheed Griffith, a researcher and analyst at U.S. think tank Inter-American Dialogue, studies Chinese geoeconomic and financial engagement with the Caribbean. This article by Griffith explains how the ROC (at the time Grenada’s largest bilateral lender) retaliated to Grenada’s diplomatic recognition of the PRC by first refusing to allow debt restructuring in the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Ivan (2004) and Hurricane Emily (2005) as well as suing Grenada to gain immediate repayment of the loans.

Hu Shaohua (胡少华). "Small State Foreign Policy: The Diplomatic Recognition of Taiwan." China: An International Journal, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2015): 1-23.

• Since the establishment of the PRC in 1949, the unresolved status of the Chinese Civil War has taken on a much more international dimension. This article analyzes the ideological, economic, and geographical factors that motivate countries to recognize the ROC rather than the PRC. Anti-communist and religious motivations were especially strong during the Cold War and even endure today (e.g. Tuvalu). Economic aid in the form of trade, tourism, infrastructure investments, and direct donations has motivated both governments as whole (e.g. St. Lucia) and leaders as individuals (e.g. Guatemala) to switch diplomatic recognition between the ROC and PRC, sometimes even multiple times to extract more benefits (e.g. Central African Republic, Nauru). Lastly, geopolitical factors such as security relationships with the U.S. (e.g. Marshall Islands, Palau) or leverage against U.S. regional influence (e.g. Paraguay) will affect diplomatic relations.

Ives, Kim. “Taiwan Tries to Bolster Jovenel, Albeit Briefly.” Haïti Liberté. July 17, 2019.

• Haiti is another of the last 11 UN member states to recognize the ROC. This article from 2019 details Tsai Ing-wen’s diplomatic and (rather paltry) financial support for the deeply unpopular far-right regime of then-President Jovenel Moïse. In February 2021 Moïse would go on to retain power unconstitutionally after the expiration of his presidential term, triggering a mass national uprising. That August he was assassinated by a professional hit squad; bizarrely, 11 of its members fled to the ROC embassy before Haitian police arrested them with the approval of diplomatic staff.

Mullen, Joseph. “A prologue to the Swazi revolution, one year in the making.” MR Online. July 7, 2022.

• The only remaining country in Africa to recognize the ROC is Eswatini, a brutal absolute monarchy also known by its former name Swaziland by opponents of the regime. This article recounts the role of Taiwan in assisting King Mswati III’s bloody crackdown on the 2021-22 pro-democracy movement: supplying helicopters and drones, providing military training, and offering around $18 million in “development aid.” The general secretary of the Communist Party of Swaziland is quoted as saying “the people of Swaziland face a great enemy in Taiwan’s colonization.”

Macleod, Alan. “Tanks and Think Tanks: How Taiwanese Cash is Funding the Push to War with China.” Mint Press News. April 22, 2021.

• When Chiang Kai-shek’s ROC lost the civil war and fled to Taiwan, it was their financial and military links with the U.S. that sustained their political claims of representing all of China. Today, those same connections are used to justify U.S. imperialism in Asia as a defense of “free and democratic societies” and to fuel political support for militarization, intervention, and war against China. The influx of cash from the ROC government, pro-independence NGOs, and Taiwanese private companies to support war is rarely openly disclosed and the U.S. is undoubtedly an enthusiastic partner in escalating tensions with China on military, economic, and ideological fronts. 

• In 2007, the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy donated $1 million to establish the Victims of Communism Memorial and continues to financially support the foundation that counts both Nazi soldiers and all global COVID-19 deaths as “victims of communism.”

“Notified Taiwan Arms Sales 1990-2023.” Taiwan Defense & National Security. Updated December 15, 2023.

• This tabulation of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, as notified to Congress on an annual basis, reveals the massive scope of its effort to garrison the island in preparation for war with China. Since 1990 alone, $69.5 billion in arms have been earmarked for transfer to Taiwan. $10.72 billion worth was transferred in 2019, the largest single year total, reflecting the increasing militarization of the island.

Prashad, Vijay. “Making Taiwan the Ukraine of the East.” Consortium News. February 9, 2023. 

• Vijay Prashad analyzes contemporary U.S. strategy vis-a-vis Taiwan in light of analogies to the proxy war in Ukraine, a recent deal for military base expansion in the Philippines, and continuing arms sales to Taiwan. 

Rigger, Shelley. The Tiger Leading the Dragon: How Taiwan Propelled China's Economic Rise. New Jersey: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. 

• Though far from an anti-imperialist critique, Rigger’s book provides a useful English-language account of the role of Taiwanese business interests in “opening” China to global capitalist forces during the 1990s. Ironically, given the tendency of some to paint China as an imperialist threat to Taiwan, it was Taiwanese business leaders (台商) who, facing rising costs of production in Taiwan, tapped the low-hanging fruit of Chinese cheap labor, a dynamic that transferred surplus value from the Chinese mainland to Taiwanese capitalists and Western investors and consumers.  

Shoup, Laurence H. “Giving War A Chance.” Monthly Review. May 2022. 

• This article critically engages with Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict, a recent book by former Defense Department official and influential foreign policy “expert” Elbridge A. Colby. Shoup writes that Colby’s text provides a concrete opportunity to observe “how the monopoly capitalist ruling class is preparing the people of the United States for what could be a catastrophic world war” with China. Central to Colby’s vision of a “strategy of denial” is brinkmanship with China over Taiwan. This article thus reflects how Taiwan is understood as an essential part of a “first island chain” of U.S. allies and client states surrounding the Chinese coast.  

Tu Zhuxi (兔主席). “中美关系的四个阶段——台湾问题与中美关系 (8)” [The Taiwan question and Sino-US relations (8)]. WeChat. October 14, 2022.

• Pseudonymous political commentator “Chairman Rabbit” describes how the United States’ role in cross-strait relations has shifted between stabilization and provocation, tracing the evolution of China-U.S. relations over four historical periods since Nixon’s 1972 visit and the Shanghai Communiqué. The author concludes that the status quo will hold as long as the U.S. and Taiwan authorities do not jointly seek to confront China. As an example he cites the U.S. opposition to Chen Shui-bian’s UN membership referendum in 2008, as a needless provocation at a time when the former’s imperial designs centered on the Middle East.

Tu Zhuxi (兔主席). “白营：台湾年轻人的“第三条道路”？” [White Camp: A Third Way for Taiwan’s Youth?]. WeChat. January 18, 2024.

• Chairman Rabbit argues that the youth-backed Taiwan People’s Party led by Ko Wen-je represents a political shift away from the “independence vs. reunification” dichotomy of the DPP and KMT camps. This new political force focuses on practical solutions and domestic interests, including an increase in political, economic and cultural exchanges with the mainland, which could build a profound, broad and resilient foundation for cross-strait peace. However, the author argues the mainland needs to realize that "peace" does not automatically lead to "reunification."

d. Sinophobia, De-Sinicization, and Classism in Taiwan arrow_upward

Chen Kongli (陳孔立). “台灣「去中國化」的文化動向.” [Taiwan’s cultural trend of ‘de-sinicization’]. 海峽評論 (Straits Review), Issue 128. August 2001.

• Chen Kongli, a professor at the Taiwan Research Institute at Xiamen University, analyzes the theory and practice of Taiwan’s de-sinicization and how it provides a foundation for Taiwanese localism and separatism. De-sinicization involves whitewashing European and Japanese colonization into positive and authentic aspects of Taiwanese identity, as well as the portrayal of Chinese culture as inferior and antithetical to Taiwanese modernization. It entails artificially separating Taiwan’s history from its Chinese context and characterizing Mandarin as an oppressive import from mainland China while promoting the use of “Taiwanese” Hokkien (a dialect that also originates in mainland China). 

Ching Leo T. S. “Between Assimilation and Imperialization: From Colonial Projects to Imperial Subjects.” In Becoming "Japanese": Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation, 89-132. Oakland: University of California Press, 2001.

• With the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, colonial authorities introduced a new “Japanization” or “imperialization” policy called kōminka (皇民化, lit. “becoming subjects of the emperor”) that aimed to forcibly assimilate or subordinate all Han Taiwanese and some yuánzhùmín into Japanese society. This entailed bans on Chinese-language press and education, to be replaced with Japanese; the adoption of Japanese names; renunciation of Chinese ancestry for the adoption of new Japanese ancestors; and suppression of Han and yuánzhùmín spiritual customs in favor of State Shinto and emperor worship. There was also heavy emphasis on volunteering for the Imperial Japanese military and dying for the Japanese emperor. By the early 1940s, it had become common for Taiwanese youth to include "desires written in [their own] blood" (kessho shigan) in their applications for military service. 

Duan, Lei. “Contested Memories of the Past: The Politics of History Textbooks in Taiwan.”  ASIANetwork Exchange, Vol. 28, Issue 2. July 15, 2023.

• Duan details the political controversies surrounding the de-sinicization of Taiwanese history textbooks from 1997 to 2016. Under Lee Teng-hui’s administration, a new set of secondary school textbooks entitled Getting to Know Taiwan asserted that every previous government in Taiwan, including that of the Dutch, the Kingdom of Tungning, the Japanese, and KMT, was colonial in nature. Japan’s “contributions” to Taiwan’s industrialization were uncritically praised without acknowledging their basis in colonial extraction and militarism. Later, under Chen Shui-bian, phrases deemed insufficiently supportive of Taiwan’s “sovereignty” vis-à-vis China were systematically revised (e.g. “both sides of the Taiwan Strait” to “both countries,” “the retrocession of Taiwan” to “the end of World War II”). Ma Ying-jeou’s attempts to reverse this de-sinicization were met with strong protests from separatists and repealed soon after DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen won the 2016 election.

Hao Zhidong (郝志东). “Imagining Taiwan (1): Japanization, Re-Sinicization, and the Role of Intellectuals.” In Whither Taiwan and Mainland China: National Identity, the State and Intellectuals, 11-48. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010.

• Hao Zhidong documents Taiwanese resistance to Japanese colonization and the development of Chinese nationalism in Taiwan in response to the kōminka (“Japanization” or “imperialization”) policy and later under KMT dictatorship. In the first decades of colonial rule, armed resistance was brutally suppressed by the Japanese military leading to the deaths of an estimated 40,000 to 90,000 people. Later, Taiwanese revolutionaries were inspired to organize left-wing anticolonial formations by epochal developments in mainland China like the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, the May Fourth Movement of 1919, and the founding of the Communist Party in 1921. As Japan escalated its aggression in China in the lead-up to the Second Sino-Japanese War, it suppressed these formations and imprisoned and/or executed most of their leaders. Lastly, under the KMT, Hao details the development of critical support for Chinese nationalism among Taiwanese socialists as well as the anticommunist and sinophobic underpinnings of Taiwanese independence activism.

Hao Zhidong. “Imagining Taiwan (2): De-Sinicization under Lee and Chen and the Role of Intellectuals.” In Whither Taiwan and Mainland China: National Identity, the State and Intellectuals, 49-74. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010.

• Hao documents Taiwan’s decades-long educational de-sinicization campaign, in which history textbooks were revised to describe the Republic of China as an occupying foreign power while praising Japanese colonial rule as an overall positive. Terms like “Japanese occupation” or “Japanese colonization” were edited to “Japanese rule” in order to retroactively legitimize their seizure of the island and whitewash the exploitative nature of their developmental policies. At the same time, references to “mainland China” or “the mainland” were replaced simply with “China” in order to negate any implication that Taiwan too is part of China. This effort to “clear away the ‘remnants of greater Chinese consciousness’” (大中國意識的沉屙) also entailed the reframing of Chinese migration during the Qing dynasty as an intentional colonial project.

Lin, James. “Nostalgia for Japanese colonialism: Historical memory and postcolonialism in contemporary Taiwan.” History Compass, Vol. 20, Issue 11. October 10, 2022.

• Despite questionable political claims of “KMT colonization in Taiwan,” this article usefully illustrates how the Japanese colonial period is today invoked to reposition Taiwan as trans-historically separate from China in politics, culture, literature, music, and art. Indeed, all that fundamentally distinguishes Taiwanese localism from the KMT ideology it claims to reject is the former’s rank Sinophobia (extending to the use of Japanese fascist slurs for China, see e.g. this talk show at the 12:42 mark). It is otherwise just as firmly rooted in anticommunism and Western imperialist conceptions of “democracy.” 

Ma Zhen (馬臻). “台灣左翼的逃避與「四化」運動” [The escape of Taiwan’s left wing and the ‘Four Modernizations’ movement]. 兩岸犇報 (Chaiwan Ben Post). March 16, 2023.

• This piece identifies a major lacuna in modern-day “left” historiography in Taiwan, namely the forced separation of working-class and anti-KMT struggles on the island from their mainland counterparts. Reviewing a recent history of Taiwanese workers’ movements in the 1940s, Ma Zhen finds scant mention of the named protagonists’ membership in the CPC underground or their stated adherence to Mao Zedong Thought. As such, this work sits comfortably with the increasingly hegemonic ideology of Taiwan separatism and is all the poorer for it analytically. (Previous installments of Ma Zhen’s series address the fundamental dishonesty of DPP narratives around the White Terror.)

Wang Hui. “当代中国历史巨变中的台湾问题” [The Taiwan issue amid the great historical changes in contemporary China]. 爱思想 (Aisixiang). July 9, 2015.

• Tsinghua University scholar Wang Hui situates the 2014 Sunflower Movement and other contemporary Taiwanese political developments in a complex matrix of historical, geopolitical, and cultural forces. He identifies in particular the PRC’s retreat from class politics and the language of national liberation; the decline of pro-unification forces in Taiwan; and the limitations of appealing to shared Chinese culture without a common cross-strait political program. He also notes that the Sino-Soviet split, Sino-U.S. rapprochement, and post-Cold War global U.S. hegemony irreversibly conditioned Taiwan’s “democratization” process. Under these circumstances the Sunflower Movement unsurprisingly took a hard anti-China turn, attributing legitimate economic grievances not to neoliberalism but to “dependency” on the mainland (a dynamic reproduced even more explosively in Hong Kong in 2019). Wang concludes with an intriguing world-systems analysis that connects Taiwan’s history under Dutch/Spanish colonial and Qing rule to today’s Belt and Road Initiative.

e. Demographics and Public Opinion arrow_upward

“People: Fact Focus.” Government Portal of the Republic of China (Taiwan).

• As of June 2022, the ROC reports that out of Taiwan’s population of 23.2 million, 95% are categorized as “Han Chinese,” 2.5% are categorized as “Indigenous peoples,” and 2.5% are categorized as “new immigrants.” Within the Han Chinese umbrella category, a 2008 report from the Council for Hakka Affairs cited here reported that 70% of Taiwan’s population are Hoklo, 14% are Hakka, 9% mainlander (外省人 wàishěngrén, or Chinese arriving during and after the Chinese Civil War), and 2% are yuánzhùmín. Taiwan’s Hoklo and Hakka populations are often grouped together as 本省人 (běnshěngrén, lit. local peoples), and are descended from waves of Chinese migration to Taiwan beginning in the 17th century up to the end of Japanese colonization.  

• Taiwan’s demographics are highly politicized. The Taiwan independence movement has attempted to coalesce a unified Taiwanese identity (in distinction to a Chinese identity). Taiwan’s population is composed of various ethnicities and migration histories, often with conflicting ideas about Chinese/Taiwanese identity. While Anglophone media has frequently attempted to use the language of ethnic difference or “indigeneity” in support of claims of Taiwan independence (see: here and here), the reality is that the overwhelming majority of Taiwan’s population are of Han Chinese origin (indeed a higher percentage than the mainland). Nonetheless, the běnshěngrén-wàishěngrén distinction has important cultural and political relevance: by and large, běnshěngrén tend to be associated with the DPP; and wàishěngrén are traditional supporters of the KMT. Interestingly, yuánzhùmín have historically been considered “iron voters” for the KMT.                

“Taiwan Independence vs. Unification with the Mainland.” Election Study Center, National Chengchi University, July 12, 2023. 

• As these annual surveys conducted by Taiwan’s National Chengchi University show, people in Taiwan generally oppose both reunification and Taiwan independence in the short-term. As of 2023, a majority (53%) of respondents want to maintain the status quo “indefinitely” or “decide at a later date,” while 21.4% support “maintain[ing] the status quo, mov[ing] towards independence.” 7.6% of respondents support some form of reunification, and only 4.5% support a move towards independence “as soon as possible.” These divergent views are also reflected by a 2021 poll that found that 43.1% of Taiwanese respondents think U.S. military sales to Taiwan will increase tensions across the Taiwan Strait, compared to 37.8% who think such sales will help maintain peace.

f. Official Government Statements arrow_upward

Standing Committee of the Fifth National People's Congress. “Message to Compatriots in Taiwan.” Issued January 1, 1979.

• Soon after the beginning of mainland China’s reform period and of Chiang Ching-kuo’s ROC presidency, the PRC national legislature issued this New Year’s message to the people of Taiwan. It announced a unilateral cessation of PLA military hostilities, in particular the ritualized back-and-forth shelling around Kinmen and Matsu since the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis. Furthermore it expressed a shared desire for renewed cross-strait transport and postal links and for eventual reunification. Notably, while short on specifics, the message offered to “take present realities into account in accomplishing the great cause of reunifying the motherland and respect the status quo on Taiwan.”

Ye Jianying (叶剑英). “Taiwan's Return to Motherland and Peaceful Reunification.” Interview with Xinhua. September 30, 1981.

• In this statement, the chairman of the NPC standing committee clarified some points in the reunification offer made two years earlier. He proposed not only complete freedom of movement and restoration of all cross-strait links but that “Taiwan's current socio-economic system will remain unchanged, so will its way of life and its economic and cultural relations with foreign countries.” Moreover, after reunification “Taiwan can enjoy a high degree of autonomy as a special administrative region and it can retain its armed forces [emphasis ours].” For several decades this almost unbelievable degree of non-interference remained the cornerstone of various “one country, two systems” schemes proposed by the PRC, but successive ROC governments refused to engage.

Deng Xiaoping. “An Idea For the Peaceful Reunification of the Chinese Mainland and Taiwan.” Interview with Prof. Winston L.Y. Yang at Seton Hall University. June 26, 1983.

• Further elaborating on Ye Jianying’s statement two years earlier, the by-then established paramount leader of the PRC promised Taiwan “independent judicial power” and “its own army, provided it does not threaten the mainland … the party, governmental and military systems of Taiwan will be administered by the Taiwan authorities themselves.” Only foreign relations would be reserved for the central government in Beijing. He emphasized that this was a degree of autonomy far outstripping any other province-level administrative unit of China.

Tenth National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China. “Anti-Secession Law.” Adopted March 14, 2005.

• After its passage this law was pilloried in the Western press for Article 8, which sanctions the use of “non-peaceful means” to achieve reunification in the event of unilateral secession by Taiwan. Though this was arguably the clearest and most legally actionable statement yet of China’s “red line” on independence, the bulk of the law simply restates long-standing official positions: the one-China principle, cross-strait division as an internal matter left over from the civil war, and a pathway to peaceful reunification under “one country, two systems” (albeit not explicitly named as such).

Cao Ruitai (曹瑞泰). “台湾原住民族权益与自治区发展的法制规划研究” [“Policy planning research for the development of the rights, interests and autonomous regions of Taiwan’s yuánzhùmín”]. China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification (中国和平统一促进会). December 26, 2017.

• In this report written for the official organ of the CPC United Front Work Department dedicated to reunification, Taiwanese scholar Cao Ruitai reviews the history of the yuánzhùmín struggle for self-determination under KMT and then DPP rule. While acknowledging the halting progress of the ROC government towards securing political, cultural, and educational rights for yuánzhùmín, Cao judges it inadequate to the tasks set out in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Instead he proposes a framework closely modeled on the PRC’s system of regional ethnic autonomy, wherein yuánzhùmín will have substantial autonomy over their own legislative, judicial, economic, and cultural affairs (notably law enforcement). He judges that this would be practicable upon reunification with the PRC under the “one country, two systems” framework.  

Xi Jinping. “Working Together to Realize Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation and Advance China’s Peaceful Reunification.” Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, January 2, 2019. 

• Address by PRC President Xi Jinping commemorating the 40th anniversary of the 1979 New Year’s message. He hailed the practical advances made since then: the 1992 Consensus around the one-China principle; the full restoration of cross-strait air, sea, and mail links; the growth of people-to-people exchanges; and the practical implementation of “one country, two systems” in Hong Kong and Macau. He again pledged non-interference in Taiwan’s social, political, and legal system after reunification, while quietly dropping the earlier offer of a separate Taiwanese military. As separatist forces had grown considerably in strength since the 1980s, he naturally took a far more explicit line against “independence” than Ye Jianying or Deng Xiaoping did.

Tsai Ing-wen. “Statement on China’s President Xi’s ‘Message to Compatriots in Taiwan.’” January 2, 2019.

• In her near-immediate response to Xi’s speech, ROC President Tsai Ing-wen (DPP) flatly rejected both the 1992 Consensus and the concept of “one country, two systems.” She insisted as a precondition for negotiations that Beijing recognize the existence of “the Republic of China (Taiwan)” and its “democratic system” and agree to hold such talks on a “government-to-government basis.”

Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council (PRC). “The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era.” August 2022.

• This white paper reiterates China’s stance on reunification for the New Era. It highlights the importance of reunification and the shared bond between Chinese people across the straits. Reunification is a necessary step towards rejuvenation, and furthermore ensures both peace and strength through unity. The paper reviews the progress towards peaceful reunification since 1949 and explains that China would use force only as a last resort to deter external interference and separatism.

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]]>Taiwan: An Anti-Imperialist Resourcereading-listQiao CollectiveFri, 05 Nov 2021 02:59:00 +0000https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/socialism-with-chinese-characteristics5e221b9a8c24523f813a5a8e:5f420e5b96cb8352b451173a:61761d7bd5ee7b50dce6f77e

Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), China has transformed in just 70 years from a poor, underdeveloped country mired by feudalism and imperialism into a sovereign socialist society and the world’s second-largest economy. 2020 marked historic new achievements in China’s socialist path: the elimination of absolute poverty and the containment of COVID-19.

As “advanced” Western capitalist nations remain plagued by the impacts of the pandemic—disproportionately born by a permanent and growing underclass—the question for socialists and all concerned people must be: why has the Chinese system produced such different outcomes? To this end, this resource list provides a starting point for understanding China’s rapid development through a close examination of Chinese socialist theory and governance. Here, Qiao Collective offers a cursory reading guide that illuminates both the history of China’s development and the theory of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (SWCC)—the CPC’s political economic philosophy.

Assessments of China’s political-economic system take on geopolitical significance in a context in which a renewed U.S.-instigated Cold War draws on longstanding patterns of anti-communism to slander the accomplishments of Chinese socialism. On the one hand, the Trump administration put U.S.-China relations in terms of a clash of ideologies, posing liberal democracy against what former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described in 2019 as a “Marxist-Leninist party focused on...international domination.” On the other hand, many self-described Western socialists have adopted a same-same pessimism which casts China as the mirror to the United States: a hyper-capitalist, imperialist power which seeks not multilateralism but an era of Chinese hegemony. This nihilist posture enables a disavowal of Cold War aggression by painting it as an “inter-imperialist” rivalry.

Accurate assessment is therefore critical amidst a bipartisan “China threat” discourse propelled by state-sponsored information war which seeks to distort the nature of China’s political economic system and its future ambitions. Far from hegemonic ambitions, China’s official political philosophy prioritizes people-centered development, peaceful coexistence, and the development of China’s national industries through strategic engagement with the global economy in order to build socialism and enable its gradual development into communism.

In the midst of heightened Western aggression, it is urgent to engage China on its own terms—and through a materialist analysis—to understand the implications and historical scope of Chinese socialism in the present day. Beyond fear mongering narratives or romanticized projections of a ‘socialist utopia’, a closer look at the theory and practice of Chinese socialist governance reveals the great accomplishments, evolving contradictions, and people-centered ambitions of the Chinese people. Such inquiry can yield opportunities for peaceful cooperation to meet the global challenges of our time, from climate change to pandemic recovery.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction and Summary of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (SWCC)

2. Theory of SWCC

   1. Key Concepts of Marxism-Leninism

   2. Marxism Leninism with Mao Zedong Thought

   3. Socialism with Chinese Characteristics

   4. Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era

3. Practice of SWCC

   1. Historical conditions of China

   2. Constitutions

   3. Key Political Institutions of the State

      1. The National People’s Congress (NPC) and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)

      2. The President of the People’s Republic of China

      3. The State Council

      4. The Central Military Commission

      5. Local People’s Congresses at All Levels and Local People’s Governments at All Levels

      6. Autonomous Organs of Ethnic Autonomous Areas

      7. Commissions of Supervision

      8. People’s Courts and People’s Procuratorates

   4. Communist Party of China Structure and Processes

   5. Notable Outcomes and Achievements

      1. Prosperity

      2. National Rejuvenation

      3. Social Harmony

      4. People’s Well-being

      5. Party’s Capacity to Lead

   6. News Sources

1. Introduction and Summary of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (SWCC)

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (SWCC) defines the CPC’s approach to governing China and how it can best lead the Chinese working class, people, and nation. SWCC marks the second great innovation in the Sinicization of Marxism-Leninism, the first being those advances enshrined under Mao Zedong Thought (ML-MZT).

SWCC began to emerge in 1978 under Deng Xiaopeng’s leadership when the CPC declared that class struggle was no longer China’s primary contradiction. Instead, it defined the primary contradiction as resting ​​between the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people and backward social productivity. China has since made remarkable achievements by implementing successful but often misconstrued policies like reform and opening up, market socialism, and “one country, two systems.” Rather than a retreat to capitalism, these policies make up a refined approach to socialism, as practiced by the CPC under China’s conditions. Rather than a rebuke of the Mao era, SWCC represents the adaptation of Chinese socialism for a new era. As Deng Xiaoping himself put it: “From many aspects, right now we are merely implementing what Mao Zedong already put out, but was unable to do himself.”

China reached a new milestone by 2017 when Xi Jinping announced that Socialism with Chinese Characteristics had entered a new era by making steady progress in building a moderately prosperous society. Today, the CPC identifies China’s primary contradiction as resting between the nation’s unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life. Unbalanced development means that some regions are more developed than others and that generally speaking, some people benefit more than others from development, and inadequate development means there’s not enough development of material and social resources overall. Development includes not only economic development, but also political, cultural, social, and ecological development. Moving forward, the CPC will focus greater attention on policies that reduce wealth inequality and strengthen social harmony, while further developing China’s productive forces, which are the material basis of the economy: natural resources (water, land, sun, minerals), human labor power (scientific knowledge, research, skills), and the means of production (factories, tools, technology), so as to build a modern socialist country.

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics articulates some basic tenets:

• The “Essence of Socialism” is developing the productive forces, which will eventually bring about communism via the withering of the state.

• China is in the “Primary Stage of Socialism,” where the central task is economic development.

• There are other tasks which complement the central task of economic development. These include improving China’s political, cultural, social, and ecological institutions, safeguarding China’s sovereignty from foreign interference and improving the Party’s discipline and capacity to serve the people.

• Under socialism, the correct tool to create these improvements is reform, not revolution. Reform means strengthening China’s various institutions and removing social and institutional barriers to developing the productive forces. This shift recognized that the Chinese revolution had successfully established a people’s democracy and that the excesses of the Cultural Revolution had stalled rather than augmented material development.

• The Chinese people and nation are led by the CPC, which is the vanguard Party of the Chinese working class. The legitimacy of the CPC’s leadership is founded on the people’s historical choice, one expressed through two people’s wars leading to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. To maintain China's effective governance and deter chaos and decline, China will not adopt Western procedural democracy (whose material basis lies in capitalist expansionism and the continued domination of an imperial bourgeoisie).

• The CPC relies on the working class to build Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. The working class includes laborers, farmers, and intellectuals.

• The CPC also protects the rights of those in the “new social strata” who work in the non-public sector, including entrepreneurs and technical personnel in private enterprises. These people are considered “constructors of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.” Contradistinct from the entrepreneurial class within Western capitalist states, the development of the new social strata first and foremost aim to strengthen national development rather than accumulate private wealth.

SWCC’s overall goals are to achieve prosperity, national rejuvenation, social harmony, and people's well-being. Prosperity means to be both rich and strong, so that the people live comfortably and that the nation can withstand external attacks. In particular, the CPC aims to achieve common prosperity, where all people are rich in both their material and spiritual life. In the long run, common prosperity can also be thought of as communism, a society organized by the principle “from each according to their capacity, to each according to their needs;” however, in the current era, common prosperity is better thought of as a joint process of building prosperity by everyone and for everyone to increase the size of the pie, not to ensure that all pie sizes are equal. National rejuvenation is the current historical process of transforming China from a backwards, closed society to a modern socialist nation that can increasingly develop towards common prosperity. Social harmony is peaceful relations and increasing unity between people of different ethnicities, regions, class, and political perspectives.

As China makes progress towards these goals, its approach to governance receives the vast majority of people’s support. Over 90% approve of the central government, 90% trust the government, and 95% think China is headed in the right track. China’s institutions continue to undergo reform in areas like anti-corruption, socialist rule of law, and economic systems of coordination and innovation.

This resource list is intended to help contextualize what China is doing so that we can build resistance against U.S. propaganda and aggression and towards a vision of shared humanity and common destiny. Even if we may differ with China on priorities and preferred policies, our focus in the imperial core must not be empty critique. Instead, we understand that imperial escalation in the forms of military containment, sanctions, and information warfare does nothing to resolve the internal contradictions within Chinese society. Instead, it harms the interests of workers both in China and around the world. Recognizing our role as anti-imperialists and socialists, this resource list is designed to introduce China’s approach to governance so that those in the West can better understand the common ground they share with the CPC on which we might build a better world.

2. Theory of SWCC

These sources give an overview of the general perspective towards governance under Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (SWCC). SWCC is Marxism-Leninism applied to China in the post-1979 period. Marxism-Leninism with Mao Zedong Thought (ML-MZT) is Marxism-Leninism applied to China during the Mao era. SWCC is built upon the foundations of ML-MZT. Having a basic understanding of all three is crucial to understanding China’s approach to governance today.

a. Key Concepts of Marxism-Leninism (ML)

These sources provide a brief intro to the theory of Marxism-Leninism. Briefly, Marxism-Leninism is the study of class struggle and how to improve society by organizing the vast majority of people via a worker’s Party.

Dessalines. Crash Course Socialism. Github. December 1, 2020.

• Describes how capitalist lack of democracy in the workplace leads to prioritizing profit over human needs, which is why Capitalism necessarily has certain flaws, and only Socialism can fix them.

Dessalines. “Does Capitalism Work?”. Github. December 22, 2020. 

• The capitalist status of the world that motivates people to seek Marxism-Leninism.

Jin, Chongji. “An Epoch-Making Event.” Research on Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping Theory, no. 6 (2011): 7-10.

• A summary of China’s conditions when the CPC was founded and its achievements. Its explanation for why only the CPC could lead the Chinese nation to defeat imperialism and feudalism explains generally why a Party is needed for revolution from a Marxist-Leninist perspective.

Red Menace. “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific -- Friedrich Engels.” Red Menace. February 11, 2019.

• This podcast summarizes the book by Engels that traces the origins of Scientific Socialism, a scientific approach to changing society for the better by transitioning from Capitalism to Socialism.

Red Menace. “State and Revolution: Marx, Lenin, & the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” Red Menace. June 3, 2019.

• This podcast summarizes Lenin’s book The State and Revolution, which outlines why in a socialist state it is necessary to suppress capitalists to prioritize the needs of the vast majority of people.

Wang, Chuanzhi. “Democratic Centralism: The Core Mechanism in China’s Political System.” Qiushi Journal. October 1, 2013.

• Democratic Centralism is a founding tenet of Marxism-Leninism. It is an approach to decision-making where democracy and centralism are balanced to achieve the best outcomes. Too much centralism means the decision-makers are unaccountable to the whole. But too much democracy inhibits decisions from being implemented quickly and effectively. In practice, democratic centralism typically means open discussion before a decision is made, and strictly abiding by a decision once made until it is re-evaluated.

b. Marxism-Leninism with Mao Zedong Thought

These sources provide a brief introduction to the theory of Marxism-Leninism with Mao Zedong Thought (ML-MZT), which is Marxism-Leninism applied to China’s conditions. Specifically, ML-MZT outlines how to wage revolution in a semi-colonial, semi-feudal state and also clarifies some essential practices for a revolutionary party.

Mao, Zedong. “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society.” Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. March 1926. 

• Mao argues that the primary reason why revolutions fail is because of their failure to distinguish real friends from real enemies. Where the two deviations of the Party in 1926 veered toward either the Kuomintang or the labor movement, respectively, Mao argued that the Party must ally itself with peasants (semi-proletariats) and industrial proletariats—true friends who could form the backbone of a Chinese revolution with the vacillating forces of the middle bourgeoisie, against imperialists, warlords, and the comprador and the big landowning classes.  

Mao, Zedong. “On Contradiction.” Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. August 1937.

• Articulates a practical approach to dialectical thinking, which is the foundation for Chinese policy-making and prioritization of work.

Mao, Zedong. “On Practice.” Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. July 1937. 

• Explains the origins of “seeking truth from facts” and “crossing the river by feeling the stones.” It speaks to how to apply scientific socialism in the context of a Party.

Freedom Road Socialist Organization. “Some Points on the Mass Line.” FRSO: Freedom Road Socialist Organization (blog). February 20, 2008.

• Describes the process for how a Party relies on the people to change society. As a vanguard Party, the CPC leads the people to meet their demands for a better life.

Tsinghua University. “Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought | 毛泽东思想概论.” EdX, TsinghuaX (course). February 24, 2016.

• The first Chinese ideological and political theory course that has been launched overseas and the first online course in China on Mao Zedong Thought. Explores questions like “Why could the Chinese Revolution be a success, how did China build the basic system of socialism, and how did Mao explore the laws of socialist construction?”

Tsinghua University. “Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought | 毛泽东思想概论.” Qiao Collective (blog). October 24, 2021.

• PDF format of this Tsinghua University’s course, “Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought.”

Qiao Collective. “Study Guide: Tsinghua University Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought.” Qiao Collective (blog). October 24, 2021.

• In-depth introduction to how the practice of Marxism-Leninism was developed and applied to China’s conditions before 1978. Highlights key questions and takeaways from Tsinghua University’s “Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought.”

c. Socialism with Chinese Characteristics

These sources provide a brief intro to the theory of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (SWCC). SWCC builds upon the theoretical foundations of Marxism-Leninism with Mao Zedong Thought (ML-MZT) and includes notable innovations like reform and opening up, market socialism, and the people's democratic dictatorship.

Anticonquista and Qiao Collective. “The Governance of China” By Xi Jinping | Political Education Session #8, 2020.” YouTube. November 27, 2020.

• Contextualizes the Chinese Dream, targeted poverty alleviation, socialist rule of law, and supply-side structural reform.

“Constitution of the Communist Party of China.” Qiushi Journal. February 11, 2018. 

• The guiding principles and organizational structure of the CPC. In particular, the Constitution’s General Program outlines the Party’s commitment to Socialism and the particularities of applying Marxism-Leninism to China’s conditions.

“理论书库--理论--人民网.” 理论--人民网 (blog). 2021.

• [Chinese only] CPC Theory Library offers a variety of books for reference on particular areas of work for orientation on building Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.

Tsinghua University. “Introduction to the Theoretical System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics | 中国特色社会主义理论体系概论.” EdX, TsinghuaX (course). 

• Part 2 after the “Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought” course. Gives an overview of how the practice of Marxism-Leninism was developed and applied to China’s conditions after 1978. Explores questions like “How to understand the primary stage of socialism, why did China reform and open up, and for whom and by whom do we build socialism?”

Tsinghua University. “Introduction to the Theoretical System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics | 中国特色社会主义理论体系概论.” Qiao Collective (blog). October 24, 2021.

• PDF format of this Tsinghua University’s course, “Introduction to the Theoretical System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.”

Qiao Collective. “Study Guide: Introduction to the Theoretical System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.” Qiao Collective (blog). October 24, 2021.

• In-depth introduction to how the practice of Marxism-Leninism was developed and applied to China’s conditions from 1978 to 2016. Highlights key questions and takeaways from Tsinghua University’s “Introduction to the Theoretical System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.” 

Qiu Shi. “Making ‘Four Important Distinctions’ in Theoretical and Practical Issues.” Qiushi Journal. January 1, 2011.

• Clarifies the role of Marxism and non-Marxism in Chinese society, the relationship between public sector and non-public sector, the necessity of CPC leadership of China and never Western procedural democracy, and the continued struggle for socialist values over feudal and capitalist ones.

Xi, Jinping. Greer, Tanner trans. “Uphold and Develop Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.” Palladium Magazine. May 31, 2019.

• Explains how only Socialism with Chinese Characteristics can develop China and why it is important to uphold Mao’s legacy and contributions.

Xi, Jinping. “Xi Jinping: The Governance of China.” English Version. 1st edition. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2014.

———. “Xi Jinping: The Governance of China Volume 2: Reprint edition.” Place of publication not identified: Shanghai Press, 2018.

———. “Xi Jinping: The Governance of China Volume Three.” Foreign Languages Press, 2020.

• Selections of speeches by Xi Jinping to guide CPC members in the understanding, implementation, and further development of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.

Zeng, Peiyan. “The Establishment of the Socialist Market Economy.” Qiushi Journal. July 1, 2012.

• Describes how the planned economy has limits in its ability to develop the productive forces and how the establishment of the socialist market economy resolves that shortcoming and furthermore contributes to the development of Marxism.

d. Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era

“The New Era” reflects China’s new principal contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life. These sources provide an intro to the new objectives and guidelines used by the Party to realize people's aspirations for a better life and the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.

Angang Hu, Yilong Yan, and Xiao Tang et al. “2050 China: Becoming a Great Modern Socialist Country.” Singapore: Springer, 2021.

• After building a moderately prosperous society in all respects by 2020, China begins to build a modern socialist country in 2 stages: from 2020-2035, China will basically realize socialist modernization, and from 2035-2050 China will further advance its democratic, cultural, and ecological construction. By 2078, China will be a highly developed great modern socialist country.

Angang Hu, Yilong Yan, and Xiao Tang. “Xi Jinping’s New Development Philosophy.” Singapore: Springer, 2018.

• Because China is still in the Primary Stage of Socialism, development plays a key role. The New Development Philosophy expands the Western concept of entrepreneurial development to include innovation from everyday people, institutions, and systems. It puts forward “coordinated development” to navigate unbalanced development, as well as green, open, shared, and security development.

National Development and Reform Commission. “The Roadmap for Our New Journey Toward a Modern Socialist Country.” Qiushi Journal. April 30, 2021.

• Highlights policy updates contained in the Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan, including coordinated and innovation-driven development to continue modernization, rural revitalization to fight relative poverty, and new development dynamic based on the domestic economy.

Xi, Jinping. “Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.” Report to the 19th CPC National Congress. October 18, 2017.

• Xi Jinping outlines 14 points that form the basic policy that underpins the CPC’s endeavors to uphold and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era. He also overviews 6 guidelines to unlock the development of productive forces, 6 areas to further improve China’s socialist democracy, and additional commentaries on developing China’s socialist culture, people’s well-being, ecological civilization, defense, reunification, international relations, and Party building.

Zhanbin Zhang, Silin Ai, and Daokui Li et al. "【理论圆桌会】如何理解和实现"共同富裕"." 中国共产党新闻网. August 23, 2021. (Chinese only)

• The goal of common prosperity is to put forward policies that not only increase income for the overwhelming majority of people, but to do so in a way that ensures that cultural life is rich, that the environment is healthy, and that people have a sense of security and happiness. Notably, the meaning of common prosperity is not to take wealth from the rich and redistribute it to the poor so that all people have the same amount of wealth without distinction. Common prosperity is an approach of development that benefits all people, both materially and spiritually.

3. Practice of SWCC

These sources give an overview of the actual institutions, policies, and outcomes of governance under Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (SWCC). SWCC began to emerge under Deng Xiaopeng’s leadership of China starting in 1978.

a. Historical conditions of China

These sources provide context for the governance of China today by outlining the history and traditions of China as relevant to its governance. The governance of China is based on China’s conditions—its geography, culture, and history.

Hammond, Kenneth J. and The Great Courses. “‎From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History.” The Great Courses. July 8, 2013.

• A short history of China that touches on what makes China unique and what it shares in common with the West in terms of how its political institutions developed historically. It begins in the prehistoric period and covers high-level events and changes.

Party History Research Centre of the CPC Central Committee. A Concise History of the Communist Party of China. Edited by Hu Sheng. Translated by Central Translation Bureau. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1994.

• The history of the CPC as told by the CPC. As the vanguard of the Chinese working class and the Chinese nation, the CPC matured in the face of difficulties and setbacks as it led the Chinese people in the struggle for national liberation, socialist construction, and socialist modernization.

Rich, Nathan. “Epic China.” YouTube. 2019.

• A brief, opinionated, and dynamic history of China. Currently a work in progress. It aims to focus on the modern period of China’s history. The first few episodes describe the character of Chinese dynastic rule and the historical regularity of famine.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Qiao Collective. “5-Part Class: From Opium Wars to Trade Wars: China’s Long Path toward Socialism.” Liberation School (blog).

• A lecture series on China’s history between 1800-1979. It focuses on the period leading up to the Chinese revolution when China was a semi-colonial, semi-feudal state.

Zhang, Weiwei. The China Wave: Rise Of A Civilizational State. Hackensack, N.J: Wcpc, 2012.

• A clear outline of the ways China’s culture and geography are integrated into national governance. Zhang argues that the CPC’s political economic philosophy is a “humanistic” one that  prioritizes an alignment between Chinese peoples and their natural resources, contributing to China’s rise.

Zhao, Liang, dir. General History of China; Documentary, 2013.

• 100 episode large-scale documentary produced by CCTV Film Channel Program Center and Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It tells China’s history in three perspectives: formation and development of a unified multi-ethnic country, the rise and fall of past dynasties, and the distinctive characteristics of Chinese culture.

b. Constitutions

These sources define the purpose, scope, and organization of the People’s Republic of China and the Communist Party of China.

“Constitution of the People’s Republic of China.” The National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China. Accessed December 29, 2020.

• The constitution defines the general principles for the governance of China, the fundamental rights and obligations of citizens, and various state institutions.

“Constitution of the Communist Party of China.” Qiushi Journal. February 11, 2018. 

• The guiding principles and organizational structure of the CPC. In addition to the General Program, the ensuing 11 chapters and 55 articles describe how the Party is organized and expectations for party members.

c. Key Political Institutions of the State

These sources provide a look at China’s key institutions for governance as defined by the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China.

i. The National People’s Congress (NPC) and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)

CGTN. “Explainer: CPC-Led Multi-Party Cooperation and Political Consultation.” CGTN. November 21, 2019.

• Illustrates the relationship between the CPC, China’s other 8 political parties, the CPPCC (Chinese People’s Political Consultancy Conference), and the government of China as the high-level organs of consultative democracy.

CGTN. “From Grassroots to Lawmaker: Meet Liu Li Who Gives Voice to the Disadvantaged.” CGTN. May 22, 2020.

• Looks at one National People’s Congress deputy’s efforts to create proposals that become government policy.

“Democracy for 1.3 Billion: Members of China’s Legislature Represent All Walks of Life.” CGTN. March 10, 2017.

• Illustrates how legislators are elected at varying levels of governance from the township level up to the National People’s Congress.

ii. The President of the People’s Republic of China

CGTN. “Who Are CPC’s New Leaders?” CGTN. 2017.

• A list of Xi Jinping’s governing experience within the CPC prior to becoming President. Also features a short speech where Xi emphasizes the continued need for reform.

iii. The State Council

Diab, Nadim. “The Invisible Hands Helping China’s Neediest Shake off Poverty.” CGTN. June 2, 2020.

• Documentary about the work of one of 2.8 million poverty relief officials, hosted by Lebanese reporter Nadim Diab. The work of these officials is supervised by the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development.

Huang, Shuxian. “Using Supervision to Promote the Transformation of Government Functions.” Qiushi Journal. January 1, 2014.

• Describes the character of reform as it applies to the state council. Government is constantly reorganized to suit new functions required by the socialist market economy.

Meng, Yaping. “China’s Meritocracy: Selection and Election of Officials.” CGTN. December 26, 2019.

• Describes the process used to appoint government officials who have the capacity for leadership. The process includes passing eligibility criteria based on experience and style of work, putting in a formal proposal explaining why a particular person is a good candidate for an upcoming role, democratic recommendation where a discussion and ballot is held to inform the appointment, appraisal of top candidates according to assessment criteria, discussion about who should be appointed to which roles, and finally appointment.

Wei, Changhao. “A Guide to 2018 State Council Institutional Reforms (FURTHER UPDATED).” NPC Observer. March 14, 2018.

• Describes the seven different types of organizations under the State Council and a list of agencies that were restructured in 2018 to support reform.

Xinhua. “Profile: Li Keqiang: A Man Who Puts People First.” Qiushi Journal. December 24, 2012.

• A personal profile of the current Premier, who is the head of the State Council. Written when he was Vice-Premier, his achievements reflect the kind of work done by the State Council.

iv. The Central Military Commission

Zhao, Hong. “Graphics: China’s Path of Defense and Military Modernization.” CGTN. October 24, 2020.

• Describes the different offices within the Central Military Commision and the overall organization of the Chinese military.

Xinhua. “China Says It Will Never Seek Hegemony in National Defense White Paper” Qiushi Journal. July 25, 2019.

• Highlights key tenets of China’s national defense policy, which is to never seek hegemony and expansion. These tenets are reflected by China’s steadily decreased military expenditure as a percentage of GDP.

v. Local People’s Congresses at All Levels and Local People’s Governments at All Levels

CGTN. “Grassroots Governance: The Last Mile to Deliver Happiness to People.” CGTN. July 7, 2020.

• Video spot of the Jilin Changchun School for Training Community Cadres as a look into the processes and work at the grassroots level of governance.

Ian Goodrum. “‘The Participation of Workers in Management Embodies the Party’s Principles of Running Enterprises by Relying on the Working Class.’ Workers’ Congresses and Workplace Democracy in China.” Tweet. @isgoodrum (blog). September 21, 2018.

• A review of China’s processes for workplace democracy, where workers give feedback on and take a role in deciding company policies.

“Thread: When I tell people that a lot of ppl in China feel their opinions and desires are heard by the government, they look at me like I’ve had a brain aneurism. But there are very good reasons why they feel that way. Here I will attempt to provide some context on that.” Tweet. @willehelmwonka (blog). September 26, 2020. 

• A brief look into the many ways that the government receives a wide variety and large volume of feedback from the people.

Yang, Jinghao and Zhang, Kai. “Deputies Maintain Close Contact with People in Various Forms.” CGTN. March 7, 2019.

• Describes the role of  deputies at varying levels of people’s congresses, who serve as an intermediary for everyday people to reach the appropriate government officials, share feedback, and get things done.

Zhao, Hong. “Graphics: China’s Democracy at a Community Level.” CGTN. November 24, 2019.

• Illustrates how village committees at the grassroots level are elected.

Zhou, Jingnan. “My Vlog: How to Make My Voice Heard by the Deputies.” CGTN. March 7, 2019.

• A video that demonstrates how everyday people can connect with 1 of 2.6 million deputies, who serve at 5 different levels: national, provincial, municipal, county, and township.

vi. Autonomous Organs of Ethnic Autonomous Areas

Qiao Collective is compiling a resource list specific to ethnic minorities in China. It will be linked here when it is completed. See below for a brief introduction to the topic.

Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China. “China’s Ethnic Policy and Common Prosperity and Development of All Ethnic Groups.” China.org.cn. September 27, 2009.

• This white paper details many of the contemporary ethnic minority policies that are still in effect today.

Information Office of the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China. “National Minorities Policy and Its Practice in China.” China-un.ch. September 1999.

• Although dated, many of the policies described in this paper are still in effect today.

The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. “Seeking Happiness for People: 70 Years of Progress on Human Rights in China.” Chinahumanrights.org. September 23, 2019.

• A more recent update on China’s human rights progress, this white paper provides some updated figures for minority-related affairs.

Qiu Shi. “Ethnic Initiatives Since the Sixteenth National Congress of the CPC.” Qiushi Journal. October 8, 2012.

• Describes ethnic solidarity as the prime obligation of the Party as expressed through various ethnic initiatives including prioritizing solidarity, stability, and unity, using development to resolve ethnic issues, strengthening ethnic autonomy pursuant to law, and supporting minority culture and leadership.

vii. Commissions of Supervision

CGTN. “China’s Draft Supervision Law: What Is It, Why Does It Matter?” CGTN. March 13, 2018.

• Illustrates how the National Supervisory Commission is organizationally set up in relation to the National People’s Congress and the Party.

CGTN’s Closer to China. “China’s New Governance: The National Supervisory Commission.” CGTN. March 28, 2018.

• Created in 2018, the National Supervisory Commission reports directly to the National People’s Congress and punishes corruption and rule-breaking among officials.

Hu, Chao. “Supervisory Reform Enhances Efficiency in Shanxi as Pilot.” March 13, 2018.

• Describes how streamlining anti-corruption procedures shortened processing time from a few years for a high-profile case to less than 10 days.

He, Guoqiang. “Tackling Corruption in Ten Aspects That Impact Everyday Life.” Qiushi Journal. July 1, 2012.

• Lists the high priority types of corruption that the Party seeks to prevent, deter, and punish.

Kuhn, Robert L. “The Watcher: China’s National Supervisory Commission.” CGTN. March 12, 2018.

• The National Supervisory Commission enforces separation from other branches of government, which safeguards against conflict of interests. For example, people who work for the The National Supervisory Commission can never work in another branch of government, thus deterring political favors.

viii. People’s Courts and People’s Procuratorates

CGTN. “Come Together: China’s Progress in Building a Law-Based Government.” CGTN. May 22, 2020.

• Describes how Chinese law is crafted to be used by ordinary people through policies like public legal education for 700 million citizens and public lawsuit services that streamline the process of going to court.

CGTN. “Job Challenge: Delivering Justice in Remote Inner Mongolia.” CGTN. July 2, 2020.

• Illustrates the work of one of China’s mobile courts by having a Westerner take part for a short period. Courts travel to remote areas so people can have access to the Law.

Sun, Qian. “Characteristics of China’s Procuratorial System.” Qiushi Journal. April 1, 2010.

• The Procuratorial System is a court system that exists to prosecute government officials if they administer the law unjustly. It exists as a separate entity from the judicial and administrative system and therefore serves to check and balance power.

Shi, Yu. “Graphics: All You Need to Know about China’s Rule of Law.”  CGTN. November 28, 2019.

• Illustrates the different levels and types of courts in China and summarizes the types of cases handled by both the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.

Wang, Mingyan. “A Closer Look at China’s People’s Jury System.” CGTN. March 1, 2017.

• Describes how China’s jury system works where jurors are chosen for 5-year tems and are selected from a jury pool to serve on a particular trial.

Yang, Zhao and Shang, Jianglong. “A Look at China’s Judicial System.” CGTN. March 12, 2019.

• A brief explainer of China’s 2 court systems, the People’s Courts and people's procuratorates.

Zhang, Jiaming, and Na, Jiang. “Changes after Enforcement of Supervision Law in China.” Chinese Studies 8, no. 4 (November 21, 2019): 222–29.

• The National Supervisory Commission consists of discipline inspection, supervisory commissions and people’s procuratorates. Therefore it consolidates the role of legal oversight that had once spanned over two court systems and suffered from conflict of interests from other governing bodies.

d. Communist Party of China Structure and Processes

These sources outline some key organizational structures and processes used by the Communist Party of China.

CGTN. “CPC 100 Years On: How is the CPC organized?” CGTN. June 14, 2021.

• Illustrates the different organizing bodies of the CPC.

CGTN. “How Does the CPC Engage with Its Members?” CGTN. October 10, 2017.

• Describes high-level how the CPC engages Party members through the Party School.

CGTN. “How Is the CPC National Congress Different from the Two Sessions?” CGTN. October 13, 2017.

• Describes the basic roles of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and Chinese Peoples’ Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in the Two Sessions, the annual legislative meeting held by the NPC in tandem with the CPPCC. Whereas the CPC National Congress is organized by the Party, the Two Sessions is organized by the state. 

CGTN. “What Is the CPC National Congress?” CGTN. October 12, 2017.

• The CPC National Congress, not to be confused with the National People’s Congress, is the Party’s internal mechanism for electing leaders in the Party and setting the country’s direction.

CGTN. “Why Is the 19th CPC National Congress Important?” CGTN. October 17, 2017.

• Defines the relationship between the CPC National Congress, the Central Committee, the Political Bureau, the Political Bureau Standing Committee, and the General Secretary of the Political Bureau Standing Committee.

Hu, Yiwei. “A Simple Guide to 4th Plenary Session of 19th CPC Central Committee.” October 29, 2019.

• Describes the 7 plenary sessions that occur every Central Committee’s 5 year-term and what their general content is when the CPC Central Committee meets. This is a process of the CPC, not the state.

Ian Goodrum. ““There Is No Such Thing as a Private Sector That’s Independent of Politics. It Does Not Exist.” Communist Party Committees and the Chinese Enterprise. A Thread” Tweet. @isgoodrum (blog). August 7, 2018.

• Describes CPC mechanisms for guiding profit-seeking corporations from within to prioritize employment and consider the greater social good, not just profit.

Yang, Jing. “CGTN Explains: How China Steers Its Economy through Five-Year Plans.” CGTN. October 24, 2020.

• The CPC creates the plan for the country’s strategies and goals every 5 years to be reviewed and approved by the National People’s Congress. The CPC takes on this role as the leading Party of China’s multi-party system.

e. Notable Outcomes and Achievements

These sources document some of the outcomes and achievements of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics as prioritized by the Party around creating prosperity, national rejuvenation, social harmony, people’s well-being, and improving the Party’s capacity to lead.

i. Prosperity

CGTN. “Job Challenge: China Push Back the Desert with Generations’ Efforts.” CGTN. April 8, 2019.

• Demonstrates the role of workers in creating prosperity through their work. Residents of Zhongwei City in southwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, once plagued by sand storms, over decades transformed deserts into apple orchards and trees.

Ke, Tizu. “Public Land Ownership: A Key to Explaining the China Miracle.” Qiushi Journal. January 1, 2012.

• Land reform, achieved by Mao, lets China make investments in infrastructure that prioritizes developing the productive forces and thereby benefits the vast majority of people. Public ownership ensured the orderly relocation over 30 years of 340 million rural residents into the cities while also guaranteeing they could return to the countryside and farm when higher-paying city jobs became temporarily unavailable.

Ross, John. “China’s Socialist Model Outperforms Capitalism.” Global Times. August 23, 2016.

• Op-ed by John Ross, senior fellow at the Chongqin Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University, argues that China’s socialist system and other socialist countries achieve faster economic development and reduce poverty in decisively greater numbers than capitalist countries. By prioritizing meeting people’s needs, the socialist system creates more wealth than capitalist ones that prioritize profit and therefore hoarding by the rich.

Ross, John. “Why China Will Grow Rich Long before It Grows Old.” China.org.cn. December 8, 2013.

• Disproves the claim that China grew rich by exploiting the work of its large labor supply. Looking at the numbers show China’s increased wealth mostly comes from investment, such as in infrastructure, and increased productivity, such as enabled by technology.

ii. National Rejuvenation

CGTN. “China’s 2020 FDI Inflow Expected to Hit Record High: Official Data.” CGTN. December 26, 2020.

• Increased foreign direct investment (FDI) is a measure of China’s integration with international finance markets and is capital that China can use to further develop while foreign investors have a shared interest in China’s economic success.

Escobar, Pepe. “Dragon Flies, Eagle Crashes at Geoeconomic Summits.” The Saker.  November 23, 2020.

• Gives an overview of how international trade agreements and talks like the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) have put China on track to greater international cooperation and supported the trend towards multilateralism.

Ipsos. “What worries the world: November 2019.” World Worries. November 2019.

• Report compiled by Ipsos, the France-based international consulting firm and market research company. In late 2019, 95% in China agreed that China was headed in the right direction, compared with 41% in the US who felt the same about the US. This confidence demonstrates Chinese people’s alignment with government policies.

六爷阿旦. “惊心动魄的2015年，美国金融战收割财富失败，成了国运转折点.” 知乎. August 27, 2020. (Chinese only)

• A fairly technical financial and geopolitical explanation that China’s housing market is inflated because of hostile dynamics between the financial markets of the US and China. These dynamics influence the trajectory of China’s economic development and world standing.

Ross, John. “China Is Now the Main Pillar of Globalisation.” China.org.cn. January 16, 2017.

• Another op-ed by Ross, arguing that if operated with goals of mutual cooperation,  globalization is in the economic interest of all nations and people. Socialist countries have taken the best advantage of this trend by enacting state policies to uplift its working class, and China has taken leadership as the world’s steadfast champion of globalization. Ross notes the protectionist tendencies of labor unions in developed nations, many of which wrongly blame globalization, rather than neoliberalism--or the subsumption of the state to the market, and public goods to private holdings--as the chief cause of their declining quality of life.

Shi, Yu. “In Data: China’s Fight against Corruption in Poverty Alleviation.” CGTN. August 9, 2020.

• Argues that punishing officials who engage in corruption is essential for building trust in government and people’s faith in the CPC to lead the nation. Preventing corruption better enables the government to achieve its objectives of increasing people’s quality of life.

Su, Yuting. “Wang Yi Talks to CGTN in Year-End Interview: China’s Role in a COVID-Hit World.” CGTN. January 2, 2021.

• Foregin Minister Wang Yi on China’s cooperation and achievements on the international stage regarding COVID-10 response and economic development.

Xi, Jinping. “Full Text of Xi Jinping’s 2021 New Year Address.” CGTN. December 31, 2021.

• Xi Jinping reviews China’s 2020 achievement of establishing a moderately prosperous society in all respects, including eliminating extreme poverty. He announces China’s new journey of comprehensively building a modern socialist country.

Xinhua. “Belt and Road Initiative Makes Solid Progress, Embraces Brighter Future.” Xinhua Net. April 23, 2019.

• China has signed 173 cooperation agreements with 125 countries and 29 international organizations, which creates international win-wins and supports the trend towards multilateralism.

iii. Social Harmony

CGTN. “Why China Can Achieve Stable Employment” CGTN. August 1, 2019.

• By having the government play an important role in education and job creation, China ranked No.1 in employment in world competitiveness ranking, with a less than 4% unemployment rate.

Cunningham, Edward, Tony Saich, and Jesse Turiel. “Understanding CCP Resilience: Surveying Chinese Public Opinion Through Time.” Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. July 2020.

• The Chinese public has over 90% satisfaction with the central government, according to an over 10-year long Havard study. Satisfaction has increased over the 10 years, though there is greater room for improvement at the local level.

Edelman. “Edelman Trust Barometer 2020.” Edelman. 2020.

• Study, conducted by the U.S.-based research firm Edelman Data & Intelligence, showing that compared internationally, China had the highest combined score of people trusting its society’s 4 major institutions of government, media, business, and NGOs. 90% in China trusted the institution of government, more than any other measured nation, including Singapore, Germany, and the US, reflecting the Chinese public’s confidence in the integrity and competency of Chinese institutions.

Wang, Xiaonan and Wang, Zengzheng. “Disabled in China: How Digital Economy Is Creating New Job Opportunities.” CGTN. December 3, 2020.

• China offered skills training for more than 2.3 million disabled people over a 5-year period. Although stigma against disability still persists, programs like these help to integrate disabled people and reduce stigma.

Zhao, Hong and Hu, Yiwei. “Graphics: Highlights of China’s SPC’s and SPP’s Annual Work Reports.” CGTN. May 25, 2020.

• Illustrates an increase in court cases, which reflects people’s increasing reliance on socialist law to solve relevant problems. Since 1999, the number of people being prosecuted for serious violent crime has gone down by more than half.

iv. People’s Well-being

CGTN. “Feeding 1.4 Billion: China’s ‘Grain for Green’ Program.” CGTN. October 25, 2019.

• Good air quality increased from 238 days in 2001 to 315 days in 2018 in Yan'an that partook in China’s “Grain for Green” program where farmers converted farmlands into forests. Vegetation coverage nearly doubled to 81.3 percent.

CGTN. “15 Years on: In China, Green Is New Gold.” CGTN. August 15, 2020.

• Illustrates China’s achievements in forest coverage, reducing CO2 emissions, and reducing pollution. Eco-tourism has also increased prosperity.

CGTN. “Why Can China Provide 1.4 Billion People with Healthcare Coverage” CGTN. Jun 14, 2019.

• Looks at China’s efforts to provide universal health insurance, what achievements have been made, and what work remains to be done.

China Joint Study Partnership. “Deepening Health Reform In China: Building High-Quality And Value-Based Service Delivery.” 2016. 

• World Bank Group, World Health Organization, and various Chinese government agencies outline the next phase in health care reform in China based on its existing reform and achievements.

健康中国行动推进委员会. “健康中国行动（2019—2030年).” 卫生健康委网站. July 15, 2019.

• Current health indicators for China and government plans to improve citizens’ health over a ten-year period. (Chinese only)

Ning, Hong. “Public Housing Improvements: China Helps Some 200 Million People Improve Housing Conditions.” CGTN. August 14, 2019.

• Report on the improving quality of public housing, with breakdown of data showing more than 37 million Chinese living in public housing in 2019, with nearly 22 million more who were receiving public rental subsidies. 

Ross, John. “Why China’s Social Achievements Are Even Greater than Its Economic Ones.” Learning from China (blog). April 2016.

• GDP per capita is highly correlated with life expectancy. China’s life expectancy is 3 years higher than what would be expected based on international standards, which means that its social achievements further improved life expectancy.

The World Bank and Development Research Center of the State Council, the People’s Republic of China. “Urban China: Toward Efficient, Inclusive, and Sustainable Urbanization.” 2014.

• Although China has avoided common ills of urbanization like urban poverty, unemployment, and squalor, challenges like urban-rural income inequality and limitations on worker mobility continue. This report studies how best to use public land to facilitate continued development of productive forces and increasing quality of life.

Voices from the Frontline: China’s War on Poverty. Film. Directed by Peter Getzels. The Kuhn Foundation & PBS Socal, 2020. [available on Youtube]

• A documentary film that looks at the process of poverty alleviation in China, including the variety of approaches to reducing poverty, how it’s tracked, and how people feel about it.

You, Yang and Ma, Yunpu. “Fighting Climate Change: China’s Efforts in Energy Saving, Carbon Cutting.” CGTN. November 27, 2019.

• China's energy consumption per unit of GDP went down by over 45 percent from the level of 2005. China is doing its part in the global fight against climate change.

Zhao, Hong.“Graphics: Ending China’s Poverty by 2020.” CGTN. October 17, 2019.

• Illustrates the progress over time for China to end extreme poverty and the ways that residents’ lives have improved.

v. Party’s Capacity to Lead

CGTN. “Live: International symposium on CPC's 100 years of history.” CGTN video, 3:03:00. June 15, 2021.

• Robert Lawrence Kuhn explains why he predicted that China would successfully contain COVID-19, because based on his study of the CPC’s fight against poverty, the CPC has the governing capacity to effectively organize large-scale projects using benchmarks, experimentation, and coordination. He outlines 11 distinctive features of why the CPC can govern effectively. Kuhn’s speech occurs from 2:46:50 - 3:02:00. Other speakers at this symposium highlight other aspects of CPC’s maturation over its 100 year history.

Xi, Jinping. “Speech at a Review Meeting on the Campaign Themed "Staying True to Our Original Aspiration and Founding Mission.” English Edition of Quishi Journal. January 8, 2020.

• Xi pinpoints corruption as a failure to stay true to the Party’s original aspiration and founding mission . By strengthening this conviction with systematic diligence while combating bureaucratism, the Party can unify and face new difficulties.

Xi, Jinping. “The Guiding Thoughts and Goals for the Program of Mass Line Education and Practice.” The Governance of China. June 18, 2013.

• Xi identifies the Four Malfeasances that obstruct the Party from serving the people and how to address them, including using criticism and self-criticism.

f. News Sources

These sources give updates on China’s policies as it develops Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era and navigates new situations and contradictions.

Beijing Channel. “Beijing Channel.” Accessed June 19, 2021. https://beijingchannel.substack.com/.

• Extended personal commentary and translations by Yang Liu, a writer for Xinhua News Agency. The occasional newsletter provides additional insights into how CPC approaches its policies that are often misunderstood in the West.

China BIG Idea. “China BIG Idea by Yu and Partners.” Accessed June 19, 2021. https://chinabigidea.substack.com/.

• Written for corporate and government decision-makers, especially “Fortune Global 100 stakeholders,” this  newsletter provides insight into the intersection of business, policy, and geopolitics.

CGTN. “CGTN - Homepage - Breaking News, China News, World News and Video.” Accessed June 19, 2021. https://www.cgtn.com/.

• International media organization that promotes communication and understanding between China and the world, presenting timely and objective information from a Chinese perspective in a variety of formats.

Dongsheng. “Dongsheng - Stories about China highlighting Chinese perspectives.” Accessed June 19, 2021. https://dongshengnews.org/en/.

• Weekly newsletter curates Chinese news stories on geopolitics, economy, national politics, agriculture and environment, science and technology, and people’s life and culture.

Pekingnology. “Pekingnology.” Accessed June 19, 2021. https://pekingnology.substack.com/.

• Extended personal commentary and translations by Zichen Wang, a writer for Xinhua News Agency. The occasional newsletter provides notable interpretations of generally lesser known aspects of important policies and issues.

Qiushi Online. “Qiushi.” Accessed June 19, 2021. http://en.qstheory.cn/

• The official publication of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. An authoritative source for the Party’s high-level policies and theories.

Organized by Geopolitical Economy Research Group - GERG, Qiao Collective, and ANTICONQUISTA

Panelists:

• Nicholas Ayala, ANTICONQUISTA

• Maria Victor, former member-at-large of the Ontario Law Commission

• Marco Fernandes, Dongsheng News

The Biden administration has set a clear course for continuing to escalate Washington’s aggression towards China. This comes at a time where movements against racism, against police violence, and for economic, social and climate justice are only growing. As the US sets the stage for confrontation with China, it’s increasingly important to think about how to channel the energy and momentum generated by these movements into preventing the escalation of violence and aggression by Washington and its allies. To do this, an understanding of the countries they target as official enemies is necessary. For progressives in Canada and the US, an understanding of progressive movements and government in Latin America is essential. In recent decades, Left movements and governments in Latin America have won victories, suffered setbacks and sustained popular movements that progressives in the US and Canada can learn from. Accordingly, they have often become the target of the US and Canadian governments.

At the same, there is growing imperial anxiety over China’s increased presence in the region – Washington’s so-called “backyard.” Far from another imperial power aiming to subordinate Latin American countries to its own interests, China’s presence in the region presents opportunities to pursue economic development without having to submit to neoliberal imperial preferences. This panel will discuss progressive movements and governments in Latin America and their relationship with China.

This panel, hosted by the People’s Forum and Qiao Collective, focused on U.S. militarization of Asia and the Pacific under the auspices of the renewed U.S. “containment” doctrine and the new Cold War on China. Panelists analyzed how the U.S. deploys false claims of a “China threat” narrative to justify the further entrenchment of its own militarization of regions in Asia and the Pacific. We will highlight how renewed U.S. Cold War aggression on China is further expanding the U.S. militarization and occupation of regions in Asia in the Pacific such as Korea, Hawai’i, Guam, Okinawa, and beyond.

This panel will also unpack the false equivalence of posing the U.S. and China as “equal instigators” of the militarization of the Asia-Pacific region. Building connections between national anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles in Korea, Guam, China, and beyond, this panel centers an interregional approach to resist the impacts of a U.S.-led new Cold War. In order to disarm the U.S. empire’s framing of the “Asia-Pacific” as a strategic terra nullius for U.S. military and economic supremacy, we highlight people’s struggles under the rubrics of internationalism and anti-imperialism to pose an alternate vision for Asian and Pacific futures.

Panelists:

• Professor Christine Hong

• Mark Tseng-Putterman

• Professor Michael Lujan Bevacqua

The class touched on common questions and controversies such as:

- China’s approach the internationalism

- China’s foreign policy philosophy

- China and the South China Sea

- China and Taiwan

- China and Hong Kong

- China and Xinjiang

As China’s global rise rivals U.S. hegemony, the number one priority of U.S. foreign policy is wage a demonization campaign against China. Since the Obama administration announced the Pivot to Asia, the U.S. has spent countless military dollars in the Pacific to encircle China. While the demonization and propaganda campaign against China has been at an all time high, the unforeseen COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the anti-China narrative.

As the outrageous, demonization campaign against China continues to grow amidst this crisis, The Party for Socialism and Liberation, in partnership with the Qiao Collective, is putting forth a five-part class series on China. The course will examine the construction of modern day China in the context of global imperialism, starting from the very first Opium war between China and Britain in the early 1800s. Imperial China, which was one of the most advanced civilizations of the world, quickly became a country looted and torn apart by many imperialist nations who wanted a piece of the pie. The course will examine China’s century-long national liberation struggle and the construction of socialism. The purpose of the class is to provide the necessary context for understanding modern China today, especially under the weight of U.S. imperialism.

On November 23, 2020, Guizhou Province announced that its 9 remaining poverty-stricken counties had met the necessary conditions to be considered lifted out of absolute poverty. This quiet announcement effectively marked the successful completion of China’s “campaign against absolute poverty” (脱贫攻坚战) set by the 13th Five Year Plan in 2015, which ultimately targeted 832 counties for poverty alleviation. This campaign is just the latest achievement of decades of governmental efforts to develop the productive forces of the country and improve the living standards of Chinese citizens, as part of a concerted push towards a “comprehensive moderately prosperous society” (全面小康社会). 

By China’s own admission, this historic achievement is but a modest first step, with official concerns about households “sliding back into poverty” (返贫) (prompting the creation of an Office for the Prevention of Return to Poverty) and efforts turning to the continuing fight against relative poverty. China eyes a “modern socialist country” (社会主义现代化国家) by 2035, and hopes for a developed country by 2049. It is quite clear that the Communist Party and the Chinese nation are not resting on their laurels, especially not in a time of intensifying imperialist aggression, most notably from the United States. That the United States and its prominent propagandists feel so threatened by the accomplishments of a country which only recently succeeded in providing all its citizens with modest but secure incomes, safe housing, and basic health provisions speaks to the powerful socialist and anti-imperial potential of New China. As evidenced by the 14th Five Year Plan’s intention to prioritize rural development and revitalization, it is clear that China understands its struggle with poverty is far from over, and will continue to seek peaceful development despite stiff imperialist opposition.

Yet even as China’s campaign against absolute poverty has come to an end, the campaign itself, its policies and procedures, and the stories of the triumphs and struggles of the Communist Party cadres and working class people in throwing off the shackles of poverty remain poorly understood outside the country, particularly in the West. Lacking the interest or ability to eradicate poverty under capitalism, the West has instead turned to fearmongering and misinformation, painting China’s anti-poverty efforts as exaggerated at best or repressive at worst. Such a lack of understanding of this monumental achievement, a culmination of decades of political work, hampers the ability of the left to learn from China’s experiences and begin devising ways of effecting poverty alleviation in their own locales.  

In this context, we are pleased to share a short note on China’s campaign against absolute poverty, with an emphasis on the on-the-ground procedures and processes involved in this historic project. To that end, we provide a translation of a short press release summarizing the metrics and procedures of poverty alleviation work groups in classifying and delisting individuals, households, villages, and counties as “in absolute poverty.” We also provide a list of the final 234 counties to be lifted out of absolute poverty, as reported by their respective provinces—a list which gestures to both the scale of this national campaign as well as the immense detail of local officials in ensuring individual households rise past the threshold for absolute poverty. Finally, we provide a very short reading list for those wishing to learn more about China’s campaign against absolute poverty. 

Table of Contents

1. Four Aspects in the Standards and Procedures for Delisting Entities as “in Absolute Poverty”

2. Further Readings

3. List of Last Counties to be Lifted Out of Extreme Poverty

Four Aspects in the Standards and Procedures for Delisting Entities as "in Absolute Poverty"

State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China

The original press release can be found here.

Translated by Sean Haoqin Kang of Qiao Collective

On the morning of May 10th, 2016, the State Council Information Office held a press meeting on circumstances related to the “Opinions Concerning the Establishment of Mechanisms for the Delisting of Entities as “in Absolute Poverty.” Liu Yongfu, Director of the State Council’s Poverty Alleviation Office, summarized the standards and procedures for delisting entities, including individuals, villages, and counties, as “in absolute poverty.” They were as follow:

First, on the individual level, with a household as the unit, the main measure is whether the household’s annual per capita net income stably exceeds the national poverty line, as well as whether there is food and clothing security, access to compulsory education, guaranteed basic healthcare, and safe housing.

Second, on the household level, for a household to be delisted as “in absolute poverty”, it must be designated as such by a public appraisal organized by the “two committees” [a grassroots village-level CPC branch, and a village committee formed and governed by the local residents themselves]. Once the results of the public appraisal are verified by the “two committees” and the CPC poverty-alleviation working group stationed in the village, and the plan to delist the household as “in absolute poverty” is approved, if the village publicly has no objection, the household is publicly announced to have been delisted as “in absolute poverty.”

Third, on the village level, the poverty rate is the main measure, with other comprehensive factors such as the village’s foundational infrastructure, provision of public services, industrial development, and collective economic income also holistically considered. In general, if a poverty-stricken village reaches a poverty rate below 2% (below 3% for villages in the country’s western regions*), if the township or town publicly has no objections, the village is publicly announced to have been delisted as “in absolute poverty.”

Fourth, on the county level, including counties especially designated on the national level as targets for poverty alleviation, the main measure is poverty rate. In general, a county must reach a poverty rate of less than 2% (below 3% for counties in the country’s western regions*). If upon the recommendation of the county’s CPC leading group of poverty alleviation, the initial inquiry of the [prefectural-level] city’s CPC leading group of poverty alleviation, and the inspection of the provincial-level’s CPC leading group of poverty alleviation, the county is considered eligible for delisting as “in absolute poverty”, the proposal to do so is circulated to the public. If the public has no objections, the CPC leading group of poverty alleviation of the province/autonomous region/municipality audits and confirms the decision, ultimately reporting to the CPC leading group of poverty alleviation under the State Council.

Liu Yongfu points out further that the CPC leading group of poverty alleviation under the State Council organizes relevant departments and forces to undertake specialized appraisals and inspections of local decisions to delist entities as “in absolute poverty.” If a decision is found to not have fulfilled the requirements, or the procedures have not been properly carried out, the leading group will instruct the relevant local entities to inspect and handle the issue. For counties that do fulfill the requirements to delist as “in absolute poverty”, the provincial-level government will formally approve of the decision and delist the county.

*China’s western regions are considered to be the Southwest (Chongqing, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Xizang Autonomous Region), Northwest (Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region), Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Further Readings

Voices from the Frontline: China’s War on Poverty. Film. Directed by Peter Getzels. The Kuhn Foundation & PBS Socal, 2020. [available on Youtube]

• A documentary hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn offering an insightful look into the war against absolute poverty. The documentary not only provides an on-the-ground look at the procedures and effects of poverty alleviation efforts as well as their often imperfect executions, but also shines a light on the workings of the Communist Party of China, including mobilization, promotion, corruption, monitoring, and discipline. Kuhn travels to Hainan, Gansu, Guizhou, Xinjiang, and Sichuan, gaining a rare and balanced insight into Chinese society and policies. Censored by the United States barely a week after its release. 

Qin, Ling. Kang, Sean Haoqin trans. The Metamorphosis of Yuangudui. Qiu Shi 2020/11. June 1, 2020. 

• This Qiu Shi article outlines the diverse experiences of the residents of Yuangudui, a poverty-stricken village in the drylands of Gansu, and goes through the many struggles CPC cadres and locals alike went through in order to throw off absolute poverty.

Peng, Qinghua. Poverty Alleviation in Liangshan Prefecture. Qiu Shi 2019/16. August 16, 2019.

• This Qiu Shi article outlines the poverty alleviation efforts in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, outlining the unique difficulties of development in mountainous highlands before making recommendations for more consistent results. For an example of new housing built for Liangshan villages, please see CGTN’s “Nearly 150 homes built for mountain villagers in China's anti-poverty drive.”

Major progress in NW China's Yushu since devastating 2010 earthquake. CGTN. April 15, 2020. 

• Qinghai Province’s Yüxü Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture is in difficult terrain and was devastated by a major earthquake in 2010. Since then, Yüxü has rebuilt, not only making strides in poverty alleviation, but strengthening the Sanjiangyuan nature reserve in order to better suit China’s goal of ecological civilization.

Preserving intangible cultural heritage contributes to poverty alleviation. Xinhua. November 5, 2020.

• A quick look at how poverty alleviation works hand-in-hand with preservation of intangible cultural heritages, which often become threatened under the pressure of modernization and development. 

Big data adds momentum to city's poverty alleviation efforts. Guiyang Bureau of Big Data Development and Management. April 17, 2020.

• In recent years, the province of Guizhou has been building up its telecommunications industry, quickly becoming one of the country’s high-tech big data centers (itself a result of central government planning decisions and local entrepreneurship). This short article outlines how such efforts can be harnessed towards poverty alleviation ends.

Revealing Chinese military's war against extreme poverty. CGTN. February 25, 2021.

• This short video covers a single village and the role the People’s Liberation Army played in poverty alleviation efforts. It shows how in a socialist society, every institution can be mobilized to better people’s livelihoods.

Working in China's poorest village & Revisiting China's poorest village. CGTN. June 3 2020; and February 7, 2021.

• This two-part documentary follows Lebanese Nadim Diab as he engages directly in poverty alleviation efforts in Kuijiu Village, Jiudu Township, Butuo County, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, and sees the results of years of poverty alleviation work first-hand.

List of Last Counties to be Lifted Out of Extreme Poverty

Starting from December 23, 2019 with the Xizang Autonomous Region, China’s provincial-level governments began announcing their last batches of county-level entities to be lifted out of absolute poverty. This list provides the last 234 counties (more accurately, county-level divisions) to be lifted out of absolute poverty. It serves as a reference point as to the breadth and depth of China’s poverty alleviation program, the difficulties inherent in such a project, the diverse circumstances of the counties targeted for poverty alleviation, as well as a lay of the land as to which areas had the most difficulty rising out of absolute poverty and will likely remain targets for sustained poverty alleviation efforts.

It is important to understand the basics of the People’s Republic of China’s system of administrative divisions to fully grasp the poverty alleviation program and the mechanisms in place at each level of government down to the neighborhood and village governances. The system is best understood as a tiered one:

The first tier is the provincial-level (省级), which encompasses provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities, and special administrative regions. 

The second tier is the prefectural-level (地级), which encompasses prefectural-level cities, prefectures, autonomous prefectures, and leagues. Most of China’s cities (for example, Xi’an, Nanjing, etc.) are prefectural-level cities, and Leagues are unique to Inner Mongolia. 

The third tier is the county-level (县级), which encompasses districts, county-level cities, counties, autonomous counties, banners, and autonomous banners, among other entities. Districts are urban areas that can be thought of as constituting the urban core of a given municipality or prefectural-level city, such as the Xicheng and Dongcheng Districts of Beijing, or Futian District of Shenzhen. Banners and Autonomous Banners are unique to Inner Mongolia.

The fourth tier is the township-level (乡级), which encompasses subdistricts, towns, and townships, among other entities.

At the grassroots below the township-level are neighborhoods and villages, the basic unit of Chinese governance represented by neighborhood and village committees formed by local residents (for more on how the neighborhood committees were institutionally vital to breaking the chain of COVID infections in China, see “How China broke the Chain of Infection,” by Vijay Prashad, Du Xiaojun, and Zhu Weiyan on People’s Dispatch; and “The Secret of China’s Success: Neighborhood Committees,” by Adnan Akfırat on Defend Democracy Press).

This list displays the 234 county-level divisions by provincial-level and prefectural-level divisions, with parentheses marking the prefectural-level division. 

Note: This list attempts to prioritize Chinese romanization systems (Pinyin, Tibetan pinyin, SASM/GNC romanizations for Mongolian and Uygur languages)

2019 December 23: Xizang Autonomous Region (19)

• (Xigazê City) 

  • Xätongmön County

  • Gyangzê County

  • Sa'gya County

  • Saga County

  • Lhazê County

  • Namling County

• (Qamdo City) 

  • Baxö County

  • Zogong County

  • Markam County

  • Gonjo County

  • Zhag'yab County

• (Nagqu City) 

  • Seni District

  • Baqên County

  • Nyima County

  • Co’nyi/Shuanghu County

  • Xänza County

• (Ngari Prefecture) 

  • Coqên County

  • Gêrzê County

  • Gê'gyä County

2020 February 22: Chongqing (4) [as a municipality, Chongqing directly administers county-level entities]

• Pengshui County

• Chengkou County

• Wuxi County

• Youyang County 

2020 February 26: Heilongjiang (5)

• (Harbin City) 

  • Yanshou County

• (Qiqihar City) 

  • Baiquan County

• (Daqing City) 

  • Lindian County

• (Suihua City) 

  • Hailun City

  • Qinggang County

2020 February 27: Shaanxi (29)

• (Tongchuan City) 

  • Yintai District

  • Yaozhou District

• (Weinan City) 

  • Baishui County; 

• (Yulin City) 

  • Jia County

  • Qingjian County

  • Zizhou County

• (Hanzhong City) 

  • Nanzheng District

  • Chenggu County

  • Yang County

  • Mian County

  • Xixiang County

  • Lüeyang County

  • Zhenba County

  • Ningqiang County; 

• (Ankang City) 

  • Hanbin District

  • Pingli County

  • Xunyang County

  • Shiquan County

  • Ziyang County

  • Baihe County

  • Hanyin County

  • Ningshan County

  • Langao County

• (Shangluo City) 

  • Shangzhou District

  • Luonan County

  • Shanyang County

  • Danfeng County

  • Shangnan County

  • Zhashui County

2020 February 28: Henan (14)

• (Luoyang City)

  • Song County

  • Ruyang County

• (Pindingshan City)

  • Lushan County

• (Puyang City)

  • Fan County

  • Taiqian County

• (Sanmenxia City)

  • Lushi County

• (Nanyang City)

  • Nanzhao County

  • Xichuan County

  • Sheqi County

  • Tongbai County

• (Xinyang City)

  • Huaibin County

• (Zhumadian City)

  • Shangcai County

  • Pingyu County

  • Queshan County

2020 February 29: Hainan (3)

• Wuzhishan City [provincially-administered county-level division]

• Lingao County [provincially-administered county-level division]

• Baisha Li Autonomous County [provincially-administered county-level division]

2020 February 29: Hebei (13)

• (Chengde City)

  • Weichang Manchu and Mongol Autonomous County

  • Fengning Manchu Autonomous County

  • Longhua County

• (Zhangjiakou City)

  • Kangbao County

  • Guyuan County

  • Zhangbei County

  • Shangyi County

  • Yangyuan County

  • Chicheng County

  • Huai’an County

  • Yu County

• (Baoding City)

  • Fuping County

  • Laiyuan County

2020 March 2: Hunan (20)

• (Shaoyang City)

  • Shaoyang County

  • Longhui County

  • Dongkou County

  • Xinning County

  • Chengbu Miao Autonomous County

• (Zhangjiajie City)

  • Sangzhi County

• (Yongzhou City)

  • Xintian County

• (Huaihua City)

  • Yuanling County

  • Xupu County

  • Mayang Miao Autonomous County

  • Tongdao Dong Autonomous County

• (Loudi City)

  • Lianyuan City

  • Xinhua County

• (Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture)

  • Luxi County

  • Fenghuang County

  • Huayuan County

  • Baojing County

  • Guzhang County

  • Yongshun County

  • Longshan County

2020 March 5: Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (20)

• (Hulunbuir City)

  • Oroqen Autonomous Banner

  • Morin Dawa Daur Autonomous Banner

• (Hinggan League)

  • Tuquan County

  • Horqin Right Front Banner

• (Tongliao City)

  • Horqin Left Middle Banner

  • Hure Banner

  • Naiman Banner

• (Chifeng City)

  • Ar Horqin Banner

  • Bairin Left Banner

  • Ongniud Banner

  • Aohan Banner

• (Xilingol League)

  • Taibus Banner

  • Zhengxiangbai Banner

• (Ulanqab City)

  • Qahar Right Front Banner

  • Qahar Right Middle Banner

  • Dorbod Banner

  • Zhuozi County

  • Xinghe County

  • Shangdu County

  • Huade County

2020 March 6: Shanxi (17)

• (Datong City)

  • Guangling County

  • Tianzhen County

  • Hunyuan County

• (Xinzhou City)

  • Ningwu County

  • Jingle County

  • Pianguan County

  • Dai County

  • Wutai County

• (Lüliang City)

  • Xing County

  • Shilou County

  • Lin County

• (Changzhi City)

  • Huguan County

  • Pingshun County

• (Linfen City)

  • Yonghe County

  • Daning County

  • Fenxi County

• (Jinzhong City)

  • Yushe County

2020 April 11: Jilin (9)

• (Baishan County)

  • Jingyu County

• (Baicheng City)

  • Taobei District

  • Da’an City

  • Tongyu County

• (Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture)

  • Antu County

  • Wangqing County

• (Siping City)

  • Shuangliao City

• (Tonghua City)

  • Liuhe County

• (Songyuan City)

  • Changling County

2020 April 21: Qinghai (17)

• (Haidong City)

  • Ledu District

  • Minhe Hui and Tu Autonomous County

  • Hualong Hui Autonomous County

• (Colho/Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture)

  • Gêrqên/Gonghe County

  • Triga/Guide County

• (Yüxü Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture)

  • Nangqên County

  • Zhidö County

  • Zadö County

  • Qumarlêb County

• (Golog Prefecture)

  • Maqên County

  • Bäma County

  • Jigzhi County

  • Gadê County

  • Darlag County

• (Malho/Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture)

  • Rebgong/Tongren City

  • Jänca County

  • Zêkog County

2020 April 26: Jiangxi (7)

• (Ganzhou City)

  • Ganxian District

  • Yudu County

  • Xingguo County

  • Ningdu County

• (Shangrao City)

  • Poyang County

• (Jiujiang City)

  • Xiushui County

  • Duchang County

2020 April 29: Anhui (9)

• (Suzhou City)

  • Xiao County

• (Fuyang City)

  • Yingdong District

  • Linquan County

  • Funan County

• (Lu’an City)

  • Huoqiu County

  • Jinzhai County

• (Chizhou City)

  • Shitai County

• (Anqing City)

  • Taihu County

  • Wangjiang County

2020 September 14: Hubei (5)

• (Shiyan City)

  • Zhuxi County

• (Xiangyang City)

  • Baokang County

• (Huanggang City)

  • Yingshan County

• (Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture)

  • Badong County

• (Yichang City)

  • Wufeng Tujia Autonomous County

2020 November 14: Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (10)

• (Kashgar Prefecture) 

  • Yarkant/Shache County

  • Kargilik/Yecheng County

  • Payzawat/Jiashi County

  • Yengisar County

• (Hotan Prefecture) 

  • Karakax/Moyu County

  • Guma/Pishan County

  • Lop County

  • Qira County

  • Keriya/Yutian County

• (Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture) 

  • Akto County

2020 November 16: Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (1)

• (Guyuan City)

  • Xiji County

2020 November 17: Sichuan (7)

• (Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture)

  • Puge County

  • Butuo County

  • Jinyang County

  • Zhaojue County

  • Xide County

  • Yuexi County

  • Meigu County

2020 November 20: Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (8)

• (Liuzhou City)

  • Rongshui Miao Autonomous County

  • Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County

• (Baise City)

  • Napo County

  • Leye County

  • Longlin Autonomous County

• (Hechi City)

  • Luocheng Mulao Autonomous County

  • Dahua Yao Autonomous County

  • Du’an Yao Autonomous County

2020 November 21: Gansu (8)

• (Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture)

  • Dongxiang Autonomous County

  • Linxia County

• (Longnan City)

  • Tancheng County

  • Xihe County

  • Li County

• (Dingxi City)

  • Tongwei County

  • Min County

• (Qingyang City)

  • Zhenyuan County

2020 November 23: Guizhou (9) 

• (Anshun City) 

  • Ziyun Miao and Bouyei Autonomous County

• (Bijie City) 

  • Nayong County

  • Weining Yi, Hui, and Miao Autonomous County

  • Hezhang County

• (Tongren City) 

  • Yanhe Tujia Autonomous County 

• (Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture) 

  • Rongjiang County

  • Congjiang County

• (Qianxinan Bouyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture) 

  • Qinglong County

  • Wangmo County

Based on a handful of think tank reports and witness testimonies, Western governments have levied false allegations of genocide and slavery in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. A closer look makes clear that the politicization of China’s anti-terrorism policies in Xinjiang is another front of the U.S.-led hybrid war on China.

This resource compilation provides a starting point for critical inquiry into the historical context and international response to China’s policies in Xinjiang, providing a counter-perspective to misinformation that abounds in mainstream coverage of the autonomous region.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction and Summary

2. Timeline of Events

   1. 1989-2016

      1. Formation of the World Uyghur Congress (1989-2006)

      2. Violence and Unrest (2009-2016)

      3. Chinese Anti-Terrorism Policy and Context (2012-2016)

   2. 2017-present

      1. The Seeds of Controversy (2017-Aug 2018)

      2. Entrenching the Narratives (Aug 2018-Jan 2020)

      3. U.S. Politicization and Pandemic Fallout (Jan 2020-Jan 2021)

      4. Declarations of Genocide and Pushback (Jan 2021-Present)

   3. On the Nature of Unsubstantiated Allegations

3. Resources

   1. Overview

   2. Chinese Perspectives on the Problem of Terrorism

   3. Geopolitical Context

   4. Poverty Alleviation and Economic Development in Xinjiang

   5. Overview of Chinese Minority/Religious Policies

   6. The Misinformation Industrial Complex

   7. Views from Xinjiang: People, Cultures, and History

   8. Xinjiang Responds

Reference Pages

• Attacks on Xinjiang

• The Xinjiang Controversy at the United Nations

• Xinjiang Responds

1. Introduction and Summary

In the mid-2010s, China launched far-reaching de-radicalization and economic development programs in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Before then, few casual Western observers were even aware of the province’s existence, which makes up 17% of China’s land and whose population consists of 65% ethnic minority peoples. Fewer still could speak to the autonomous region's complex political, cultural, and religious history as well as to its complex legacies as a crossroads between diverse peoples over many centuries.

However, since 2018, Western media and state officials have put Chinese government policy in Xinjiang under intense scrutiny, citing just a handful of think tank reports and witness testimonies to lodge charges of forced labor, slavery, and genocide.       

Having saturated Western media, these charges are difficult to systematically refute. The situation on the ground is complex, and there are limits to what we can know. While we recognize that there are aspects of PRC policy in Xinjiang to critique, these critiques should be debated and resolved on Chinese terms and in Chinese dialogues, and not be used as crude ammunition in the U.S.-led geopolitical assault on China. Based on the history of Western atrocity propaganda, its funding sources, and the poor quality of the ‘research’ being pushed, we are skeptical that the U.S.—having engaged in two decades of perpetual war in Muslim-majority nations—has any legitimate moral interest or grounds on which to defend Muslim religious rights in Xinjiang. 

Moreover, given the history of PRC ethnic and religious minority policy, and the reports from first-hand delegations to Xinjiang from countries and organizations including Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Thailand, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and even the World Bank, neither genocide nor slavery accurately describe the realities of Xinjiang. It is not a coincidence that these accusations have ramped up during a period of unprecedented Western antagonism towards China. Instead, these unfounded claims serve primarily to build consensus for conflict, intervention, and war with China. 

The effectiveness of Western propaganda lies in its ability to render unthinkable any critique or alternative—to monopolize the production of knowledge and truth itself. In this context, it is important to note that the U.S. and its allies are in the minority when it comes to its critiques of Chinese policy in Xinjiang. At two separate convenings of the UN Human Rights Council in 2019 and 2020, letters condemning Chinese conduct in Xinjiang were outvoted, 22-50 and 27-46. The 46th Human Rights Council Session in March 2021 saw no joint statements condemning Chinese policy in Xinjiang while a joint statement in support garnered the signatures of 64 countries, with more than 80 countries supporting the Chinese position. Many of those standing in support of Chinese policy in Xinjiang are Muslim-majority nations and/or nations that have waged campaigns against extremism on their own soil, including Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, and Nigeria. On the issue of Xinjiang, the clear break in consensus between the Global South and the U.S. bloc suggests that Western critiques of Xinjiang are primarily politically motivated. 

These resources are preceded by a timeline that focuses on the events preceding China’s Xinjiang de-radicalization program, the international responses it provoked, and other relevant contexts.       

This resource list is intended only for initial inquiry into the immediate controversy over China’s de-radicalization program in Xinjiang. In the spirit of seeking truth from facts, this resource does not offer definitive answers, nor is it comprehensive in scope. It aims only to be a starting point for critical inquiry, and we urge readers to seek a diversity of sources and form their own opinions. A more complete and nuanced view requires further study into the region’s history, China’s policies towards ethnic and religious minorities, and ongoing geopolitical developments.

Note: There are several ways to spell “Uygur” in English, including “Uygur,” “Uighur” and “Uyghur.” “Uyghur” is perhaps the most common in international settings, although “Uygur” is the official romanization by the Chinese government. We will use “Uyghur” in accordance with the common spelling in Western dialogue, except when referring specifically to the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Similarly, the common Western spelling of “Kazakh” and “Kyrgyz” differs from the Chinese government’s official romanizations of “Kazak” and “Kirgiz.” We will similarly use the common Western spelling.

2. Timeline of Events

a. 1989-2016

From 1990-2016, China considered the terrorism problem to be particularly severe in Xinjiang. It is a period marked by immense difficulty and upheaval for China, unilateral U.S. military action throughout West Asia, and rapid Chinese economic growth.

i. Formation of the World Uyghur Congress (1989-2006)

➤ 1989 June 4 – The Tiananmen June 4th Incident, born of contradictions from market reform, inflamed by Gorbachev’s perestroika, and combined with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its fall on December 26, 1991, sparks a generational crisis in China. A wave of disillusioned students and upwardly-mobile young people leave China for the U.S. and other Western nations, with some receiving lavish attention and platforms as ‘dissidents’ who serve a strategic interest for U.S. ambitions vis-a-vis China.

• Some of the most prominent Uyghur diaspora activist leaders today are as follows: Erkin Alptekin, Rushan Abbas, Dolkun Isa, Rebiya Kadeer, Omer Kanat, and Nury Turkel. Of these six, four arrived in the West on or after 1989 (Abbas 1989; Isa 1994; Turkel 1995; Kadeer 2005, as the cause célèbre of Turkel). Alptekin left around 1949 as part of the Guomindang’s defeat and Kanat left in 1971.  

➤ 1990 April 5 – Baren Township Riots, considered the first terrorist attack of a phase lasting till 2016 during which terrorism was considered a severe problem in Xinjiang. This is also the first attack China has attributed to the then East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), now Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) (ETIM/TIP). (see White Paper: The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang)

➤ 1996 November – The World Uyghur Youth Congress (WUYC) is established in Germany, with Omer Kanat and Dolkun Isa playing important roles. Both of them still hold high positions (Chairman of the Executive Committee and President, respectively) in the WUYC’s successor organization, the World Uyghur Congress (WUC). Kanat apparently left China in 1971 to Afghanistan, then to Turkey in 1979, before moving to the United States in 1999; Isa left China in 1994. Kanat has served as the Senior Editor of Radio Free Asia’s Uyghur Service from 1999 to 2009.

➤ 1998 April – The Uyghur American Association (UAA) is founded. One of the people who played an important rule in its founding is Rushan Abbas, who would serve as Vice President for the UAA for two terms while also reporting for Radio Free Asia. Abbas arrived in the United States in 1989 and co-founded the United States’ first Uyghur association, the Uyghur Overseas Student and Scholars Association, in 1993.

• Abbas would later serve the United States at Guantanamo as a linguist and a translator. This has caused some netizens to doubt her legitimacy to speak on human rights issues.

➤ 2001 June 15 – In the inaugural meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, China identified the “three evils” (the Chinese term 三股势力 is more akin to the “three forces” or “three influences”) of extremism (极端主义), separatism (分裂主义), and terrorism (恐怖主义). It has since applied this framework to the terrorism problem in Xinjiang. (see The Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism)

➤ 2001 September 11 – The 9/11 attacks claim the lives of 2,977 people (excluding the perpetrators). In response, the United States begins to wage the “War on Terror” and engaged itself in combat in at least 24 countries. This war has displaced anywhere between 37 to 59 million, according to a recent report (September 2020) from Brown University. This report also notes that 801,000 have died as a direct result from combat, but “indirect deaths” may reach up to 3.1 million after a war that has lasted almost two decades. 

➤ 2002 September 11 – The United Nations registers the ETIM/TIP as a terrorist organization at the request of the governments of Afghanistan, China, Kyrgyzstan, and the United States. The United States Department of State had previously designated the ETIM/TIP under E.O. 13224 prohibiting transactions with “Persons Who Commit, Threaten To Commit, or Support Terrorism” on September 3rd, 2002, but would only formally designate the ETIM/TIP as a terrorist organization on April 29th, 2004, although this was never reflected on the Department of State’s website in 16 years.

➤ 2003 December 15 – China designates the ETIM/TIP, the WUYC, and two other organizations as terrorist organizations.

➤ 2004 April 16 – The WUC is founded in Munich, merging the East Turkestan National Congress and the WUYC. Its inaugural president is Erkin Alptekin, the son of Isa Yusuf Alptekin, a Guomindang affiliate who was virulently anti-communist (to the point that he largely opposed the Soviet-backed Second East Turkistan Republic) and violently opposed marriage between Hans and Uyghurs. Isa Alptekin remained active in Turkey after the Communist victory in China. 

• Presumably around the same time, the Uyghur American Association founded the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) with a supporting grant from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The UHRP was co-founded by Nury Turkel, who arrived in the United States in 1995 and was appointed to be a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom on May 26, 2020.

• The NED has since boasted on May 29, 2020 that it “has awarded $8,758,300 to Uyghur groups since 2004, serving as the only institutional funder for Uyghur advocacy and human rights organizations.”

• Erkin Alptekin himself is a longtime affiliate of the CIA, helping the CIA to build up “network of contacts with the Uighur separatist elements” in the 1970s and 1980s, and enjoying close relations with the 14th Dalai Lama. (see Raman, Bahukutumbi. “US & Terrorism in Xinjiang.” South Asia Analysis Group (Paper no. 499) (2002).)

• Later, on September 14, 2004, the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile was founded and established in Washington, D.C.

➤ 2006 November 26 – Rebiya Kadeer is elected president of the WUC. Kadeer was sentenced to 8 years in prison for providing state information to foreign entities in 2000. This was after a career as a business owner, Vice-Chairwoman of the Xinjiang Federation of Industry and Commerce, Vice-Chairwoman of the Xinjiang Association of Women Entrepreneurs, and as a member of the 8th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. She was given leave on March 17th, 2005 to seek medical treatment in the United States on condition that she not engage in any subversive activities abroad.

ii. Violence and Unrest (2009-2016)

The extent of terrorist violence in China during this period is not well known in the West. There were many attacks between 1990 and 2016 and not all of the information is yet available. A compilation of publicly-known attacks has been collected here. Some high-profile attacks are as follows:

➤ 2009 July 5 – The Urumqi Riots, 197 killed, 1700 wounded. Chinese investigations allege that the riots were enflamed by foreign entities such as the WUC to undermine regional stability and unity. As an aside, due to Facebook’s failure to provide information to the Chinese government following the attacks, Western social media was banned from China.

➤ 2013 October 28 – Tiananmen Attack, 5 killed, 40 wounded. Usmen Hasan, along with his mother and wife, drives a jeep through a crowd at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square before setting the vehicle on fire. Authorities find “extremist religious content” and a jihadi flag in the remains of the vehicle.

➤ 2014 March 1 – Kunming Train Station Attack, 31 killed, 141 wounded. Eight attackers burst into the city’s rail station, stabbing people at random before police arrive at the scene. Officials identify the leader of the group as Abdurehim Kurban, and state that insignias and flags worn by the attackers point to political involvement as “East Turkestan” separatists. The international community, including U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki, joins China in denouncing the attack as an act of terrorism. 

➤ 2014 May 22 – Urumqi Attack, 39 killed and 94 injured as attackers drive two cars into a crowded marketplace and throw explosives towards surrounding buildings.

➤ 2014 July 30 – Assassination of Imam Juma Tahir at the Id Kah Mosque after morning prayers. Juma Tahir was the practicing imam of Id Kah, China’s largest mosque, as well as a deputy to the National People's Congress and vice president of the China Islamic Association. Juma Tahir had called for peace and stability amidst rising violence in the region. (see also)

iii. Chinese Anti-Terrorism Policy and International Context (2012-2016)

➤ 2012 October 30 – Chinese officials announce that since May 2012, ETIM/TIP has been participating in the Syrian Civil War, which had started in early 2011. (Later Anadolu Agency report from 2014)

➤ 2014 May 25 – The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region issues a notification on “Striking Hard Against Terrorist Activities Within the Confines of the Law,” indicating a turn of attention towards the problem of terrorism in Xinjiang.

• For an example of news coverage on Xinjiang’s society after this notification but before the De-radicalization Regulations of 2017, see Daily Sabah, “Uighurs do not face harsh oppression, Anadolu Agency reporters claim.” Daily Sabah, July 8, 2015. (based off “Anadolu Ajansı Uygur Özerk Bölgesi'ne Gitti: Oruç Yasağı Bildirimi Yok.” Haberler, July 8, 2015 [Turkish language])

➤ 2015 – A “Turkish passport plot” (see Global Times report) is exposed in which Turkey provided false passports to Chinese nationals in third countries (usually Thailand & Malaysia) for passage to Turkey.

➤ 2015 January 1 – Shohrat Zakir, a CPC cadre of Uygur nationality, assumes his current position of Chairman of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. He additionally remains the Deputy Party Secretary of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, a position he has held since December 2014, and Secretary of the Party Group of the Standing Committee of the People's Congress of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, a position he has held since December 2013. This is in culmination of a decades-long career serving the CPC and Xinjiang, including serving on the Party Standing Committee of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) from December 2005 to June 2011.

➤ 2015 May 29 – China receives a loan from the World Bank on the “Xinjiang Technical and Vocational Education and Training Project,” a five-year project lasting until April 30, 2020. It is the “fourth technical and vocational education and training project that the World Bank has supported in China since 2007.” This loan would be reviewed by the World Bank later on November 11, 2019. On March 31, 2019, it was reported that 113,880 students had enrolled in schools funded by this project, of which 40,413 were women and 65,015 were minorities.

➤ 2015 July – Thailand repatriates 109 Chinese nationals allegedly en route to Turkey to join terrorist groups in Syria. A few weeks later on August 17, 2015, terrorists detonated a bomb in Bangkok, claiming 20 lives. 2 Chinese nationals of the Uyghur nationality were charged. The prevailing theory is that it was in retaliation for the repatriation.

➤ Mid-2015 – The ETIM/TIP becomes settled in Idlib Province, Syria, particularly in the city of Jisr al-Shughur, near the border with Turkey. The ETIM/TIP occupation of Jisr al-Shughur is marked by “changing demographics” (p. 15) and sectarian violence.

➤ 2015 October – France begins operating “de-radicalization programs.” It would seem these programs have since garnered mostly criticism from the public, but mainstream Western discourse has not accused France of cultural genocide.

• While France’s de-radicalization program largely attracted controversy, programs like Denmark’s preceding France’s mostly went unnoticed, even being praised as a “groundbreaking de-radicalization program focused on providing opportunity to reintegrate versus punishment.”

• A year later in October 2016, the United Kingdom began the “Desistance and Disengagement Programme” aimed at “address[ing] the root causes of terrorism, build resilience, and contribute towards the deradicalisation of individuals.”

• New York Times reported on Kazakhstan’s de-radicalization program on August 10, 2019.

➤ 2015 December 27 – The 12th Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress passes the “Anti-Terrorism Law” (Chinese-language text), the first of its kind in the country.

• 2016 July 29 – The 12th Standing Committee of the People’s Congress of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region passes the “Xinjiang Implementation of the Anti-Terrorism Law,” adapting the Anti-Terrorism Law to Xinjiang’s regional context.

➤ 2016 – Chen Quanguo is appointed the Party Secretary of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the First Commissar of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (The First Commissar of XPCC is always held by the Party Secretary of Xinjiang). As his previous tenure from 2011 to 2016 was as the Party Secretary of Tibet Autonomous Region, Western NGOs cite Chen’s influence for alleged increase in human rights abuses in Xinjiang. A year later in 2017, Chen would be appointed a seat in the Politburo while retaining his two posts.

➤ 2016 December 23 – Adrian Zenz begins his career pivot to Xinjiang after a brief focus on Tibetan language and culture (and born-again Christian writings) with a Foreign Affairs article about Xinjiang’s police and surveillance apparatus.

b. 2017-Present

The waning of the severity of extremist violence in Xinjiang by 2017 coincided with elevated antagonisms in the U.S.-China relationship. The Trump Administration’s inaugural National Security Strategy document identified China as a strategic threat to U.S. power, setting the stage for ongoing trade, tech, and ideological attacks on China. During this time, the U.S. raised the issue of Xinjiang in international bodies and federal legislation as part of its efforts to isolate China on the world stage.

i. The Seeds of Controversy (2017-Aug 2018)

➤ 2017 March 6 – President Donald Trump signs Executive Order 13780, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” or “Travel Ban 2.0,” superseding EO 13769 issued on January 27, 2017. It originally banned the entry of citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—all Muslim-majority countries. This was all done quickly after President Trump assumed his post on January 20, 2017, after fervently advocating a “Muslim Ban” during his candidacy (see J. Sotomayor’s dissent in Trump v. Hawaii). 

➤ 2017 March 14 – Zenz joins the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief and continues his pivot to Xinjiang, initially focusing on the securitization of Xinjiang. (2017-3-14 Article, 2017-9-21 Article, 2018-3-12 Article) Interestingly, Adrian Zenz’s March 14th, 2017 article was considered a “fair assessment,” if biased, by Ian Goodrum, writer and digital editor for China Daily, indicating that there may have been a time Adrian Zenz did not feel as clearly “led by God” on a mission against China, as he indicated on May 21, 2019.

➤ 2017 March 29 – The 12th Standing Committee of the People’s Congress of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region passes the “Xinjiang De-radicalization Regulations” (Chinese-language text). Contemporary mainstream media’s focused criticisms on the “ban on long beards, veils” (Al-Jazeera) articulated in Article 9 of the original Regulations and not on Article 14, which outlined education and psychological counseling as part of de-radicalization work. 

• See Cui, Jia & Gao, Bo, “Islamic institutes step up training to fight extremism.” Xinhua. March 30, 2015, for an earlier instance of education as de-radicalization work.

➤ 2017 May 11 – Syrian ambassador tells China that up to 5000 ethnic Uyghurs were fighting in various militant groups in Syria.

➤ 2017 June 1 – China releases the white paper “Human Rights in Xinjiang - Development and Progress.”

➤ 2017 August 1 – WUC begins activism and writing on “internment camps,” citing April and May as the first months of detainment of Uyghur citizens. Sporadic reporting include: 

• September 10, 2017 Human Rights Watch report alleging “thousands” of detainees. Interestingly, Human Rights Watch reported that “State media in Xinjiang, including the Xinjiang Daily, have reported on these facilities,” which would seem to contradict Reuters’ later 2018 headline that the facilities were “secret.” 

• January 22, 2018 Radio Free Asia report claims “around 120,000” detainees based on information provided by an anonymous source from Chasa Township (possibly 恰萨美其特乡)

• February 28, 2018 Foreign Policy article by a “Special Correspondent” on “A Summer Vacation in China’s Muslim Gulag.”

• March 13, 2018 Newsweek Japan article (Japanese-language) by Naoko Mizutani (Japanese researcher previously barred from China for her support of Rebiya Kadeer) reporting “890,000 or more” detainees based on an unverified “leak” by Istiqlal TV (Uyghur-language, “leaked information” at 3:14), a Turkey-based media platform advocating for separatism from China. Also runs the English-language Turkistan Times.

  • As an aside, Rebiya Kadeer has also previously visited the Yasukuni Shrine on May 14th, 2012. The Yasukuni Shrine honors, among others, 1068 war criminals, including 14 Class A war criminals, as ruled by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.

➤ 2017 September – Presumably around this time, Rushan Abbas founds the Campaign for Uyghurs.

• On November 12, 2017, Dolkun Isa takes Rebiya Kadeer’s place as President of the World Uyghur Congress. Although Kadeer said, “It is time for the younger generation to take up the leadership role at the WUC,” Isa seems to have been involved in diaspora Uyghur organizations longer than she has, at least overtly (since at least 1996 for Isa and since at least 2005 for Kadeer). 

• Similarly, Omer Kanat sometime in 2017 took up both the Chairman of the World Uyghur Congress Executive Committee and Director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project.

➤ 2018 April 26 – Mike Pompeo, former Director of the CIA and notoriously proud of lying, cheating, and stealing, assumes office as Secretary of State, heralding a new era of rapidly deteriorating U.S.-China relations.

• Prior to assuming the post of the United States’ foremost diplomat, Pompeo had a long and distinguished history of being a relentless Islamophobe. Among other instances, he declared that “silence [in condemning the 2013 Boston bombings] has made these Islamic leaders across America potentially complicit.”

➤ 2018 May 15 – Zenz starts to fix his eyes on Xinjiang’s de-radicalization program and criticizes education as de-radicalization work authorized by Article 14 of the Xinjiang De-radicalization Regulations. Between “several hundred thousand and just over one million” detainees are “estimate[d]” from “information from various sources...”, citing specifically Naoko Mizutani’s Newsweek Japan article.

➤ 2018 May 29 – The United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom releases the 2017 Report on International Religious Freedom. Its report on China raises concerns that “human rights groups and others reported hundreds of thousands of Uighur Muslims… forcibly sent to re-education camps...”

➤ 2018 August 3 – Chinese Human Rights Defenders publishes a report “China: Massive Numbers of Uyghurs & Other Ethnic Minorities Forced into Re-education Programs.” This is the report taking eight anonymous interviewees and extrapolating 1 million incarcerated (or even up to 3 million) from their unverified statements.

ii. Entrenching the Narratives (Aug 2018-Jan 2020)

➤ 2018 August 10 – Meeting of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. It is here that Gay McDougall alleged concentration camps, forcing the controversy over the de-radicalization program in general, and the vocational centers in particular, into wide public discourse for the first time. (press release, 2018-8-13)

• Reuters on the same day erroneously reported it as “U.N. says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps.” Most news outlets failed to clarify that the UN CERD—let alone a sole committee member thereof—cannot speak for the UN; Gay McDougall said she had credible reports but failed to cite them.

  • Grayzone rebuttal by Ben Norton & Ajit Singh

• The Press release actually reads: “Committee Experts, in the dialogue that followed, congratulated China for creating extraordinary prosperity and lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, including in the eight multi-ethnic provinces and regions, but remain concerned over the growing inequality, particularly for ethnic minorities who continued to disproportionately experience poverty… A great source of concern was racial discrimination in the context of laws fighting terrorism, separatism and extremism, particularly against Tibetans, Uyghurs, and other ethnic minorities.” (As it turns out, Gay McDougall was both the only American at the meeting and the only person at the meeting to bring up "internment camps")

➤ 2018 August 20 – While being interviewed by Max Blumenthal from the Grayzone, Omer Kanat admits that the “one million” figure was from “Western media estimates.” 

➤ 2018 September 6 – Adrian Zenz publishes “Thoroughly Reforming Them Towards a Healthy Heart Attitude: China’s Political Re-Education Campaign in Xinjiang” in the Central Asian Survey, a peer-reviewed article version of Zenz’s May 15, 2018 report. In it, Zenz clarifies the sources for his estimate of “approx. 1,060,000”: Naoko Mizutani's Newsweek Japan article and Radio Free Asia.

➤ 2018 October 9 – The 13th Standing Committee of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region People’s Congress amends the “Xinjiang De-radicalization Regulations” (amended Chinese text here) to expressly outline vocational education as a central strategy for de-radicalization work (Global Times report, SCMP report) (Relevant changes: Article 14 amended; Articles 17, 21, 33 added).

• It is important to note that vocational education is not unique to Xinjiang. For instance, the Ministry of Education reported in 2015 that 7.25 million adult students were undergoing non-academic degree higher education, while the Ministry reported in 2018 that 11.3 million students were registered in vocational colleges. The white paper “Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang” provides further that from 2014 to 2019 “Xinjiang provided training sessions [vocational education] to an average of 1.29 million urban and rural workers [annually], of which 451,400 were in southern Xinjiang.” This 1.29 million figure here is for all vocational education, not just persons who undergo vocational education as a part of the de-radicalization program.

➤ 2018 November 1 – The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) publishes “Mapping Xinjiang’s ‘re-education’ camps,” a report analyzing satellite imagery. Mainly, ASPI analyzes “28 facilities,” but alleges 181 (Agence France-Presse) or “as many as 1,200” (Adrian Zenz) such facilities, although an examination of their cited sources reveals no evidentiary basis for such allegations. (Note: ASPI is primarily funded by the Australian government and maintains strong funding relationships with weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin)

➤ 2018 November 15 – China releases the white paper “Cultural Protection and Development in Xinjiang.”

➤ 2018 December 19 – Relying on ASPI personnel and witnesses, AP condemns Hetian Taida Apparel for using “forced labor” due to its public association with a vocational training program, which AP insinuated were “concentration camps.” The Hetian Taida Apparel ordeal is the birth of the “forced labor” allegations in the current controversy. 

➤ 2018 December 28-30 – Diplomats from 12 countries (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Thailand, and Kuwait) visit Xinjiang. Pakistani diplomat Mumtaz Zahra Baloch reported that the delegation was given full and open access to three vocational centers and that she “did not find any instance of forced labor or cultural and religious repression” during her tours of the region.

➤ 2019 January 6 – Reuters visit Xinjiang.

➤ 2019 January 9-16 – A media group of 12 representatives from 6 countries (Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka) visit Xinjiang.

➤ 2019 January 22 – The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation announces its one-week-long visit to China. This is presumably the visit on which the later OIC resolution is based.

➤ 2019 January 25-31 – A media delegation from Egypt visits Xinjiang.

➤ 2019 January 29 – A European Union delegation visits Xinjiang.

➤ 2019 February 16-19 – Senior diplomats from the permanent missions of eight countries to the United Nations Office at Geneva visit Xinjiang.

➤ 2019 February 22-27 – A group of 11 journalists from Indonesia and Malaysia, as part of the ASEAN Elites China Tour 2019, visit Xinjiang.

➤ 2019 February 25-27 – Around 200 representatives of 50 political parties from nearly 30 countries visit Urumqi Xinjiang for a meeting aimed at showcasing China’s ethnic policy in Xinjiang.

➤ 2019 February 28-March 2 – Diplomats from Myanmar, Algeria, Morocco, Vietnam, Hungary, Greece, Singapore and the mission of the League of Arab States visit Xinjiang.

➤ 2019 March 1-2 – 46th Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Resolutions on Muslim Communities and Muslim Minorities in the Non-OIC Member States (OIC/CFM-46/2019/MM/RES/FINAL), ¶20 of Resolution No.1/46-MM [pg.5] (“... commends the efforts of the People’s Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens...”).

➤ 2019 March 18 – China releases the white paper “The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang.” A transfer employment program for 100,000 people was mentioned and would presumably be the object of consternation in the ASPI report of March 2020 alleging slavery.

• CGTN summary with some infographics

➤ 2019 March 25 – The European Union rejects China’s offer of Xinjiang tour, but says it is open to one later. The EU would sit on its rain check for 539 days before once again demanding “independent” investigations into Xinjiang on September 14, 2020, despite the nearly 1,000 personnel from diplomatic, media, and academic circles who were invited to visit Xinjiang in 2019. 

➤ 2019 March 27-29 – Milan Bacevic, Serbian Ambassador to China, and Selim Belortaja, Albanian Ambassador to China, visit Xinjiang.

➤ 2019 May 7 – NPR releases its report on its visit to a vocational center.

➤ 2019 May 10 – Val Thompson, founder and publisher of International Focus Magazine - Houston, writes on his experiences visiting Xinjiang. He states that in his group of media visitors were journalists from “Afghanistan, Egypt, Belgium, Bangladesh, Belarus, Jordan, Japan, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Iran, India, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia, UAE, USA, Switzerland, and a Geneva Delegation.”

➤ 2019 June 15 – Under Secretary-General of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Office Vladimir Voronkov visits Xinjiang and reaches a “broad consensus” with China on the issue of counter-terrorism.

➤ 2019 June 18 – BBC’s visit to a vocational center.

• See also Sun, Feiyang, “Breaking down the BBC's visit to Hotan, Xinjiang.” Medium. July 18, 2019.

➤ 2019 June 18-21 – Diplomats from 14 countries (including Algeria, Burkina Faso, Congo (Democratic Republic of), Laos, Malaysia, Nigeria, Serbia, Somalia, Tajikistan, Togo) and a representative from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation based in Geneva visit Xinjiang.

➤ 2019 July 8, 12 – 41st Session of the Human Rights Council. Two joint letters took opposing views of China’s conduct in Xinjiang. For a summary of discussion of Xinjiang in United Nations fora, see our summary.

• A/HRC/41/G/11 [criticizing] - Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom [22]

• A/HRC/41/G/17 [supporting] - Algeria, Angola, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Comoros, Congo (Democratic Republic of), Congo (Republic of), Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of), Kuwait, Laos, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe [50]

➤ 2019 July 12 – Adrian Zenz pushes the “forced labor” angle with his paper, “Beyond the Camps: Beijing's Grand Scheme of Forced Labor, Poverty Alleviation and Social Control in Xinjiang,” which would not get peer-reviewed until its publication in the Journal of Political Risk (a journal with a long history of involvement with U.S. military and intelligence) on December 10, 2019. Zenz relies on scaremongering about China’s poverty alleviation programs and pair assistance programs (whereby a richer province gives monetary and other material aid to poorer provinces, manifesting in factories or educational support) to draw foregone conclusions of forced labor. One such poverty alleviation workshop mentioned in Zenz’s report can be seen in this vlogger’s video.

➤ 2019 July 14-22 – Journalists from 24 countries including India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey, the United States, and Uzbekistan visit Xinjiang.

• One of the journalists on this trip was Tunç Akkoç, General Manager of Turkey’s Aydınlık Daily (newspaper of Turkey’s Vatan Partisi). His report published on Xinhua is as follows. (2019-8-11)

• Aydınlık Daily and Vatan Partisi have since rebuked the United States’ position in the controversy (Aydınlık 2020-2-21, Vatan Partisi’s statement reported in Aydınlık 2020-9-10 [Turkish language]).

➤ 2019 July 21 – China releases the white paper “Historical Matters Concerning Xinjiang.”

➤ 2019 August 17 – China releases the white paper “Vocational Education and Training in Xinjiang” (this is the white paper that states that “No terrorist incidents have occurred in Xinjiang for nearly three years since the education and training started.”). 

➤ 2019 August 17-23 – A media group from 16 countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates visit Xinjiang.

➤ 2019 August 19-21 – Diplomats from Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bahrain and Nigeria visit Xinjiang.

➤ 2019 August 28-September 1 – Diplomats from Yemen, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Zambia, Côte d'Ivoire, South Africa, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe visit Xinjiang.

➤ 2019 August 29 – ABC’s visit to the vocational centers.

➤ 2019 September 9-12 – Diplomats from 16 African countries (including Burundi, Djibouti, Uganda, Lesotho, Sudan and Zimbabwe) and the African Union visit Xinjiang.

➤ 2019 October 17 – Amy K. Lehr & Mariefaye Bechrakis from Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) publish “Connecting the Dots in Xinjiang: Forced Labor, Forced Assimilation, and Western Supply Chains.” Noticeably, in the interceding 10 months since the Hetian Taida Apparel report, the researchers do not have another “‘smoking gun’ for forced labor in Xinjiang,” and are left with witness testimonies and Zenzian logic that vocational training and rural poverty alleviation carries “a significant risk that in many cases the detainees and rural poor are not participating by choice,” without anything to back up that assertion.

• Global Times 10/25 rebuttal

➤ 2019 October 29 – 74th Session of the General Assembly, Third Committee (A/C.3/74/SR.37). For a summary of discussion of Xinjiang in United Nations fora, see our summary.

• Total 24 countries and the European Union criticized China’s position on Xinjiang

  • ¶41 - United Kingdom joint statement on behalf of itself, Albania, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, United States

  • Criticized in individual capacity: European Union (¶58), Turkey (¶45)

• Total 57 countries supported China’s position on Xinjiang

  • ¶40 - Belarus joint statement on behalf of itself, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, China, Comoros, Congo (Democratic Republic of), Congo (Republic of), Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, Iraq, Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of), Laos, Mauritania, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Russia, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Togo, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Tanzania, Venezuela, Zambia, Zimbabwe

  • Supported in individual capacity: Ethiopia (¶72), Kyrgyzstan (¶59), Saudi Arabia (¶75 - note: qualified support)

➤ 2019 November – Sometime in November, Former Deputy Speaker of the Indonesian House of Representatives Fahri Hamzah led a delegation to visit Xinjiang.

➤ 2019 November 11 – World Bank releases a statement regarding its visit to Xinjiang concerning the vocational centers, finding no aberrations.

➤ 2019 November 16 – New York Times publishes a story about “leaked documents” concerning Xinjiang. These documents had strange grammatical errors and have been disavowed as false.

➤ 2019 December 5 – CGTN releases two specials about terrorism in Xinjiang, with footage never released to the public before, including footage of the above-mentioned attacks. They were made available to YouTube on December 11th. 

➤ 2019 December 9 – Xinhua reports that students “participating in education and training programs of standard spoken and written Chinese, understanding of the law, vocational skills and deradicalization at vocational education and training centers” have all graduated.

By the end of 2019 – 

• Nearly 1,000 personnel from diplomatic, media, and academic circles were invited to visit Xinjiang in 2019. 

• Xinjiang received more than 200 million tourists in 2019, up 41.6% from 2018’s 150 million.

• From 2014 to 2019, nearly 2,923,200 residents of Xinjiang constituting 737,000 households were lifted out of poverty, dropping the poverty rate from 2013’s 19.4% to 1.24%. (original Chinese editorial, English summary) 645,000 were lifted out of poverty in 2019 alone. Xinjiang must still lift another 165,000 people out of poverty to meet China’s 2020 goals for poverty alleviation. (see CGTN report)

iii. U.S. Politicization and Pandemic Fallout (Jan 2020-Jan 2021)

➤ 2020 January 23 – Having confirmed human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 in tandem with the World Health Organization, China locks down Wuhan City and later the entire Hubei Province. While still pushing the Xinjiang issue, Western media became fixated on the pandemic response, seizing on human suffering to push a political and often racist agenda.

➤ 2020 February – Adrian Zenz publishes a report about the “Karakax List” in the Journal of Political Risk, supposedly a leaked document from 2017 provided by the Uyghur Human Rights Project proving collection of information about 3,000 Uyghurs and detention of 311 of them in Karakax (Moyu) County.

• Global Times’ 2/18, 2/20, and 2/23 rebuttals.

➤ 2020 March 1 – ASPI publishes “Uyghurs for sale,” a report alleging forced labor (and, notably, “slavery”) of Uyghur people around China. This seems to be scrutinizing the transfer employment program from an earlier Chinese white paper. It also builds on the material previously pushed by Adrian Zenz and CSIS. 

• 2020 March 26 Grayzone rebuttal by Ajit Singh. Global Times 3/1, 3/16 rebuttals.

➤ 2020 April 4 – China holds a national mourning ceremony for the victims and first responders of COVID-19. China’s ability to contain COVID comes in sharp contrast to the United States, which declared a state of emergency on March 13th and has since watched its situation worsen significantly. The United States accelerates escalation of tensions with China.

➤ 2020 June 17 – President Trump signs the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act into law, ending a process started after it was first passed as a bill by the Senate on September 11, 2019.

➤ 2020 June 18 – CGTN releases another special about terrorism in Xinjiang, Tianshan: Still Standing. 

➤ 2020 June 29 – Adrian Zenz publishes a report alleging mass sterilization of Uyghur people through the Jamestown Foundation. This report has a blatant mathematical error. 

• Global Times rebuttal (2020-7-3), Global Times infographic (2020-9-7), Rebuttal by Dr. Lin Fangfei of Xinjiang University (2020-9-14) (CGTN summary)), Rebuttal by the Southwest University of Political Science & Law (summary) (2020-9-16)

➤ 2020 July – 44th UN Human Rights Council meeting, in which two joint statements took opposing sides as to China's conduct in Xinjiang. For a summary of discussion of Xinjiang in United Nations fora, see our summary.

• [criticizing] (2020-6-30) – United Kingdom on behalf of itself, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belize, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Palau, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland [27]

• [supporting] (2020-7-1) – Belarus on behalf of itself, Bahrain, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, China, Comoros, Congo (Republic of), Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Iran, Iraq, Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of), Laos, Lesotho, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Solomon Islands, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Togo, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe [46]

• The criticizing statement also attacked China’s sovereignty on Hong Kong, leading to a same-day joint statement on Hong Kong made by Cuba on behalf of 53 countries.

➤ 2020 July 6 – The Washington Post editorial board publishes the opinion piece, “What’s happening in Xinjiang is genocide,” marking the rapid escalation of allegations. The opinion references “new evidence” of forced sterilizations, but cites only Adrian Zenz’s June 2020 report for the Jamestown Foundation and an Associated Press “investigative report” which similarly relies on Zenz’s research.

➤ 2020 July 16 – An Urumqi resident is found to be an asymptomatic carrier of COVID-19 (Chinese source), leading to an identified COVID-19 cluster in Urumqi, Xinjiang, which had until then seen minimal cases since January 25. However, China’s efforts to combat COVID in Xinjiang go largely unreported.

• As an aside, photos from February 19, 2020 show doctors, police, and border guards on horseback on snowy Kurte (Ku’erte) Plains (near the border with Mongolia), Fuyun County, Altay Prefecture, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (Business Insider and People’s Daily Wechat Post). This demonstrates the extent of China’s COVID response, as officials made sure every person was provided for, in this case agro-pastoral citizens in border regions. 

➤ 2020 July 24 – In response to the United States ordering the Chinese Consulate in Houston to close, China ordered the United States Consulate in Chengdu to close. Radio Free Asia among others speculated that this would stymie United States intelligence gathering on Xinjiang.

➤ 2020 July 30 – Amy K. Lehr of CSIS publishes a brief “Addressing Forced Labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region: Toward a Shared Agenda.” Particularly noticeable about this brief is its emphasis on the XPCC, with assertions cited backed up by sources from Radio Free Asia, Uyghur Human Rights Project, and Citizen Power Initiatives for China (an otherwise opaque organization based in Brookline, Massachusetts founded by Yang Jianli, a self-described “Tiananmen survivor”). Footnote 33 cites Bao Yajun’s article on the XPCC but misrepresents the source, which does not mention labor camps as Lehr asserts.

➤ 2020 July 31 – The United States imposes Global Magnitsky sanctions on the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps over accusations that it is connected to human rights abuses against minorities in Xinjiang. The sanctions include Chen Quanguo, the first Politburo member to be sanctioned by the United States. 

➤ 2020 July 30 and August 7 – Coda Story—a self-described counterweight to Russian and Chinese “disinformation” funded by the U.S. and EU—runs two pieces seeking to undermine The Grayzone, Jerry Grey, and Carl Zha, some of the few Western sources to contradict the mainstream media narrative on Xinjiang. 

• The Grayzone’s rebuttal by Ben Norton (8/18).

➤ 2020 August 15-16 – Carl Zha and Daniel Dumbrill both release interviews held with Arslan Hidayat, an activist noted for spreading many lies about Xinjiang by faking captions and taking Douyin and other videos out of context on social media (see this Twitter thread, which also exposes similar lies made by CJ Werlemen, who would shortly afterwards write an article alleging 9 million incarcerated in Xinjiang). Among other happenings, Hidayat admits to putting fake captions on videos he posts as well as to having no hard evidence for his claims, instead relying on mainstream media and “scholars” like Adrian Zenz. Hidayat also displays a seeming ignorance of the general contours of Xinjiang history and its people.

➤ 2020 August 17 – Radio Free Asia reports that Xinjiang hospital kills babies, relying on witnesses and Adrian Zenz’s mathematically suspect June 29 report.

➤ 2020 August 24 – CJ Werlemen at Byline Times reports “evidence that up to nine million Uyghurs are unaccounted for and allegations Chinese authorities plan to kill, incarcerate or convert the whole population.” His only source is Dr. Erkin Sidick, President of the Uyghur Projects Foundation and senior advisor to the World Uyghur Congress, who left China in the late 1980s and whose own sources are ever reliable anonymous Chinese government sources. The report also cites Zenz's mathematically suspect June 29, 2020 report and the NYT’s November 16, 2019 grammatically wanting “leaks” to back up Dr. Sidick’s otherwise baseless allegations. Near the end of the article, Dr. Sidick decides to liberally tamper with the statistics to prove his own foregone conclusions.

➤ 2020 August 25 – CGTN releases a documentary collecting the experiences of students of the vocational centers, Lies and truth: Vocational education and training in Xinjiang.

➤ 2020 August 27 – Buzzfeed, backed by ASPI and Open Technology Fund (part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which runs Radio Free Asia, and a key supporter of 2019 Hong Kong riots) among others, pushes a two-part report relying satellite imagery, blanked-out images on Baidu Maps which are otherwise common occurrences, and witness testimony to further the Western narrative on Xinjiang. One such “camp” is in actuality an apartment complex with a five-star rating.

➤ 2020 September 2 – After about a month and a half, the COVID-19 cluster in Xinjiang is contained and Urumqi’s lockdown is lifted.

➤ 2020 September 9 – The U.S. State Department creates a new page just for propagandizing “CCP”’s atrocities in Xinjiang, in addition to releasing a short condemnatory video. Neither add anything new. The webpage relies on “recent, documented evidence” for “forced population control,” presumably Adrian Zenz’s mathematically suspect June 29 report; “NGO estimates and media reports” for “forced labor,” presumably ASPI’s and CSIS’ scare pieces; and unsubstantiated nonsense such as “CCP target[ing]... Uyghur language and Uyghur music.”

➤ 2020 September 14 – The United States restricts cotton and apparel imports from Xinjiang, citing “forced labor.” Both cotton and apparel industries are important to poverty alleviation and economic development in Xinjiang.

➤ 2020 September 15 – China agrees to and will arrange for European Union diplomats in China to visit Xinjiang.

➤ 2020 September 17 – China releases the white paper “Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang.” Some actors have twisted the white paper’s statistics (“Every year from 2014 to 2019 Xinjiang provided training sessions to an average of 1.29 million urban and rural workers, of which 451,400 were in southern Xinjiang”) to allege that China admitted to interning “8 million” into camps (presumably 1.29 x 6 = 7.74 for the headlining “8 million”). It bears repeating that this figure includes normal vocational education as well as those educated in institutions funded by the 2015 World Bank project. To date, the Chinese government has not released a figure on the number of people who have undergone vocational education as part of its de-radicalization program.

• The relevant statistics in the original Chinese reads as follow: 据统计，2014年至2019年，全疆年均培训城乡各类劳动者128.8万人次，其中，南疆地区年均培训45.14万人次。

➤ 2020 September 22 – The U.S. Congress passes the “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act,” authorizing sanctions on the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and any other Xinjiang entity as determined by the discretion of the Department of Commerce. It expressly targets China’s poverty alleviation and pair-assistance programs designed to develop Xinjiang and bring residents out of absolute poverty. For more about the genocidal impact of U.S. sanctions as a form of economic warfare primarily targeting civilians, see Robin Davis, Onyesonwu Chatoyer, & Nancy Wright, “Sanctions Kill: The Devastating Human Cost of Sanctions,” Hood Communist (blog), March 26, 2020.

➤ 2020 September 23 – ASPI launches a “Xinjiang Data Project” (reportedly mapping “380 sites of suspected re-education camps, detention centres and prisons that have been built or expanded since 2017”) with an accompanying report on “Cultural erasure.” The former in particular has been heavily criticized online for designating common schools and offices as concentration camps and listing the renovated Keriya Aitika Mosque as demolished.

➤ 2020 October 6 - 75th Session of the General Assembly, Third Committee, General Debate (Official Summary Records of the 3rd, 5th, and 6th Meetings (SR.3, 5, and 6 respectively). For a summary of discussion of Xinjiang in United Nations fora, see our summary.

• Total 39 countries on a joint statement delivered by Germany criticizing China on Xinjiang and Hong Kong on behalf of itself and Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Haiti, Honduras, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Nauru, Netherlands, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Palau, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. (SR.3 ¶11)

• Total 45 countries on a joint statement delivered by Cuba supporting China on Xinjiang (SR.3 ¶15) (see release by the Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations)

  • Angola, Bahrain, Belarus, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, China, Comoros, Congo, Cuba, Dominica, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, Iraq, Kiribati, Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of), Laos, Madagascar, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Palestine, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Yemen, Zimbabwe

• Total 54 countries on a joint statement delivered by Pakistan supporting China on Hong Kong (SR.3 ¶14) (see release by the Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations)

• The Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that “nearly 70 countries backed China at the General Debate of the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly” “on its stance and policies on Hong Kong and Xinjiang-related issues.” The final count appears to be 67 countries.

  • “Kuwait made a joint statement on behalf of three Gulf states [Oman and Qatar], opposing politicization of human rights issues and interference in others’ internal affairs with the pretext of human rights.” (SR.3 ¶16) (see release by the Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic to the United Nations)

  • Singapore separately opposed the politicization of human rights, and the “practice of some Member States of issuing joint statements to target the policies of other countries and interfere in their internal affairs.” (SR.3 ¶32)

  • South Africa (SR.3 ¶25), Ethiopia (SR.3 ¶57), Chad (SR.5 ¶29), the Maldives (SR.5 ¶104), Papua New Guinea (SR.6 ¶36), Kyrgyzstan (SR.6 ¶43), and Tajikistan (SR.6 ¶118) separately criticized the politicization of human rights against China and called for respect of China’s sovereignty in human rights discussions.

  • Burkina Faso (SR.6 ¶29) separately supported China’s policies in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

➤ 2020 October 19-22 - Diplomatic envoys posted in China from 20 Arab states and the Arab League visit Xinjiang.

➤ 2020 October 24 - A resident of Shufu (Konaxahar) County, Kashgar Prefecture is found to be an asymptomatic carrier of COVID-19, leading to an identified cluster in Kashgar Prefecture. The prefecture was locked down, and by October 27th (3 days afterwards), the prefecture’s entire population of 4.74 million residents had been tested. Western news media coverage is muted, similar to its treatment of the Urumqi cluster. According to 2019 data from the Statistic Bureau of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, 92.6% of the prefecture’s population is Uyghur, and another 1.4% is of a minority nationality other than Uyghur, for a total of 94% of Kashgar Prefecture’s population belonging to minority nationalities.

➤ 2020 November 3 - The Islamic Association of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region issues a “Report on Freedom of Religious Belief in Xinjiang” via Tianshan Net.

➤ 2020 November 5 - Secretary Pompeo quietly revokes the designation of the ETIM/TIP as a terrorist organization on October 20th, 2020. The announcement was published on November 5th, 2020 and with little attention.

➤ 2020 November 14 - Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region announces the end of absolute poverty, delisting the last 10 counties from the list of impoverished counties by official standards (for individuals, stable income, safe housing, and access to education, clean water, and health care). The 10 counties were Yarkant (Shache), Kargilik (Yecheng), Payzawat (Jiashi), Yengisar (Yingjisha), Karakax (Moyu), Guma (Pishan), Lop (Luopu), Qira (Cele), Keriya (Yutian), and Akto (Aketao) counties. (official release).

➤ 2020 November 20 - Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region reports no new COVID cases. The Kashgar COVID outbreak is defeated in a month.

➤ 2020 December 14 - The International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor announces in response to a communication sent to the ICC on July 6th, 2020 by the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile that it will not proceed to investigate China for alleged genocide and crimes against Uyghurs in Xinjiang. While the Office of the Prosecutor declined to make any findings on “genocide, crimes against humanity of murder, imprisonment or other severe deprivation of liberty, torture, enforced sterilisation and other inhumane acts”, due to lack of jurisdiction, it remarked that alleged crimes of “forcible transfer or deportation” of persons from Tajikistan and Cambodia to China were not substantiated enough to warrant an investigation (see report, pp. 18-20).

➤ 2021 January 8 - The United States via the Solar Energy Industries Association targets Xinjiang’s solar energy sector, using the pretext of unproven forced labor to force supply chains away from Xinjiang. Xinjiang is a world leader in the solar energy industry and the sector is an engine for poverty alleviation. Western media is quick to legitimize this decoupling and virtual sanctioning, which threatens to isolate and impoverish Xinjiang’s people.

➤ 2021 January 12 - The United Kingdom announces actions intended to isolate and impoverish Xinjiang in the name of human rights.

➤ 2021 January 13 - In the United States’ continued effort to impoverish Xinjiang, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol announces it will “detain cotton products and tomato products produced in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” citing “forced labor.” Acting DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli stated that “DHS will not tolerate forced labor of any kind in U.S. supply chains,” an ironic statement from a government readily tolerating exploitative prison labor.

iv. Declarations of Genocide and Pushback (Jan 2021-Present)

➤ 2021 January 19 - On the last day of the Trump administration, Secretary of State Pompeo labels China’s de-radicalization and economic development programs in Xinjiang as “genocide” and “crimes against humanity,” seemingly unaware of China’s extensive pandemic relief efforts serving the very people of Xinjiang supposedly facing “genocide” as opposed to the United States’ mass death disproportionately burdening indigenous and people of color brought about by negligent policies.

• Biden’s Secretary of State pick Tony Blinken concurred with Pompeo’s assessment during his confirmation hearing, dispelling any doubts as to the continuing imperialist ambitions and Balkanization fantasies the United States still possesses vis-a-vis China.

• Pompeo’s allegations inspire many people of Xinjiang to submit written and video responses rebuking Pompeo’s accusations.

➤ 2021 January 26 - Mainichi reports that a senior official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan reported to a meeting of the foreign affairs division of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that it did not agree the situation in Xinjiang constituted “genocide”. In response to a member of LDP calling the assessment “weak”, the official asserted that “Retrogressive ‘criticisms’ of human rights are not effective. It is more proper to cooperate with the relevant countries.” This is a surprising break from the United States line on the part of Japan, which has been otherwise a consistent critic of China’s Xinjiang policies and an eager participant in the U.S. “QUAD”. (See Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson’s response)

➤ 2021 February 3 - China's Permanent Mission to the United Nations Office at Geneva and the Government of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region jointly held a webinar concerning Xinjiang. Diplomats from 50 countries as well as officials from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN human rights experts participated.

➤ 2021 February 19 - Foreign Policy reports that the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor finds insufficient evidence to sustain a charge of genocide against China in its policies in Xinjiang. It however maintains “crimes against humanity”. This report awaits official corroboration and correspondence. If the Office of the Legal Advisor did indeed held such, its advice was ignored on March 30 with the publication of the State Department’s 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

➤ 2021 February 22 - The United Kingdom demands “urgent and unfettered” access to Xinjiang on the opening day of the 46th Session of the Human Rights Council despite BBC’s previous free access to Xinjiang.

• On the same day, Canada’s House of Commons, led by the opposition Conservative Party, voted 266-0 to label China’s policies in Xinjiang as genocide, although Prime Minister Trudeau and his Cabinet abstained from the vote.

➤ 2021 February 22 - The International Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the CPC Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Regional Committee co-hosted the virtual event "Stories of CPC" Thematic Briefing on Xinjiang in Urumqi. A total of over 310 leaders and prominent personages representing more than 190 political parties and organizations from 80 plus countries, among which over 100 are from Islamic countries, attended the event.

➤ 2021 February 25 - The Dutch parliament, led by a lawmaker from the D-66 Party, declares China’s policies in Xinjiang as genocide, although like in Canada, Dutch government ministers distanced themselves from the designation, and the Prime Minister’s VVD Party voted against the resolution.

➤ 2021 February 26 - The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China reveals that it has made multiple invitations and arrangements to European Union officials to visit Xinjiang, but that the European Union has been postponing any visits.

➤ 2021 March 8 - The Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy in collaboration with the Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights publishes a report alleging that China’s policies in Xinjiang amounted to genocide under international law. The report presented no new information past what Adrian Zenz had already pushed and was written and compiled by highly partisan actors affiliated with government agencies like the U.S. State Department, despite the report’s claims to “independent inquiry.”

• See the Grayzone’s rebuttal (2021/3/17)

➤ 2021 March 10 - The Grand National Assembly of Turkey led by the ruling party, the AKP, rejects a motion by the İYİ Party to label China’s policies in Xinjiang as genocide, continuing the political trend of opposition parties attempting to label China’s policies as genocide while being opposed by ruling parties.

➤ 2021 March 12 - 64 countries join a joint statement made by Cuba at the 46th Session of the Human Rights Council in support of China’s policies in Xinjiang (official document pending, statement given at the session). For a summary of discussion of Xinjiang in United Nations fora, see our summary.

• Near the conclusion of the 46th Session of the Human Rights Council on March 24th, 2021, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi reports that more than 80 countries supported China’s position on Xinjiang in the Human Rights Council.

➤ 2021 March 15 - The Australian Senate defeats a motion to label China’s policies in Xinjiang as genocide. Australia’s ruling party, the Liberal Party, played a key role in defeating the motion, echoing parliamentary dynamics in Canada, the Netherlands, and Turkey.

➤ 2021 March 22 - The United States, European Union, Canada, and United Kingdom announce sanctions on a total of four Chinese officials in connection with alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang. In response, China sanctions ten individuals from the European Parliament and European legislatures and four European entities for disseminating disinformation, undermining Chinese-European ties, and interfering in China’s domestic affairs. Of the ten individuals sanctioned, four of them are co-chairs of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) (Reinhard Butikofer, Miriam Lexmann, Samuel Cogolati, Dovile Sakaliene of the Seimas). Adrian Zenz was also sanctioned.

• On March 26, China announces sanctions against nine UK individuals and four UK entities in retaliation. Of the nine individuals sanctioned, five are members of IPAC, including the two British co-chairs of IPAC.

• On March 27, China announces sanctions against two U.S. individuals, a Canadian individual, and a Canadian entity.

➤ 2021 March 24 - Chinese social media digs up a statement from clothing retailer H&M declaring the cessation of cotton sourcing from Xinjiang, citing forced labor charges, in compliance with a October 21st, 2020 announcement by the Better Cotton Initiative to cease all field-level activities in Xinjiang, following BCI’s sudden March 2020 decision to refuse licensing of Xinjiang’s cotton (this announcement was edited and restated in March 2021 and posted to its Wechat account on March 1, 2021). It is worth noting that BCI is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, among other Western governmental organs. This causes two high-profile Chinese celebrities to cut ties with H&M.

• Subsequently, many Chinese celebrities cut ties with brands such as Adidas, Nike, and UNIQLO and rallied Chinese netizens into boycotting these brands for discriminating against Xinjiang workers. This boycott is supported by Chinese apps deplatforming H&M.

• See the responses of local Xinjiang residents Patima Ablimit, Hayrigul Abla, and Ahmatjan Mamut to the brands’ boycotting of Xinjiang’s cotton. See other responses to charges of forced labor in the cotton industry here and here.

• In the midst of this controversy, Skechers’ statement is noticeable for its rejection of ASPI’s charges of forced labor among China’s minority nationalities as verified by its regular announced and unannounced audits of its Chinese supplier.

• BCI’s China office has found no evidence of “forced labor” from 2013 to 2020. The sudden suspension of cooperation between BCI and Xinjiang’s cotton sector may be due to U.S. government pressure, as evidenced by a July 2020 U.S. government lawsuit made against BCI shortly after the July 2020 establishment of the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol by the Department of Agriculture. (see Reuters report)

• BCI’s main website has since removed the October 21st, 2020 announcement.

➤ 2021 March 30 - The State Department publishes its 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. In its China report, the State Department maintains former Secretary Pompeo’s allegations that “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” were committed in Xinjiang.

➤ 2021 March 30 - April 2 - A delegation of more than 30 diplomats from 21 countries, including Iran, Nepal, Russia, the Maldives, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, and Pakistan, visit Xinjiang. The delegation includes the Secretary-General of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

➤ 2021 April 2 - CGTN releases a documentary about more complex fields in the fight against Terrorism in Xinjiang, The War in the Shadows: Challenges of Fighting Terrorism in Xinjiang.

➤ 2021 April 22 - The United Kingdom's parliament passes a non-binding resolution labelling China's policies in Xinjiang as genocide. The United Kingdom joins the United States, Netherlands, and Australia in labeling China's policies in Xinjiang as genocide.

➤ 2021 June 13 - The United States fails to persuade the G7 to forcefully label China's policies in Xinjiang as "forced labor" in the G7's joint communiqué. The G7's split as regards to China forced the shutdown of the internet to the meeting room, with the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada insisting on a hardline anti-China line against France, Germany, and Italy maintaining their policy independence.

➤ 2021 June 14 - China's seventh census conducted in November 2020 reveals that Xinjiang's population grew 18.52% to 25.85 million people from 21.81 million recorded in the sixth census conducted in 2010. Of the 25.85 million, Han made up 10.92 million (42.24%) and minority nationalities made up 14.93 million (57.76%), of which Uyghurs made up 11.62 million (44.96%). The population of minority nationalities increased 14.27% (1.87 million) from 2010, of which the Uyghur population increased 16.2% (1.62 million) from 2010. The Han population increased 24.9%, or 2.17 million, from 2010, of which 1.95 million were migrants from other provinces.

➤ 2021 June 22 - 47th Human Rights Council at Geneva. For a summary of discussion of Xinjiang in United Nations fora, see here. Notably, Israel under the new government of Naftali Bennett joined the joint statement condemning China.

• A total of 44 countries joined a joint statement delivered by Canada condemning China's policies in Xinjiang:

  • Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belize, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Haiti, Honduras, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Palau, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States

  • Ukraine and Bosnia and Herzegovina have since withdrawn their signatures from the condemnatory joint statement, bringing the total down to 42.

• A total of 69 countries joined a joint statement delivered by Belarus supporting China's position:

  • Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, China, Comoros, Congo, Cuba, Djibouti, Dominica, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, Iraq, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Korea (Democratic People's Republic of), Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

  • In addition to the 68 signers of the joint statement in support of China's position on Xinjiang, more than 20 other countries supported China's position in individual capacities, including Azerbaijan, Cabo Verde, Cote d'Ivoire, Ecuador, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, the Maldives, South Africa, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Vietnam, and the Arab Group (the 22 countries comprising the Arab League).

➤ 2021 July 13 - Following June 23-24 Department of Commerce and Department of Homeland Security actions against Chinese companies in the solar industry, the US Department of State releases an updated Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Advisory, among the highlighted updates of which is "information on forced labor in the Xinjiang silicon and polysilicon supply chain and the prevalence of inputs sourced from Xinjiang," indicating that the Biden Administration will continue to prioritize Cold War competition with China over climate cooperation.

➤ 2021 September 21 - In his address to the 76th session of the UN General Assembly, President Biden condemns China on Xinjiang, accusing China of "targeting and oppression of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities", marking an escalation in the use and politicization of unsubstantiated allegations of human rights violations while claiming not to seek a new Cold War or divide the world into rigid blocs.

➤ 2021 September 24 - Pakistan delivers a joint statement on behalf of 65 countries supporting China's position on Xinjiang at the 48th session of the Human Rights Council. All together, nearly 100 countries expressed support for China's position. There does not appear to be an opposing joint statement.

➤ 2021 September 26 - China releases the white paper "Xinjiang Population Dynamics and Data.”

➤ 2021 October 21 - Discussion at the Third Committee of the 76th session of the General Assembly.

• 43 countries issued a joint statement condemning China's position on Xinjiang, including Turkey and the Western camp's first African supporter, Eswatini.

• In response, Cuba made a joint statement on behalf of 62 countries supporting China's position on Xinjiang. All together, more than 80 countries supported China's position.

• This marks the third year the Western camp has attempted to weaponize allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang against China at the United Nations General Assembly. China's Ambassador to the UN Zhang Jun has responded to these efforts strongly this year, including exercising the Right to Reply at the General Debate of the Third Committee on October 4, 2021 and delivering rebuking remarks on October 21. The Permanent Mission of China to the UN also released a fact sheet outlining human rights violations of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France on October 21.

➤ 2021 December 6 - White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announces a "diplomatic boycott" of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games, citing "ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses." Countries that have joined the boycott for express political reasons include Australia, United Kingdom, Canada (December 8), Estonia (December 13), and Belgium (December 14). Lithuania had prior declared a boycott on December 3. While Japan has not formally declared a boycott, it has announced on December 11 that it would not send diplomatic personnel.

• Macron on December 9 remarked that a "diplomatic boycott" was "insignificant and merely symbolic," making a European Union boycott unlikely.

➤ 2021 December 9 - The Uyghur Tribunal renders a judgment finding that China committed torture of Uyghurs, crimes against humanity, and genocide, not by killings but by "imposing measures to prevent births". The Tribunal overwhelmingly relied on anecdotal testimonials and the findings of Western scholars. The Uyghur Tribunal was conceived in June 2020 when President of the WUC Dolkun Isa formally requested that UK's Sir Geoffrey Nice establish an "independent people's tribunal", and launched on 3 September 2020. It is not a body authorized by international law.

➤ 2021 December 10 - The U.S. Department of Treasury imposes sanctions on "perpetrators of serious human rights abuses." Among the Chinese individuals and entities sanctioned are Shohrat Zakir, who served as Chairman of Xinjiang, Erkin Tuniyaz, acting Chairman of Xinjiang, and SenseTime Group Limited, accused of developing facial recognition programs targeting minorities for surveillance purposes.

➤ 2021 December 23 - The President of the United States signs the "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act" into law (see White House and State Department press releases). This ends a process begun on March 11, 2020 when Congress first introduced the Act.

• The Act is intended to "ban imports from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang) of the People’s Republic of China and imposes sanctions on foreign individuals responsible for forced labor in the region" with an eye towards "rallying allies and partners to take joint action to ensure all global supply chains are free from the use of forced labor, including from Xinjiang."

• The Act gives the United States a blank check to presume that all products from Xinjiang are made with forced labor. It allows US Customs to refuse all Xinjiang-sourced products unless the importer of the products complies with US guidance. This demonstrates that the Act is aimed at forcibly cutting business ties between China and the world, and at expelling China from global supply chains.

➤ 2022 January 20 - The French National Assembly passes a non-binding resolution declaring China's policies in Xinjiang as "genocide." It joins a group of exclusively Western countries including the Netherlands, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

➤ 2022 March 7 - China and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights arrange for a visit by High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet to visit Xinjiang in May (see Chinese Mission to Geneva's statement and UN High Commissioner for Human Right's statement).

➤ 2022 May 28 - UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet concludes her six-day visit (beginning May 23) to China and releases a statement. Among other places she visited, High Commissioner Bachelet spent two days visiting Urumqi and Kashgar in Xinjiang, including visits to cotton fields, Kashgar prison and the Kashgar Experimental School, a former vocational center. High Commissioner Bachelet additionally reported that she met with senior officials from Xinjiang, local ethnic minority residents, academics, religious leaders, inmates, and former vocational center trainees. High Commissioner Bachelet asserted that all these meetings were "unsupervised and organized by us."

• Regarding Xinjiang, although High Commissioner Bachelet expressed concerns over China's counter-terrorism and deradicalization policies, she did not echo Western allegations of "genocide" or "forced labor."

• See also: Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu briefs the media on the visit of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to China

➤ 2022 June 14 - 50th Human Rights Council Session.

• A total of 47 countries joined a joint statement delivered by the Netherlands condemning China's policies in Xinjiang:

  • Albania, Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belize, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Eswatini, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Palau, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America

• A total of 69 countries joined a joint statement delivered by Cuba supporting China's position:

  • Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahrain, Belarus, Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, China, Comoros, Congo (Republic of), Cuba, Djibouti, Dominica, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, Iraq, Kiribati, Korea (Democratic People's Republic of), Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkmenistan, UAE, Uganda, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

➤ 2022 August 31 - The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights releases an OHCHR Assessment of human rights concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China, with an attached Response by the Permanent Mission of China to Geneva. The OHCHR did not enjoy a mandate by the UN Human Rights Council in drafting this "assessment", among other procedural and methodological flaws such as one-sided citations that privileged ASPI and other hostile Western-based actors over China's people and civil society, including those living and based in Xinjiang. While the assessment offered no definitive finding on "crimes against humanity", "genocide", or "forced labor", it did accuse China of "serious human rights violations". This inflammatory and accusative language is inconsistent with the constructive spirit of former High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet's statement after her May visit to China. Given the flaws and context of the assessment, it is highly likely that the OHCHR has politicized its work in regards to China in violation of its own mandate, and will alienate the Global South in the process. See "The Flaws in the 'Assessment' Report of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on China" by Alfred de Zayas and "Bachelet’s 'Assessment of Human Rights Concerns in Xinjiang' Risks Discrediting the OHCHR and Politicizing the Human Rights Regime" by Casey Ho-yuk Wan.

➤ 2022 September 9 - In response to the OHCHR's politicized and flawed assessment, Ambassador Chen Xu, Permanent Representative of China to Geneva, tells the media that the OHCHR has "closed the door of cooperation" by releasing the assessment.

➤ 2022 September 13 - 51st Human Rights Council Session. A total of 28 countries join a joint statement by China criticizing the OHCHR for its "assessment" of Xinjiang.

• Belarus, Bolivia, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Comoros, Cuba, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Iran, Korea (Democratic People's Republic of), Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Syria, UAE, Venezuela, Yemen, Zimbabwe

➤ 2022 September 26 - 51st Human Rights Council Session. A total of 68 countries joined a joint statement by Pakistan supporting China's position in Xinjiang. No condemnatory joint statement was given in response.

• Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahrain, Belarus, Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, China, Comoros, Congo (Republic of), Cuba, Djibouti, Dominica, DPRK, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Iran, Iraq, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Pakistan, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sierra Leona, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkmenistan, UAE, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

➤ 2022 October 6 - 51st Human Rights Council Session. A U.S./Western-sponsored Human Rights Council draft decision, A/HRC/51/L.6, is rejected by the Human Rights Council. A/HRC/51/L.6 sought to capitalize on the OHCHR's politicized and flawed "assessment" by introducing Xinjiang, China as a topic of debate at the 52nd Human Rights Council Session in February 2023. A/HRC/51/L.6 would have legitimized the Western campaign to slander China on Xinjiang in the UN's human rights system.

• 17 voted for: Czechia, Finland, France, Germany, Honduras, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Montenegro, Netherlands, Paraguay, Poland, the Republic of Korea, Somalia, the United Kingdom, the United States

• 19 voted against: Bolivia, Cameroon, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Cuba, Eritrea, Gabon, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Namibia, Nepal, Pakistan, Qatar, Senegal, Sudan, UAE, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela.

• 11 abstained: Argentina, Armenia, Benin, Brazil, Gambia, India, Libya, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, Ukraine

➤ 2022 October 31 - 76th UN General Assembly, Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian & Cultural Issues).

• A total of 50 countries joined a joint statement delivered by Canada condemning China's policies in Xinjiang:

  • Albania, Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belize, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Eswatini, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Montenegro, Nauru, Netherlands, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Palau, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Somalia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States

• A total of 66 countries joined a joint statement delivered by Cuba supporting China's position:

  • Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahrain, Belarus, Benin, Bolivia, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, China, Comoros, Republic of Congo, Cuba, Djibouti, Dominica, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Iran, Iraq, Kiribati, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Pakistan, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Yemen, Zimbabwe

➤ 2023 October 18 - 77th UN General Assembly, Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian & Cultural Issues).

• A total of 51 countries joined a joint statement delivered by the United Kingdom condemning China's policies in Xinjiang. Especially notable was the renewed appearance of Israel on the list at a time when numerous international legal experts agreed it was executing a “textbook case of genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza.

  • Albania, Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Eswatini, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Nauru, Netherlands, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Palau, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tuvalu, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States

• A total of 72 countries joined a joint statement delivered by Pakistan supporting China's position:

  • Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahrain, Belarus, Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, China, Comoros, Republic of Congo, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Honduras, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Libya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Pakistan, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Yemen, Zimbabwe

As of February 2022, in the roughly three-and-a-half year period since the end of 2018, more than 2,000 people from over 100 countries and regions, including officials from international organizations, diplomats, journalists and religious leaders, have visited Xinjiang.

c. On the Nature of Unsubstantiated Allegations

The World Uyghur Congress began conducting activism based on the allegation of Xinjiang “concentration camps” in August 2017, four months after the promulgation of the Xinjiang De-radicalization Regulations. The controversy entered mainstream Western discourse a year later in August 2018 with Gay McDougall’s unsubstantiated claims at the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. 

In the interceding time, claims of concentration camps, cultural genocide, demographic genocide, slavery, and mass sterilization have saturated media and political discourse. The evidentiary weakness of these rapidly escalating claims is evinced by the shifting numbers of alleged detainees, which has ebbed and flowed from 120,000 on the low end to up to 9 million out of a Uyghur population of roughly 12 million (2019).

While Western media often paints Xinjiang as a black box, Xinjiang has in fact never been closed or restricted to outside visitors until the outbreak of COVID-19 in January 2020 (unlike Tibet Autonomous Region, which requires most foreigners to acquire special permits to visit). Indeed despite the nearly 1,000 visits by outside observers and 200 million tourists to Xinjiang in 2019, no convincing photo or video evidence has emerged of supposed genocide in Xinjiang, much less the complete absence of any recent refugee crisis originating from Xinjiang.

Photos and videos fallaciously used to prove, show, or insinuate either concentration camps or slave labor of Xinjiang people include:

• An April 14, 2017 de-radicalization public talk at Luopu County Reform & Correction Centre (explanatory Twitter thread).

• An August 12, 2017 arrest of pyramid fraudsters in Bijie, Guizhou (explanatory Twitter thread)

• A video uploaded on September 17, 2019 appearing to show a routine prisoner transfer in what looks to be Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture, with vests printed “Kashgar Detention House (喀什看守所).” (see Global Times, 2020-7-22, in response to the re-emergence of the video in summer 2020 and BBC’s confrontation of Chinese Ambassador to the United Kingdom Liu Xiaoming using the video on 2020-7-19) Detention Houses are otherwise normal infrastructure in today’s China. (see this Zhihu answer for one person’s experience staying 37 days in a Detention House, and this post about the work of a police personnel tasked to a Detention House) [Chinese language]

• A December 21, 2019 transportation of suspected fraud criminals from Shanghai to Taiyuan by Taiyuan police (explanatory Twitter thread).

• A stock photo of a Chilean shoe factory from 2010 (Reddit post)

• Satellite imagery of assorted buildings in China, some of which are normal prisons and at least one of which is a 5-star apartment complex.

• In some extreme cases, videos from other countries entirely (video was from Indonesia - part of what is being said is “ampun, pak, gak lagi” - have mercy, I won’t do it again), videos from a Taiwanese BDSM club, or edited and pixelated photos to try to push the narrative. 

It is clear that the burden of evidence for disproving allegations of slavery and genocide in Xinjiang has been set far higher than the burden of evidence for lodging these allegations in the first place. With the popular imagination saturated with images of alleged atrocities, it is difficult to argue for any course of U.S. action other than sanctions, isolation, and intervention. Such is the nature, by intent, of atrocity propaganda as it has been wielded to justify U.S. imperial adventurism. If nothing else, the context and evidence provided in this timeline should make clear that spurious claims based on weak evidence have been wielded unilaterally by the U.S. and its allies to spurn China despite broad international approval for Chinese policy in Xinjiang.

3. Resources

a. Overview

These readings are general overviews of Xinjiang in general and the current controversy in particular. They can act as effective one-stop resources for those seeking a quick summary.  

Abunimah, Ali. “How How Muslim group Emgage serves the American empire,” The Electronic Intifada, March 17, 2021.

• Ali Abunimah casts doubt on the evidentiary grounds of “genocide” in Xinjiang while analyzing how Muslim diaspora groups are co-opted for U.S. imperial interests, tied also with failure to embrace solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.

Ang, Matthias & Wong, Kayla. Different media report differently on controversial Xinjiang re-education camps in China. Read them all.”, Mothership, July 21, 2019.

• Ang and Wong offer an even-handed survey of the biases and conflicting diagnoses of different news reports on the Xinjiang controversy. The authors don’t try to take a side but advocate seeking a diversity of sources. 

Berletic, Brian. "Behind the 'Uyghur Tribunal', US govt-backed separatist theater to escalate conflict with China." The Grayzone. October 17, 2021.

• A focused look at the actors and sponsors of the Uyghur Tribunal, exposing the true goal of the tribunal as escalating a new cold war and promoting separatism in a geopolitical rival of the West.

James, Jaq. "The Australian Strategic Policy Institute's Uyghurs for Sale Report: Scholarly Analysis or Strategic Disinformation?" CO-WEST-PRO Consultancy. January 2022.

• This report by independent author Jaq James, a law student at the Australian National University at the time of writing, examines ASPI's "Uyghurs for sale" report from a legal and evidentiary perspective. James weighs ASPI's allegations against the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Labour Organization's Indicators of Forced Labor of 2012. James concludes that ASPI's allegations neither rises to the level of violations of Uyghur's rights under international law nor survives scrutiny due to lack of evidentiary substance. James also concludes that ASPI's strategic disinformation has potentially deprived Uyghurs of the right to work provided for by international law and interferes with China's legal obligation to provide employment opportunities to Uyghurs.

Kanthan, Chris. “Xinjiang and Uyghurs – What You’re Not Being Told,” World Affairs Blog (blog).

• A quick collection of facts about key cultural, historical, and political aspects of Xinjiang.

“Notes on China-Uighur Controversies: An Ever Increasing Collection of Notes, Links, Sources, & Observations”

• A well-sourced and extensive ongoing Google Document written by a leftist in critical evaluation of the Xinjiang controversy.

Singh, Ajit & Max Blumenthal. “China detaining millions of Uyghurs? Serious problems with claims by US-backed NGO and far-reach researcher ‘led by God’ against Beijing.” The Grayzone. December 21, 2019.

• A rather thorough examination of the handful of sources from which claims of ‘millions’ in concentration camps has been uncritically adopted by mainstream media. The argument focuses on the personal records and financial ties of frequently-cited ‘experts’ such as Adrian Zenz. 

Singh, Ajit. “‘Wipe out China!’ US-funded Uyghur activists train as gun-toting foot soldiers for empire.” The Grayzone. March 31, 2021.

• Taking a March 21st, 2021 Uyghur American Association-backed disruption of a gathering against Anti-Asian hate in Washington D.C. as a starting point, Ajit Singh traces the linkage of co-opted diaspora with far-right, Islamophobic actors in furtherance of Sinophobia and U.S. imperialist aggression against China.

“The Number of Uyghurs Has Tripled - The U.S. Calls It A Genocide - Propaganda Fails To Explain It.” Moon of Alabama. January 21, 2021.

• This post examines mainstream Western media reports chiefly from Reuters and the New York Times to expose inconsistencies in the narratives being pushed, including a report claiming both discrimination against minorities in employment and coerced labor of minorities.

Wu Qina. “Six Focal Points to View the True Xinjiang; How Can Beijing Break Through Charges of ‘Genocide.’” DW News. April 21, 2021. [English translation]

• Wide-ranging interview with Wu Qina, a professor of history at National Taiwan University, addressing the 20th century history of Islam and pan-Turkic nationalism in Xinjiang, as well as issues surrounding educational modernization and gender equality. Also touches extensively on the transformations of the reform and opening up period, with their often-contradictory effects on the region’s labor market, ethnic demography, migration patterns, and overall position in the political economy of China and Central Asia.

Zhao, He. “Xinjiang: Facts vs. Fiction.” Medium. November 16, 2019.

• This is perhaps the quickest yet comprehensive read on Xinjiang generally and the current controversy in particular. 

b. Chinese Perspectives on the Problem of Terrorism

These sources document the scope and extent of the recent history of terrorism in China, which received little attention in the Western press. These sources also highlight official Chinese perspectives on how to resolve the problem as peacefully as possible. China’s stated policies of economic development and poverty alleviation are key pathways towards improving social stability and tackling some of the root causes that foment violence—an approach that stands in stark contrast to the tactics employed during the U.S. so-called “War on Terror.” 

It is important to note that Western reports and figures have failed to differentiate between generalized vocational education in Xinjiang—which is an aspect of poverty alleviation programs throughout China—and vocational education as part of targeted de-radicalization programs.

CGTN. “Fighting terrorism in Xinjiang.” YouTube video, 50:01. December 11, 2019.

• CW: Violence. This documentary in particular is notable for releasing previously unreleased footage of terrorist attacks as well as extensive interviews with a wide variety of people including victims, former terrorists, religious authorities, locals, and police. [some of the interviewees speak in Uyghur]

CGTN. “The Black Hand – ETIM and Terrorism in Xinjiang.” YouTube video, 29:06. December 11, 2019.

• CW: Violence. This documentary shares some footage with the above, but otherwise is a shorter film focused more on the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM/TIP), its links to al- Qaeda, and the international nature of the threat it poses. [some of the interviewees speak in Uyghur]

CGTN. “Tianshan: Still Standing - Memories of fighting terrorism in Xinjiang.” YouTube video, 57:52. June 18, 2020.

• CW: Violence. This documentary revisits the lingering impacts of terrorism in today’s Xinjiang. Some highlights include the revisiting of Dilqemer’s story from the “Fighting terrorism” documentary; interviews with police and locals such as Memet Jume, son of former Id Kah imam Jume Tahir assassinated in 2014, and Muhpira Rahman, a female People’s Armed Police member; and exclusive looks at Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County and the Chinese-Afghan border. [some of the interviewees speak in Uyghur; the interviewee Memetrehim Ibrahim speaks in Sarikoli] 

CGTN. “Lies and truth: Vocational education and training in Xinjiang.” YouTube video, 35:08. August 25, 2020.

• CW: Violence. This documentary focuses on vocational centers and their students. There is some overlap with the “Embracing a New Life” mini-series (see below), particularly in the stories of the painter Ablizkari Ubul and dancer Aqida Arslan. Has a short section near the end containing comments by international observers to Xinjiang. [some of the interviewees speak in Uyghur]

CGTN. “The War in the Shadows: Challenges of Fighting Terrorism in Xinjiang.” YouTube video, 55:12. April 2, 2021.

• CW: Violence. This documentary sheds a light on the details of China’s counter-terrorism policy in Xinjiang. Unlike the previous documentaries, this documentary conducts extensive interviews with convicted people who share their stories and perspectives. It thus delves more into the grit of the struggle in Xinjiang.

“Why are western media silent on China’s documentaries on Xinjiang?” CGTN. December 9, 2019. (Based on Tong, Li. “CGTN发“大尺度”新疆反恐纪录片，西方媒体却沉默了.” Guancha. December 9, 2019.)

• From a Chinese perspective, this article questions why Western voices which claim to value human rights have not paid heed to issues of violence and terrorism directed against civilians in Xinjiang and beyond. 

“Joint Letter to Mike Pompeo, From Scholars and Religious Personnel in Xinjiang.” Tianshan Net. July 19, 2019.

• A letter from about 100 scholars and religious personnel in Xinjiang rebuking comments made by Secretary Pompeo.

State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang. 2019. 

• A white paper concerning the broader strategy against terrorism undertaken in Xinjiang.

State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. Vocational Education and Training in Xinjiang. 2019.

• A white paper focusing specifically on the vocational centers and their operations.

Sha, Yuan. “China’s contribution to the international counter-terrorism cause.” CGTN. September 26, 2019.

• Paraphrasing remarks made by Wang Yi at the UN - clearly identifying poverty as a root cause of terrorism.

Ed. Xiang, Bo. “Full transcript: Interview with Xinjiang government chief on counterterrorism, vocational education and training in Xinjiang.” Xinhua. October 16, 2018. 

• Xinhua interview with Shohrat Zakir, Chairman of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, concerning the roots of terrorism, poverty alleviation and education as solution, and the vocational centers.

c. Geopolitical Context

These sources place the current controversy in light of geopolitical interests. In particular, the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive Chinese-led multi-national infrastructure project that has drawn ire as a threat to U.S. unipolarity, runs through Xinjiang as a strategic region connecting China to North and West Asia.

While the U.S. has long recognized that its naval supremacy in the South China Sea could effectively “strangle” China’s economy in the event of hot war, Xinjiang in particular and the Belt and Road Initiative in general provide an overland route for Chinese trade which undermines U.S. military supremacy. As such, these sources contextualize the Xinjiang controversy amidst broader U.S. efforts to contain and isolate China.

Al-Ghadhawi, Abdullah. “Uighur Jihadists in Syria.” Center for Global Policy. March 18, 2020.

• A short article about the circumstances surrounding ethnic Uyghur fighters in Syria.

Azam, Azhar. “BRI is instrumental to realizing 'no poverty' vision.” CGTN. October 18, 2019.

• A short article making clear BRI’s role in Xinjiang’s poverty alleviation as well as its potential for poverty alleviation in other countries.

Bhadrakumar, M.K. “US lacerates China’s Uighur wound.” Indian Punchline (blog). March 28, 2019.

• Indian Punchline is a blog run by M.K. Bhadrakumar, a retired career diplomat of India. This blogpost—slightly dated now given the evolution of the controversy—properly examines the Xinjiang controversy in the U.S.’s strategic calculus.

Fuller, Graham E. & S. Frederick Starr. “The Xinjiang Problem.” Central Asia-Caucasus Institute. 2003.

• An interesting dated report on the then situation in Xinjiang, written by a former Vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council and CIA Station Chief in Kabul. Not only a primer on some of the longer-term background of the issue through the lenses of the United States (and a light on the severity of the terrorism issue), but also a window into a prior time in which a prominent United States thinker urged cooperation with China to defeat terrorism and to avoid over-politicizing the issue in the hopes of greater global stability. 

Gunaratna, Rohan. “Salafism in China and its Jihadist-Takfiri strains.” Al Mesbar Studies & Research Center. January 18, 2018.

• A short report on Salafism in China and the connection of some of its more extremist strands to terrorist activities over time.

Novák, Izak. “The War on China.” Izak Novák (blog). April 17, 2020.

• A general overview essay about the longstanding decades-long strategy of the United States against China. Importantly, it discusses the Belt and Road Initiative as a strategy to break out of U.S. encirclement, hegemonism, and imperialism, and Xinjiang’s central importance to the BRI.

Prashad, Vijay. “Trade and tensions between the U.S. and China.” Monthly Review. August 3, 2020.

• Only a small part of this article is about Xinjiang, but it places the Western fixation on it into proper context in advancing Western “political and commercial ends.”

Ron Paul Liberty Report. “'What is the Empire’s Strategy?' - Col. Lawrence Wilkerson Speech at Ron Paul Institute Media & War Conference.” YouTube video, 26:10. August 22, 2018. 

• One former U.S. military official’s insider perspective as to why the United States is in Afghanistan. He asserts it “has nothing to do with fighting terrorism” and more to do with establishing military control over a territory of strategic interest to Chinese trade routes. Time stamp starting at 20:55 is included in the link. 

d. Poverty Alleviation and Economic Development in Xinjiang

These sources describe a small slice of Xinjiang’s poverty alleviation efforts and economic development initiatives, while exploring the real and concrete impacts these programs have on the lives of ordinary people.

“Animal husbandry helping to drive up incomes.” CGTN. May 7, 2020.

“China's Xinjiang generates 260 bln kWh clean electricity.” Xinhua. August 8, 2020.

• Xinjiang is quickly becoming a hub for green energy production and distribution. This short note and video offers a small glimpse into the greening of Xinjiang and China.

“E-commerce development boosts farm produce sales.” CGTN. May 6, 2020.

Voices from the Frontline: China’s War on Poverty. Film. Directed by Peter Getzels. The Kuhn Foundation & PBS Socal, 2020. [available on Youtube]

• A documentary hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn offering an insightful look into the war against absolute poverty. The documentary not only provides an on-the-ground look at the procedures and effects of poverty alleviation efforts as well as their often imperfect executions, but also shines a light on the workings of the Communist Party of China, including mobilization, promotion, corruption, monitoring, and discipline. Kuhn travels to Hainan, Gansu, Guizhou, Xinjiang, and Sichuan, gaining a rare and balanced insight into Chinese society and policies. Ironically, some of the entities involved in poverty alleviation in Xinjiang, such as the one highlighted by the documentary, are the very entities being sanctioned and boycotted by U.S. legislation and private brands such as H&M. [the interviewees speak in a wide variety of local dialects and accents; the Xinjiang interviewees except for Murzabek Tapi speak in Kazakh]

• First aired on May 11 and 12 of 2020, and despite its award-winning status, the documentary was quickly taken down barely a week after release on May 20, citing “editorial standards.” Kuhn called it “a shame” that PBS removed his film from its platform due to “extraneous internal political matters in the United States.”

Jie, Shan. “Xinjiang scores victories in the war on poverty.” Global Times. December 18, 2019.

• A very short and succinct article with small snippets of human stories concerning poverty alleviation in Xinjiang.

“Labor transfer program boosts employment.” CGTN. May 8, 2020.

“Localized factories lift Xinjiang locals out of poverty.” CGTN. May 8, 2020.

Lu, Yin & Zhang Xinyuan. “Xinjiang’s millennial entrepreneurs make the most of the Internet age.” Global Times. July 4, 2016.

• An older article from 2016 about new Xinjiang entrepreneurs harnessing both the power of the internet and the increasing interconnectivity of Xinjiang to the world via the Belt and Road Initiative.

State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang. 2020.

• This white paper provides an overview of the employment and labor in Xinjiang, providing statistics, giving personal anecdotes, and highlighting labor laws and the efforts being made to improve them, in the context of poverty alleviation programs.

“Trans-regional job offers help Xinjiang farmers shake off poverty.” CGTN. May 3, 2020.

“Villagers get access to clean water as projects continue.” CGTN. May 2, 2020.

“Wellness of people in remote areas safeguarded.” CGTN. May 4, 2020.

Ed. Yang, Yi. “China highlights support to Xinjiang through pairing assistance.” Xinhua. July 16, 2019.

• Pairing assistance is a common practice in the People’s Republic whereas richer provinces and localities directly send aid, expertise, and cadres to poorer provinces and localities in order to help them develop. This is a short article about the visit of a senior Party official Wang Yang to Xinjiang and the re-emphasizing of this program. 

e. Overview of Chinese Minority/Religious Policies

These sources provide a quick overview of China’s policies towards minority nationalities and religion, with some focus on efforts with relevance to Xinjiang and Islam. 

Beech, Hannah. “If China is Anti-Islam, Why are These Chinese Muslims Enjoying a Faith Revival?” Time. August 12, 2014.

• A relatively honest Western media attempt to look at Islam in China before the current 2018 controversy. The author notes that thriving Hui Muslim communities in China have also been targeted by terrorist attacks.

CCTV. “Students’ Daily Life [sic] at Xinjiang Islamic Institute in Northwest China.” YouTube video, 2:19. June 19, 2016.

• This is a short video showing daily life at an Islamic educational institute in China.

Kasim, Muhabbat (Muhabaiti Hasimu). “新世纪新疆双语教学：七大变化，三点建议.” China Minzu Cultural Resources. September 20, 2018. (reprinted from Zhongguo Minzu Bao (China Ethnic News), August 13, 2010, 6)

• A Uyghur scholar of bilingual education and Turkic languages reflects on the changing situation of bilingual education in Xinjiang, noticing seven changes from her personal experience and leaving three recommendations for the future. Of particular note, it was not until the recent decade that Chinese language was taught to minority children starting in the first grade (previously it started in the fourth grade). [Chinese language]

Li, Qian. “Chinese government goes to great lengths to help Muslims go on the hajj.” Global Times. August 14, 2017.

• Documents Chinese state programs to offer support for those who want to go on hajj pilgrimage.

Lim, Louisa. “Female Imams Blaze Trail Among China’s Muslims.” NPR. July 21, 2010. 

• Documents the unique Chinese Muslim tradition of women-led mosques. The article ends with a curious line: “And so it appears the future of female imams in China is threatened — not by the state, not by resistance from inside Islam, but by the forces of market economics.” This seems to reflect the shifting and inconsistent media agenda on China: from ‘ruthlessly capitalist’ forces stymying Chinese state efforts to preserve minority cultures and religious practices to godless Communist entity seeking to wipe out Islam.

Liu, Xin. “Xinjiang Muslims welcome govt’s efforts on hajj journeys.” Global Times. August 2, 2019.

• A more recent article detailing the governmental measures offering support for rural Xinjiang Muslims who wish to go on hajj pilgrimage.

State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. National Minorities Policy and Its Practice in China. 1999. 

• Although dated, many of the policies described in this paper are still in effect today.

State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. China’s Ethnic Policy and Common Prosperity and Development of All Ethnic Groups. 2009.

• Like the above, a dry read, but full of data that demonstrates the efforts of the government in minority policies – Qiao recommends drawing attention to the passages in the white paper addressing tax exemption programs (Section V), minority languages, and intangible heritage (Section VI).

State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. Freedom of Religious Belief in Xinjiang. 2016.

• A white paper devoted to the progress of ensuring religious freedom in Xinjiang, although written shortly before the controversial 2017 de-radicalization regulations.

State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. Cultural Protection and Development in Xinjiang. 2018.

• A white paper devoted specifically to cultural policies in Xinjiang, with special considerations for the minority nationalities of Xinjiang.

State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. Seeking Happiness for People: 70 Years of Progress on Human Rights in China. 2019. 

• A white paper about China’s progress on human rights issues. Section V is devoted to minority policies.

State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. Respecting and Protecting the Rights of All Ethnic Groups in Xinjiang. 2021.

• A white paper about the protection of rights in Xinjiang specifically. Xinjiang's policies and systems advancing civil, political, economic, cultural, social rights, the rights of women and children, and freedom of religion are covered in depth.

State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. Xinjiang Population Dynamics and Data. 2021.

• A white paper focused on the population and demographics of Xinjiang in the years leading up to 2021.

“Why does China have women-only mosques.” BBC. February 23, 2016. 

• An article which shows that as late as 2016, there was some attempt by the West to understand Islam in China on its own terms, even by the world’s largest “public broadcasting company.”

Zhang, Hui. “China bans anti-Islam words on social media.” Global Times. September 21, 2017. 

• China’s infamous censoring apparatus actively tries to censor Islamophobic hate speech on social media.

“新疆维吾尔自治区计划2020年全面普及双语教育.” Zhongguo Zhengfu Wang. October 6, 2010. 

• A simple news report from 2010 that explains the plans of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to have widespread bilingual education in the autonomous region by 2020. [Chinese language]

新疆维吾尔自治区人口与计划生育条例 [Xinjiang Population and Family Planning Regulations] (promulgated by the People’s Congress of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, November 28, 2002) (made available on the website of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Health & Hygiene Commission) (current law, rev’d July 28, 2017) (previous version, rev’d June 3, 2010, available on the website 51labour)

• This is the statute currently governing Xinjiang’s family planning. Particular attention should be placed on the general rule articulated in Article 15, pre and post-2017: [Chinese language]

  • Pre-2017: Couples of urban Han residents can have one child, and couples of ethnic minority residents can have two children. Couples of Han farmers and herdsmen can have two children, and couples of ethnic farmers and herdsmen can have three children.

  • Post-2017: Couples of urban residents can have two children, and couples of rural residents can have three children.

f. The Misinformation Industrial Complex

These sources provide some general context as to the bias and agenda of Western non-state actors, particularly mainstream media and NGOs, which often act in concert with Western imperialist state agendas rather than a check on them. 

In particular, these sources highlight the historic uses of “atrocity propaganda,” through which the U.S. has galvanized public opinion for war and intervention through misrepresentations and outright lies vis-a-vis ‘humanitarian concerns.’ In particular, the wars in Iraq and intervention in Syria provide a historical warning for how mainstream media and research institutes amplify State Department ambitions. 

Bruton, F. Brinley & Tony Brown. “U.S. targets Chinese Uighur militants as well as Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.” NBC News. February 8, 2018.

• Addresses U.S. aerial bombing campaigns in Afghanistan, painting the U.S. bombing of ethnic Uyghur terrorist camps in Afghanistan as good, even natural. At the same time, the article paints these same actors as repressed freedom fighters in China’s domestic context—clear instances of double standards that speak to U.S. geopolitical interests in the region.  

Butt, Ahsan I. “Why did Bush go to war with Iraq?” Al Jazeera. March 19, 2019. 

• One more exploration of the now infamous lies that built consensus for American intervention in Iraq, a war that has directly led to a disastrous humanitarian crisis.

Fisk, Robert. “Bashar al-Assad, Syria, and the truth about chemical weapons.” Independent. December 8, 2012.

• An article about the history of Western allegations of atrocities committed in the Middle East in the leadup to war and intervention.

Ignatius, David. “Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups.” The Washington Post. September 22, 1991.

• This article quotes from the horse’s mouth the role of the National Endowment for Democracy as the “sugar daddy of overt operations” for State Department anti-communist and regime change agendas. The admission of NED intent to undermine ‘enemy nations’ should call into serious question why the NED funds groups as diverse as the World Uyghur Congress to the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions.  

McIntyre, Jamie. “Meet ETIM, the terrorist group the US just bombed in Afghanistan.” Washington Examiner. February 10, 2018.

• This article from the right-wing Washington Examiner cites Pentagon officials designating the East Turkistan Islamic Movement as a terrorist group of security concern to U.S. ambitions in the Middle East—a label which speaks to the double standard of Western media when it comes to ETIM/TIP as a threat to U.S. interests or a cudgel to be wielded against China.  

“Noble Peace Laureates Slam Human Rights Watch's Refusal to Cut Ties to U.S. Government.” Alternet. July 6, 2014.

• An older open letter expressing concern over Human Rights Watch’s “revolving door” with the United States government, causing it to overlook the U.S.’s own abysmal human rights record and subjecting the organization to partisan politics.

Norton, Ben. “Twitter spreads paid US gov't propaganda while falsely claiming it bans state media ads.” The Grayzone. August 10, 2020.

• While focused on Twitter and its pushing of American governmental agenda, this article has a helpful section on the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and demonstrates clearly how the agency and its constituent platforms including Radio Free Asia are nothing more than “soft-power arm[s] of the US government,” a context that should be taken into mind when consuming its contents.

O’Neill, Brendan. “The missing people-shredder.” The Guardian. February 24, 2004. 

• A retrospective inquiry finds the sensationalist accounts of Saddam Hussein’s "people shredder" circulated by Western media in the leadup to the Iraq war were never substantiated. 

“Sinophobia Inc: Understanding the Anti-China Industrial Complex.” Qiao Collective. September 3, 2020.

• An in-depth review of the financial ties of prominent China think tanks such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute reveals a deep conflict of interest: many such institutes are funded by Western state entities and the same weapons manufacturers now cutting record arms deals to equip the anti-China “Pivot to Asia.” Many of the aforementioned think tanks have promulgated serious allegations with regards to Xinjiang.

Singh, Ajit. “Inside the World Uyghur Congress.” The Grayzone. March 5, 2020.

• An extensively-sourced and medium-length exploration of the World Uyghur Congress, a focal organization from which many of the other organizations advocating East Turkistan independence branches off, and its shady connections with U.S. regime changers and Turkish far-right actors.

Sheridan, Tommy. “Syria and Chemical Weapons – Secrets and Convenient Lies.” Sputnik. May 31, 2019.

• An article outlining the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and how it was manipulated to serve consensus-building for war against Assad.

Sun, Feiyang. “Letters to the Editor: The Case of the Keriya Aitika Mosque.” CGTN. July 7, 2020.

• This is an editorial briefly discussing the “case” of the Keriya Aitika Mosque, in which it was claimed that the mosque was demolished and insinuated that the People’s Republic was engaging in mass demolition of places of worship, but it turned out to be renovation work for the historic mosque.

“The Propaganda Multiplier.” Swiss Policy Research. March 2019.

• This article does not talk about Xinjiang, but about the general procedures of “international news coverage” and why stories appearing consistently across “major” and “respectable” news sources is not in fact a strong indicator that it is credible. The current media structure is highly susceptible to misinformation, and in fact government agencies are very involved.

Witness to War. “Former CIA Agent John Stockwell Talks about How the CIA Worked in Vietnam and Elsewhere.” YouTube video, 15:12. September 29, 2017.

• This video is an interview of a former CIA officer (field case officer) John Stockwell, who speaks about the CIA’s close ties with the news media and journalists, the feeding of “pure raw false propaganda… creating illusions of Communists eating babies for breakfast,” and the particular process through which United States intelligence comes to shape and mold narratives around the world.

Xiong, Jack. “The Fake News in 1990 That Propelled the US into the First Gulf War.” Citizen Truth. May 7, 2018.

• A somewhat recent article that explores the background of the “Nayirah testimony,” arguably the first instance of atrocity propaganda in the then new world order of American unilateralism. 

Zhang, Chi. “One Uighur Man’s Journey Goes Viral.” Foreign Policy. May 14, 2014.

• An interesting look at a contemporary account of Xinjiang’s society at the height of the period between 2009 and 2014 when the problem of terrorism was particularly severe in Xinjiang. Not only does this article explore the perspective of an actual Uyghur person living in China, but this article, in tandem with other articles on this list dealing with female imams and Islamic revival in China, shows how drastically the media agenda on China has changed since 2014. This article ultimately provides an even-handed and frank look at a snapshot of Xinjiang before the current controversy of 2018. 

g. Views from Xinjiang: People, Cultures, and History

These are miscellaneous sources covering contemporary Xinjiang, Xinjiang’s diverse people and cultures, Xinjiang’s modern and ancient history, and the little-understood, even within China, Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC). 

Xinjiang’s Diverse People, Cultures, and Experiences

《第一次的离别》(《تۇنجى ئايرىلىش》, A First Farewell). Film. Directed by Wang Lina. Tencent Pictures, 2020.

• A Uyghur-language film that opened at #1 in the post-lockdown Chinese box office. Directly and movingly addresses the complexities and contradictions of bilingual education, modernization, and poverty alleviation initiatives through the eyes of children in rural Xinjiang. Now streaming on Amazon Prime and Kanopy (subscription free with most public library cards).

• “Domestic film 'A First Farewell' wins hearts, box office.” China Daily. August 4, 2020.

• Kuipers, Richard, “Film Review: ‘A First Farewell’.” Variety. March 17, 2019.

“Speak Out 恕我直言 Ep5:劳道.” YouTube video. January 27, 2022.

• Short documentary on a rising generation of Uyghur hip-hop artists who have attained regional and even national success by rapping in their native language and incorporating traditional Uyghur instruments like the tembor. [Rap in Uyghur, interviews in Mandarin with Chinese and English subtitles]

• Xinjiang is a powerhouse in the Chinese hip-hop scene. The documentary Iron Mic (2017), on China’s premier battle rap tournament, features the Hui Muslim rapper Majun 马俊 (2010 champion) and the Uyghur rapper 艾热 (2014 runner-up), both hailing from the region. [Mandarin with Chinese and English subtitles]

• Aire 艾热 went on to square off against fellow Uyghur rapper Nawukere 那吾克热 in the final of the 2018 season of The Rap of China, beating out a dozen mostly Han competitors.

安妮古丽. “191.新疆叼羊比賽見過嗎？哈薩克族馬背上的熱血競技，現場燃爆了！” YouTube video, 4:43. August 16, 2019.

• CW: Animal harm. Anniguli is a Uyghur woman living in Xinjiang who mostly vlogs about her everyday life. Here she spectates Kazakhs participating in the sport, buzkashi. Buzkashi is a traditional Central Asian sport that often involves playing polo with a sheep carcass while on horseback. [Chinese language, some Kazakh can be heard]

安妮古丽. “新疆零下20°怎麼出門？維吾爾美女有妙招，你覺得這樣有效果嗎？” YouTube video, 3:55. May 23, 2019. 

• This is Anniguli’s most popular video to date. Here she mostly remarks on how cold it got in Urumqi. [Chinese language, some Uyghur can be heard accompanying the pedestrian crossing signal]

CCTV. “Our Stories of the Past 40 Years” Series

• A series of personal stories told by individual members of China’s nationalities, in celebration of 40 years of Reform and Opening Up. The stories told by members of minority nationalities that take place in Xinjiang (or are told by a member of a minority nationality who consider Xinjiang their homeland) are:

• “Our story - the Daur nationality.” YouTube video, 2:17. December 20, 2018. [Inner Mongolia]

• “Our story - the Hui nationality.” YouTube video, 3:02. December 12, 2018. [Ningxia]

• “Our story - the Kazak nationality.” YouTube video, 3:00. December 26, 2018.

• “Our story- Khalkhas: guard borderline to protect our own home.” YouTube video, 2:47. December 4, 2018.

  • The nationality represented here is not Khalkha but Kyrgyz.

  • The interviewee Burmahan Moldo (Burumahan Maoleduo) speaks in Kyrgyz. Burmahan later received the national honor of “Model of the People” and was personally recognized by President Xi Jinping.

• “Our story - the Manchu nationality.” YouTube video, 2:29. December 22, 2018. [Liaoning]

• “Our story - the Mongol nationality.” YouTube video, 2:53. December 11, 2018. [Inner Mongolia; the interviewee Hurcabater (Hurichabate’er) speaks in Mongolian]

• “Our story - the Russian nationality.” YouTube video, 2:22. December 27, 2018.

• “Our story - the Tajik nationality.” YouTube video, 2:44. December 10, 2018. 

• “Our story - the Tatar nationality.” YouTube video, 2:49. December 22, 2018.

• “Our story: Uygur nationality.” YouTube video, 2:51. December 7, 2018.

• “Our story - the Uzbek nationality.” YouTube video, 2:24. December 14, 2018.

• “Our story - the Xibe nationality.” YouTube video, 2:35. December 21, 2018. [Liaoning]

CCTV中国中央电视台. “[2019非遗公开课]《十二木卡姆》 表演：莎车县十二木卡姆民间艺术团.” YouTube video, 2:39. June 7, 2019.

• Muqam is a rich Uyghur musical tradition well-known across China. It was among the first four intangible heritages registered by China to the UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008, alongside Guqin, Kunqu Opera, and Mongolian Long Song (Urtiin Duu). This video is a short performance of Muqam as well as traditional Uyghur dance.

CGTN. Amazing Xinjiang Series

• This CGTN playlist contains a number of Xinjiang-focused videos on various topics and localities, largely low-key and laidback content. 

CGTN. “Assignment Asia Episode 75: Transforming lives and building bridges in Xinjiang.” YouTube video, 25:16. November 5, 2017.

• This video from before the 2018 controversy covers many aspects of developmental work in Xinjiang, including education, labor transfer, grassroots governmental work, and living standards for people finding employment outside Xinjiang. The footage does not shy away from showing the difficulties and adjustments people in Xinjiang face as they go through changes in their lives. [Uyghur spoken in some scenes]

CGTN. “Beyond the Mountains: Life in Xinjiang.” YouTube video, 1:20:11. April 15, 2021.

• This documentary briefly interviews ordinary people of Xinjiang and their lives and perspectives. In total, 26 people are interviewed, including students, migrant workers, young entrepreneurs, scientists, monks, and farmers.

CGTN. “Dolan Muqam music tradition thrives among local Uygurs.” YouTube video, 4:04. August 16, 2017.

• This video provides a quick overview of Muqam as well as over a distinct rural tradition within Muqam.

CGTN. Eid al-Fitr Series

• A short series of documentaries focusing on the celebration of Eid al-Fitr, commemorating the end of the holy month Ramadan, in China. Notably, having been released in July 2017, it was released during a time after the De-radicalization Regulations were passed but before the World Uyghur Congress began campaigning on “internment camps.”

• “Happy reunion during Eid al-Fitr in Xinjiang.” YouTube video, 10:29. July 8, 2017.

• “Muslims in Xinjiang show piety during Eid.” YouTube video, 7:32. July 10, 2017.

• “Over 40 years of friendship between Han and Uygur family.” YouTube video, 11:37. July 9, 2017. [the interviewee Karim Turdi speaks in Uyghur]

• “The flavor of Eid al-Fitr in Xinjiang.” YouTube video, 8:12. July 10, 2017.

• “The rhythm of Eid al-Fitr in NW China’s Xinjiang.” YouTube video, 8:22. July 8, 2017. [the interviewees speak and sing in Uyghur]

CGTN. “Epic of Manas: The history of Kirgiz in Xinjiang.” YouTube video, 1:15. May 22, 2018.

• The Epic of Manas is a Kyrgyz epic poem traditionally passed down orally. The storytelling of Manas was registered by China in UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009. This video provides a quick overview of the tradition of Manas storytelling in China.

CGTN. “Looking China: Akyns song that brings happiness.” YouTube video, 9:33. January 23, 2017. 

• This video is a collection of Akyns (song-like recitative improvisation accompanied by dombra) performed by Kazakh musician Jiahnur Ohas, overlaid by scenes of Xinjiang’s Kazakh regions. [songs are sung in Kazakh language]

CGTN. “Looking China: Xibe ethnic group in Xinjiang.” YouTube video, 11:59. Jan 22, 2017.

• This video is a slice-of-life feature of a young Xibe girl living in Xinjiang, entirely narrated in the Xibe language, a relative of the Manchu language.

CGTN. “Modern designs revive traditional craft and industry.” YouTube video, 4:25. October 6, 2016. 

• This serves both as an introduction to “atlas silk,” a characteristic material in traditional Central Asian clothing, as well as a short look at fashion designer Alim Adil’s hope to introduce atlas more into modern clothing. 

CGTN. “The everlasting spirit of the Kazaks on grasslands.” YouTube video, 5:04. May 22, 2019.

• This is a look at the life of a nomadic Kazakh family, including worries and concerns for the future, displaying the still wide experiences of modern life in Xinjiang, much less China today.

CGTN. “Travelogue with Tajik people: Modern life in Xinjiang's rocky mountains.” YouTube video, 29:19. June 27, 2016.

• This is an older documentary of a Chinese-British diaspora CGTN host spending time in a rural Tajik village. It does a good job of showing the developmental difficulties as well as unique features of high-altitude mountain valley life. 

CHINA LIVE. “帕米尔高原上牦牛叼羊比赛 / Buzkashi with Yaks on the Chinese Pamir.” YouTube video, 2:57. March 20, 2016. 

• CW: Animal harm. Buzkashi is a traditional Central Asian sport that often involves playing polo with a sheep carcass while on horseback. The Tajiks of Xinjiang are distinguished by their playing of buzkashi while mounted on yaks. 

Guangming Online. “Fascinating China” Series

• This series was made in celebration of 70 years of the People’s Republic of China and focuses on the intangible cultural heritages of China’s 56 nationalities. These short episodes exploring the heritages of minority nationalities who consider modern-day Xinjiang their homeland are as follow. NOTE: Guangming Online is in the process of reloading their videos onto Youtube. Some videos from this series might be missing from Youtube. As such, links to Guangming’s own website where these videos can be viewed will also be provided (Chinese-language site).

• “Fascinating China EP01: The Mongolian Ethnic Group and Its Gesar Epic Tradition.” YouTube video, 3:13. August 6, 2019. (Guangming) [Inner Mongolia]

  • The Epic of King Gesar is an epic cycle originating in Tibet but finding wide expression across Central Asia. It was registered by China in UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009. 

• “Fascinating China EP02: A Typical Mutton Cooking Technique in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.” YouTube video, 3:11. September 28, 2020. (Guangming) [Ningxia]

• “Fascinating China EP07: Kyrgyz, An Ethnic Group Closely Related to Falcons.” YouTube video, 3:00. September 28, 2020. (Guangming) [the interviewee Khurmash Khutman speaks in Kyrgyz]

• “Fascinating China EP12: Uygur Dawaz, A Challengeable Sport and Traditional Chinese Art.” YouTube video, 3:05. September 28, 2020. (Guangming)

• “Fascinating China EP17: Manchu Embroidery, Vivid Record of Life.” YouTube video, 2:57. September 28, 2020. (Guangming) [Heilongjiang]

• “Fascinating China EP19: Daur Hanika.” YouTube video, 2:11. September 28, 2020. (Guangming) [Inner Mongolia]

• “Fascinating China EP36: Tatar Saban Festival.” YouTube video, 2:39. September 29, 2020. (Guangming) [The interviewee Zeytuna Karimova also participated in CCTV’s “Our Stories of the Past 40 Years” series]

• “Fascinating China EP38: Xibe, an Ethnic Group of Bow and Arrow.” YouTube video, 2:44. September 12, 2019. (Guangming)

• “Fascinating China EP40: Dombra Art of Kazakh Ethnic Group.” YouTube video, 2:22. September 14, 2019. (Guangming)

• “Fascinating China EP43: Delicacy of the Russian Ethnic Group.” YouTube video, 2:47. September 28, 2020. (Guangming) [Inner Mongolia]

• “Fascinating China EP44: Ashula and Yalla.” YouTube video, 2:31. September 29, 2020. (Guangming) [the interviewee Mansur Zakir speaks in Uzbek]

• “Fascinating China EP49: Costume of the Tajik Ethnic Group.” YouTube video, 2:52. September 29, 2020. (Guangming) [the interviewee Gulnisa Islamhan speaks in Sarikoli]

Looking China Official Channel. “Manas 玛纳斯.” YouTube video, 9:28. August 24, 2016.

• This video provides a more detailed look at the tradition of Manas in China and the scholarly efforts dedicated to researching the Epic of Manas further and preserving it. In particular, the role of the Manas Research Center in Xinjiang Normal University is explored.

New China TV. “Xinjiang Rediscovered” series.

• This is a series of more mundane experiences: average residents of Xinjiang who talk about their lives, experiences, and hopes for the future.

Rhymoi Music. "Musical Map of China" series.

• A series of recordings of folk songs and music from all over China and from all of China's people. Recording sessions are viewable on Youtube. The albums featuring music and songs from Xinjiang include:

  • Hui Folk Songs

  • Kazak Folk Music

  • Kazak Folk Songs

  • Kirgiz Folk Music

  • Tajik Folk Music

  • Tajik Folk Songs

  • Tatar Folk Songs

  • Uygur Folk Music

  • Uygur Folk Songs

  • Xibe Folk Songs

“xinjiang china.” YouTube channel.

• This YouTube channel periodically shares videos of Xinjiang, its people and its places. Particularly recommended are:

  • A short film series called 《我的家乡更美好》, or “Better Hometown, Better Life.” It is a series interviewing several students of Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine who are minority youth from Xinjiang, who talk about their experiences in Xinjiang and in university as well as go back to their hometowns to see how much they have developed. Some are only in Chinese. [Chinese source here]

  • 7 videos currently available about people who have studied at the vocational centers, as part of a series called 《拥抱新生活》or “Embracing a New Life.” [Chinese source here, although the videos on this site are now unavailable]

Xinzhao Li 李馨曌. “新疆 塔什库尔干塔吉克族 "Through The Unknown Tashkurgan".” YouTube video, 8:28. January 3, 2020. 

• This is a short overview of a photographer’s extended stay in Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County, and her experiences as the locality and its people changed and grew.

Xinjiang’s History

Dickens, Mark. “The Soviets in Xinjiang: 1911-1949.” 1990.

• An older but excellent overview of the complexities of Soviet involvement in Xinjiang, as well as the Republican history of the region before 1949.

Grousset, René. Walford, Naomi, trans. Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1970.

• A classic historical text on Central Asia with an emphasis on nomadic empires. It covers broader Central Asia beyond Xinjiang, but also summarizes Xinjiang history up to the Qing Dynasty’s defeat of the Khoja Uprising in 1759.

State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. History and Development of Xinjiang. 2003.

• An official Chinese document concerning the history of Xinjiang that explores some historical events in detail, providing a broad overview of the history of the region, including the role of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. It also covers progress in development in Xinjiang up to 2003.

State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. Historical Matters Concerning Xinjiang. 2019. 

• An official Chinese document concerning the history of Xinjiang. While it does paint in broad strokes, it provides a quick overview of the history of the region.

Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC)

Bao, Yajun (包雅钧). “The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps: An Insider’s Perspective.” Blavatnik School of Government Working Paper Series (BSG-WP-2018/023)  (2018). 

• One of the few English-language scholarly reports—more of a summary—on the XPCC. Nonetheless, an interesting perspective from a scholar who studied the XPCC on behalf of the Central Organization Department of the CPC (Central Compilation and Translation Bureau 中央编译局) during a restive period in Xinjiang’s history.

State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. The History and Development of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. 2014. 

• A white paper on the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) that gives an overview of the XPCC, its history, and its operations. The XPCC as a sort of “government within a government” plays an important if little understood role in Xinjiang.

h. Xinjiang Responds

On the last day of the Trump administration, Secretary of State Pompeo labeled China’s de-radicalization and economic development programs in Xinjiang as “genocide” and “crimes against humanity.” His accusations angered many Chinese citizens of Xinjiang, inspiring them to submit written and video responses rebuking Pompeo. Many of these were compiled by Tianshan Net and reveal a unity of Xinjiang residents, from government officials to rural villagers, from elderly family heads to young students, and from artists to religious leaders, in rejecting the United States’ imperialist aggression. See Tianshan’s compilation here.

Around 900 videos on Youtube have been compiled of Xinjiang citizens’ responses to Pompeo’s allegations. Some of them overlap with the video responses listed in the compilation. Other channels include hai cham and Uyghur Story.

Permalink

]]>Xinjiang: A Report and Resource CompilationlectureQiao CollectiveSun, 23 Aug 2020 05:33:41 +0000https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/socisocialism-vs-barbarism-understanding-the-new-cold-war-on-china5e221b9a8c24523f813a5a8e:5f420e5b96cb8352b451173a:5f41fc397851a152fd1227da]]>Socialism Vs. Barbarism: Understanding The New Cold War On ChinawebinarQiao CollectiveSat, 25 Jul 2020 17:07:00 +0000https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/challenging-us-imperialism-with-chinese-multilateralismblog-post-title-two-39r6j5e221b9a8c24523f813a5a8e:5f420e5b96cb8352b451173a:5f41a4c67999cb5b508c58c1

The first public online meeting of the No Cold War campaign took place on Saturday 25 July 2020, with speakers from eight countries - the US, China, Britain, India, Russia, Canada, Venezuela and Brazil - speaking out against the rising tide of aggression and hostility directed against China by the US and its allies.

Qiao Collective partnered with the Party for Socialism and Liberation to present a 1.5 hour class focused on the principles and evolution of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

The class touched on common questions and controversies such as:

- Is China capitalist? Is China revisionist? How can socialists address these questions?

- An introduction to China's socialist market economy, state-owned enterprises, and the successes and contradictions of the reform and opening up era and the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics

- The continuities and theoretical innovations of Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Thought, and Xi Jinping Thought

- How to reframe Western approaches to discussing Chinese socialism

- Understanding the US-China trade war and the capitalist world economy

As China’s global rise rivals U.S. hegemony, the number one priority of U.S. foreign policy is wage a demonization campaign against China. Since the Obama administration announced the Pivot to Asia, the U.S. has spent countless military dollars in the Pacific to encircle China. While the demonization and propaganda campaign against China has been at an all time high, the unforeseen COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the anti-China narrative.

As the outrageous, demonization campaign against China continues to grow amidst this crisis, The Party for Socialism and Liberation, in partnership with the Qiao Collective, is putting forth a five-part class series on China. The course will examine the construction of modern day China in the context of global imperialism, starting from the very first Opium war between China and Britain in the early 1800s. Imperial China, which was one of the most advanced civilizations of the world, quickly became a country looted and torn apart by many imperialist nations who wanted a piece of the pie. The course will examine China’s century-long national liberation struggle and the construction of socialism. The purpose of the class is to provide the necessary context for understanding modern China today, especially under the weight of U.S. imperialism.

More than thirty years later, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 remain a touchstone of a Western mythology spun to challenge the fundamental legitimacy of the Communist Party of China. By collapsing the diverse and often contradictory demands of protesters into a simplistic call for Western-style capitalist democracy, the West’s selective memory of June 4 continues to inform liberal platitudes to “stand with the Chinese people” against their government, reifying the universality of Western capitalism and U.S. global hegemony in the process.

This reading list compiles primary sources, Chinese state documents, and media fact-checking reports to challenge the hegemonic narrative of the Tiananmen protests. Far from the Western fairy-tale, these texts understand the June 4 tragedy in the context of the erosion of actually-existing socialism in the Soviet bloc, the contradictions of the reform and opening up period, antagonisms between student protesters, urban workers, and rural peasants, and the long challenge to China’s socialist past by “reformers” seeking to replicate the Western neoliberal model.

Also recommended: Read Qiao Collective’s “A Note on Tiananmen.”

Reading List

Table of Contents:

1. Introductory Texts

2. Official Chinese Accounts

3. Corporate Media Distortion

4. Further Readings

1. Introductory Texts

These readings provide an introduction to the 1989 Tiananmen protests, the historical context of China’s economic reforms of the 1980s, and the mythology of the Tiananmen protests as symbolic shorthand for the political illegitimacy of Chinese socialism in Western discourse.

• Sun FY and Roderic Day, “Another View of Tiananmen.” Redsails.org, March 03, 2021.

  • This crucial text surveys Western misrepresentations of the Tiananmen protests, contextualizing the right-wing tendencies of student leaders such as Chai Ling, the spurning of workers issues by the movement’s bourgeois liberal intelligentsia leadership, and admissions of media distortion from Western journalists who covered the protests.

• Goods for the People. "Tiananmen 1989: Anatomy of a Color Revolution." 3rd Culture Dialectics (on Substack). February 5, 2025.

  • This text similarly compiles resources debunking the Western narrative of an unprovoked civilian massacre in Tiananmen Square, situating U.S. influence in the protest movement in the context of contemporaneous “color revolutions” in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union which similarly sought to weaponize idealistic students and youth in order to erode actually-existing socialism in favor of the liberal capitalist Western model.

• Kelly, Mick. “Continuing the Revolution is Not a Dinner Party.” Freedom Road Socialist Organization, May 7, 2009.

  • Originally published in 1989, this account historicizes the Tiananmen protests in the context of a longstanding historical conflict between those maintaining China’s socialist path and those advocating the road of capitalist reform. Surveying the economic reforms of the 1980s, the roots of urban discontent in price inflation and the rising cost of agricultural commodities, Kelly presents an account of official Communist Party of China debates which led to the labeling of the protests as counter-revolutionary in nature.

• Li, Minqi. “Preface: My 1989” in The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy. London: Pluto Press, 2008.

  • Chinese political economist Li Minqi offers a personal account of his participation in the Tiananmen protests and his “unusual…trajectory from the Right to the Left…from being a neoliberal ‘democrat’ to a revolutionary Marxist.” In particular, Li expounds on the distaste of student protesters for affiliation with workers issues: “Just weeks before, we were enthusiastically advocating ‘reform’ programs that would shut down all state factories and leave the workers unemployed. I asked myself: do these workers really know who they are supporting?”

• Polin, Thomas Hon Wing. “Tiananmen: The Empire’s Big Lie.” Counterpunch. June 6, 2017.

• Rahman, Abdul. “The Mythmaking Around Tiananmen Square.” People’s Dispatch. June 10, 2019.

2. Official Chinese Accounts

In the face of a hegemonic Western discourse which presumes that an authoritarian, all-powerful Chinese state has silenced all discussion of the events leading up to June 4, this section presents a selection of official Chinese accounts detailing the Party’s assessment of the protest movement, its roots, and the aftermath of the violence of June 4. While public discussion of the Tiananmen Protests remain highly circumscribed, these accounts contradict the common myth that China has wiped the events of 1989 from its historical record.

• Deng Xiaoping, “Bourgeois Liberalization Means Taking the Capitalist Road.” May and June 1985.

  • These excerpts from talks delivered in Taiwan in May and June 1985 reflect Party leadership’s recognition that an ideological trend of “bourgeois liberalization” had taken root as a consequence of the reform and opening up policy. Critiquing “people who worship Western ‘democracy,” Deng Xiaoping effectively predicted the ideological currents that would take sway during the Tiananmen protests.

• “It Is Necessary to Take a Clear-Cut Stand Against Disturbances.”人民日报 (People’s Daily), April 26, 1989.

  • In April 1989, the People’s Daily denounced the “small number of people” who subverted activities mourning the death of Politburo member Hu Yaobang in order to “[call] for opposition to the leadership by the Communist Party and the socialist system.” The editorial marks the official recognition of these activities as counter-revolutionary, marking a “serious political struggle confronting the whole party and the people of all nationalities throughout the country.”

• Deng Xiaoping, “June 9 Speech to Martial Law Units.” Beijing Domestic Television Service, June 27, 1989.

  • In his first official remarks following the events of June 4, Deng Xiaoping re-asserted the correctness of the four cardinal principles and the policy of reform and opening up. Describing the ideological trend of bourgeois liberalization, Deng insisted that due to the international climate and domestic situation, the “storm was bound to come sooner or later.”

• “Report on Stopping Unrest and Quelling Counter-Revolutionary Riots.” Chinese State Council Bulletin, June 30, 1989 (Translated by Mango Press, 2021).

• Deng Xiaoping, “Excerpts from Talks Given In Wuchang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghai.” January 18 - February 21, 1992.

  • These speeches, while not addressing the events of June 4 specifically, reflect an understanding that the Tiananmen protest movement evinced the vulnerability of China’s younger generation to imperialist ideological influence. Decrying the Western push for China’s “peaceful evolution” towards capitalism, Deng called for a recommitment to political education and serving the masses in order to counteract imperialist agendas which “[placed] their hopes on the generations that will come after us.”

3. Corporate Media Distortion

While the official Chinese account of June 4 recorded 200 fatalities, including 36 college students, Western reporting at the time ran wild with reports of more than 1,000 and up to 10,000 deaths, based on rumors and unsubstantiated witness testimony. This Western media narrative depicts the Tiananmen tragedy as a brutal suppression of non-violent protesters, with images such as the infamous “tank man” photograph purporting to foreshadow the onslaught of PLA tanks into Tiananmen Square (in reality, film footage of the “tank man” moment make clear that the tanks were actually exiting from the square and did not drive over the man, as often implied).

These texts provide critical perspective on this manufactured narrative, highlighting several inconvenient truths contrary to the Western storyline, such as the fact that no bloodshed was recorded within Tiananmen Square proper, and the fact that factions of protesters armed with molotov cocktails had burned military vehicles, in some cases hanging the corpses of soldiers from the streets. These sources—many consisting of eye-witness accounts from Western journalists who challenge the media’s depiction of Tiananmen—reflect that the Western media “common sense” of June 4 is riddled with hyperbole and outright misinformation designed to challenge the legitimacy of the Chinese state.

• Brown, Adrian. “Reporting from Tiananmen Square in 1989: ‘I saw a lot I will never forget.’” Al Jazeera. June 4, 2019.

  • Journalist Adrian Brown recounts his coverage of the Tiananmen protests, including violence on June 4 which included witnessing “a burned-out army personnel carrier and the charred corpse of a soldier inside.” Brown’s account adds important context to the nature of clashes between protesters and the Chinese military which are frequently depicted as a one-sided, unprovoked massacre.

• Clark, Gregory. "Birth of a massacre myth." The Japan Times. July 21, 2008.

• Kanthan, Chris. "Tiananmen Square Massacre – Facts, Fiction and Propaganda." World Affairs. June 2, 2019.

• Mathews, Jay. "The Myth of Tiananmen." Columbia Journalism Review. June 4, 2010.

  • Here, Jay Mathews—the Beijing bureau chief of the Washington Post in 1989—takes to task what he calls the “mythical version” of the Tiananmen Square protests forwarded by U.S. media. Contrary to the accepted account that hundreds of peaceful students were mowed down under military fire, Mathews reviews various eyewitness reports from journalists to insist: “as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square.” Mathews blames “reportorial laziness” for ballooning media accounts which now routinely memorial “tens of thousands” of lives lost within Tiananmen Square the night of June 4.

• Moore, Malcolm. "Wikileaks: no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables claim." The Telegraph. June 4, 2011.

  • Malcolm Moore reports on cables released via Wikileaks which indicate that U.S. intelligence authorities were aware, through first-person accounts, that no massacre took place within Tiananmen Square, highlighting in particular the testimony of a Latin American diplomat who stayed with straggling student protesters within the square until their final, peaceful withdrawal.

• Roth, Richard. “There Was No Tiananmen Square Massacre.” CBS News. June 4, 2009.

  • Roth, a CBS News correspondent covering the protests in 1989, recounts his recollection of the night of June 4: “we saw no bodies, injured people, ambulances or medical personnel — in short, nothing to even suggest, let alone prove, that a "massacre" had recently occurred in that place.”

4. Further Readings

These texts deal with aspects of the protests not captured under the previous sections.

• Chung, Erin. “Nanjing Anti-African Protests of 1988-89.” The Institute for Diasporic Studies at Northwestern University, 2006.

• Missing from Western accounts of the Tiananmen protests is the fact that the protest movement was preceded—and deeply influenced—by a more unsavory form of civic unrest. In December of 1988, Hohai University in Nanjing was rocked by quarrels between African exchange students and their Chinese peers. Resentment of African students for receiving scholarships from the Chinese government, coupled with rumors of relationships between African men and Chinese women led 300 Chinese students to destroy the dormitories which housed the African students, chanting “Kill the Black Devils.” Here, Erin Chung surveys Nanjing’s anti-African protests and their overlap with calls for political reform which would spread to Beijing.

• “CIA Man Misread Reaction, Sources Say.” The Vancouver Sun, September 17, 1992.

  • While the full extent of foreign interference in the Tiananmen protest movement remains unknown, this article from the Vancouver Sun includes reports from unnamed Central Intelligence Agency sources who stated that the CIA maintained several sources among protesters, and for months had been equipping student activists to “form the anti-government” movement through the provision of typewriters and other equipment. These activities culminated in Operation Yellowbird, during which the CIA and British M16 coordinated the emigration of student protest leaders to the U.S. and UK in the aftermath of the June 4 clashes.

• “Voice of America Beams TV Signal To China.” New York Times. June 9, 1989.

  • New York Times coverage from 1989 details the extent to which Voice of America, an information arm of the U.S. government, broadcast television and radio signal into China at the height of the protests and their aftermath in order to exploit the conflict and seed distrust. Some present in Tiananmen Square recount VOA being played on radio receivers during the occupation.

The Red Nation in partnership with the Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC) and the Center for Political Education is hosting a series of critical conversations on settler colonialism, US imperialism, and decolonization. The COVID-19 pandemic is global, and so our response to it must also be global. Friday Night Forums feature anti-imperialist perspectives and lessons on organizing from around the world, with an eye toward decolonizing Turtle Island.

Join Qiao Collective for a webinar focused on the international impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on existing struggles against U.S. imperialism and capitalism. We are pleased to feature three guest speakers: Manolo de los Santos (member of the Popular Education Project and founding director of The People’s Forum) who will speak on Cuba’s socialized medical model and foreign aid amidst the ongoing U.S. blockade on Cuba, Tina Ngo (member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and a community organizer with The Philadelphia Liberation Center) who will speak on Vietnam’s pandemic response and aid, and Sina Rahmani (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature) who will speak on Iran’s struggle under U.S. sanctions and its pandemic response informed by expert exchanges with China, Cuba, and beyond.

The 90 minute webinar talk features a short introduction from Qiao Collective, followed by each guest speaker who gave a 10-minute presentation on their respective topic, followed by a 30 minute Q&A moderated by Qiao Collective.

The COVID-19 crisis has thrown into stark relief the cruel geopolitics of U.S. imperialism. From sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea that limit these nations' access to critical medical supplies, to continued U.S. military operations and arms deals in Iraq, Hawai'i, and the South China Sea, to media propagandizing against China, the pandemic has provided no relief for nations struggling against U.S. aggression. Yet the crisis has also modeled the power of Global South solidarity, powered by the socialist principles enabling countries such as China, Vietnam, and Cuba to provide pandemic aid to the world. These models of socialist struggle and internationalist solidarity provide an alternative framework to the capitalist, imperialist response of the United States and its allies.

As the spread of COVID-19 exposes the dysfunction and illegitimacy of capitalist and imperialist system, we need to maintain an internationalist and working class analysis. This panel will bring together leaders, thinkers, and organizers in the struggle for the human right of healthcare, against xenophobia, and against imperialism to help us understand the COVID-19 crisis in the current moment.

The People's Forum is convening a recurring online space to hear and discuss current analysis and reports from leaders of people's movements and organization.

Speakers include Nijmie Dzurinko, Ben Wilkins, Shany Ebadi, Sheila Xiao, and members of the Qiao Collective.

Qiao Collective has curated a short reading list that provides a critical lens on the driving forces of the Hong Kong protests: fervent anti-communism and a fetishization of abstract liberalism, British colonial nostalgia, anti-Chinese racism, and appeals to Western intervention.

While some on the left in the West try to sugarcoat the right-wing nature of the Hong Kong protests, these misrepresentations have resulted in widespread misinformation amongst the Western left. These readings provide a critical lens which undermines Hong Kong diaspora attempts to represent the protests as having a "leftist potential”—a fantasy which provides cover for the reactionary forces driving the protests, which seek to protect a Hong Kong colonial judicial system designed to protect private property and Western capitalist interests.

We must resist attempts to salvage and spin the Hong Kong protests by claiming there is "leftist potential" or "substantial factions" that aren't right-wing. These protests have made explicitly clear to the world the racist pro-U.S. imperialism interests they serve. It is highly deceptive to try to redeem an overtly right-wing protest that in practice and as a whole serves U.S. imperialism by pointing to an extremely minor mythical "leftist" faction or "potential." This type of leftwashing has been done repeatedly to provide left cover to right-wing protests in numerous Global South countries including Bolivia, Venezuela, Syria, and now China.

In addition, coopting movements in the U.S. against the carceral state & racial violence in order to equate them to the right wing, U.S.-funded Hong Kong protests under the guise of "transnational solidarity" is opportunistic at best and dishonest at worst. The Hong Kong protesters and their leaders have repeatedly allied with the Trumps, Pompeos, Rubios, and Pelosis of the world—the architects and enforcers of the U.S. regime of anti-Black death. These sweeping comparisons based on superficial visual references are an insult to the struggle for Black liberation. Those who equate the explicitly self-avowed right-wing Hong Kong protests with domestic liberation movements under the guise of transnational solidarity must reckon with the fact that this rhetorical trick is yet another attempt to provide left cover to the Hong Kong protests and misrepresent the true nature of the protests.

In reality, The Hong Kong "democracy movement" co-opts the language of "self-determination" and "autonomy" as a cover to bring Hong Kong more under Western colonial rule and to maintain Hong Kong as a capitalist imperialist base through which the West can attack China. We must look at the actual substance, interests, actions, and nature of the Hong Kong protests and not be misled by surface-level aesthetics and attempts to obscure and misrepresent the imperialist, racist interests that the protests made clear that they serve. We must take a materialist approach to evaluating pro-imperialist protests in the Global South rather than be distracted by superficial language by Western commentators meant to obscure and misrepresent these protests as somehow “pro-democracy.”

In fact, the fallacy in the Western left's defense of the Hong Kong protests is that they indulge in the fantasy that there are meaningful "leftist" factions that justify the protests, when really the fundamental basis and predominant nature and motivations of the protests is to serve racist, imperialist interests. No matter how much the Western left tries to salvage and misrepresent the Hong Kong protests by falsely claiming there is "leftist" potential and factions, these protests have made overtly clear via their actions the racist, classist, US imperialist interests they serve.

Ultimately, the vast majority thrust of the Hong Kong protests has been to make appeals to U.S. empire and political elite, many of whom are the same figures repressing and demeaning the Black Lives Matter movement. The fundamental question for those that performatively claim that there is hidden leftist potential in the Hong Kong protests is at what point does a right-wing dominated movement that makes explicit appeals for U.S. intervention and affiliation still have "leftist potential" and instead, are these rhetorical moves just providing left cover for a proudly self-avowed right-wing protest in order to confuse people about the actual nature (class nature, geopolitical nature, etc) of the Hong Kong protests.

Understanding the broader geopolitics behind the Hong Kong protests, it is easy to identify the Western corporate media’s investment in celebrating Hong Kong “freedom fighters” while demonizing revolutionary protest movements from Palestine to Haiti, Minneapolis, Bolivia, and beyond.

Reading List

The 2019 Anti-Extradition Movement

Adley, Mnar M. "The NED Strikes Again: How Neocon Money is Funding the Hong Kong Protests." Mintpress News. September 9, 2019.

Bo Xin & Ding Boshun. “Why the fake Left is against China (Part 1)” International Online. December 13, 2020. (archived)

“The whole basis for ‘self-determination’ in Hong Kong is right-wing anticommunism & anti-Mainland chauvinism. To say Hong Kong is a ‘colony of China’ is about as absurd as saying that modern-day Manhattan is a colony of the USA. ”

Chu Lap-tung. "Is American Dependency Actually “Self-Determination” for Hong Kong?" Qiao Collective, trans. Sean H. Kang. July 1, 2020.

Cohen, Dan. "Behind a made-for-TV Hong Kong protest narrative, Washington is backing nativism and mob violence." The Grayzone. August 17, 2019.

Flounders, Sara. "Follow the money behind Hong Kong protests." Workers World. August 16, 2019.

International. "On the logic, tendency and nature of the “No Extradition to China” movement in Hong Kong." International Online. August 6, 2019. (archived)

PSL Central Committee. "Educational background material on Hong Kong crisis prepared by the PSL." Liberation News. October 6, 2014.

Rubinstein, Alexander. "American Gov’t, NGOs Fuel and Fund Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Protests." Mintpress News. June 13, 2019.

Singh, Ajit. "Hong Kong’s opposition unites with Washington hardliners to ‘preserve the US’s own political and economic interests’." The Grayzone. November 22, 2019.

Vltchek, Andre. "Message to My Young Readers in Hong Kong." Journal of People. June 25, 2020.

Xiao, Sheila. "The Hong Kong protests and imperialism: What the corporate media isn’t saying." Liberation School. September 24, 2019.

Hong Kong: People, History, Society

Chan, Ming K. “The Legacy of the British Administration of Hong Kong: A View from Hong Kong.” The China Quarterly 151 (1997).

“Defending Hong Kong against Britain: the Six-Day War of 1899,” Afakv’s Memories (blog).

Lowe, John & Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang. “Disunited in ethnicity: the racialization of Chinese Mainlanders in Hong Kong.” Patterns of Prejudice 51, no. 2 (2017).

Shelton, Barrie, Justyna Karakiewicz, & Thomas Kvan. “The Making of Hong Kong: From Vertical to Volumetric.” London: Routledge, 2010.

Zhang, Zhuoni & Xiaogang Wu. “Social Change, Cohort Quality and Economic Adaptation of Chinese Immigrants in Hong Kong, 1991-2006.” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 20, no. 1 (2011).

This syllabus compiles articles, papers and books on China and Africa's relationship that challenges hegemonic Western tropes of Chinese "neocolonialism" and “debt-trap diplomacy.” As these readings make clear, these narratives mainly serve to obscure ongoing Western financial and military hegemony on the African continent, where Chinese state and private investments remain a relative newcomer and Chinese military presence is all but non-existent.

While significant Chinese investment in Africa is guided by private commercial interests, these readings also show that Chinese state-owned investments provide unique opportunities for African labor, environmental, and national development interests that provide an important, if imperfect, alternative to Western predatory investment. Likewise, African participation in the Belt and Road Initiative has the potential to realize billions of dollars worth of infrastructure which has long been a hurdle to African economic independence and sustainable development.

Articles and Talks

Bräutigam, Deborah. “The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth.” The Atlantic. February 6, 2021.

Bräutigam, Deborah. “China in Africa is not “Neo-Colonialism.” The Washington Post. April 12, 2018.

Bräutigam, Deborah. “Challenging the Myths of Chinese Land Grabs in Africa.” The China Africa Project. November 6, 2015.

Brown, Nino. “Five Imperialist Myths About China’s Role in Africa.” Liberation School. May 14, 2019.

Erskog, Mikaela. Remarks at Teach In: U.S. Aggression China: Laying Out The Problem. The People’s Forum. November 29, 2020.

• In this short talk, Mikaela Erskog (Pan Africa Today, TriContinental: Institute for Social Research) unpacks what she calls a U.S. “misinformation media campaign” to derail China-Africa relations, calling attention instead to historical Chinese support for African liberation movements as well as Chinese infrastructure, education, and medical investment and aid on the African continent.

Martinez, Carlos. “Is China the New Imperialist force in Africa?” Invent the Future. October 8, 2018.

Matlhako, Chris. Remarks at No Cold War: An International Peace Forum. No Cold War. September 26, 2020.

• Chris Matlhako (Deputy General Secretary, South African Communist Party) offers a South African communist perspective of China-Africa relations, arguing that the U.S. and Europe have pushed a narrative of “Chinese neocolonialism” to buttress their own neocolonial project on the African continent. Matlhako offers critical support for China-Africa cooperation, the Belt and Road Initiative, and people’s exchanges in the interests of people’s development and multilateralism.

Melin, L.E. “The Elephant in the Chinese Room.” The Elephant. December 5, 2020.

• Writing for the Nairobi-based media outlet The Elephant, political commentator L.E. Melin shows that 90% of BRI investments in Africa have gone towards critical infrastructure such as 90% transport, power, water, health, and education infrastructure. Using the case of Argentina’s debt restructuring under IMF austerity, Melin argues that the Belt and Road Initiative offers a sustainable way to finance massive infrastructure projects to a region historically infrastructure-poor under Western neocolonialism.

Moore, Gyude W. “Africa’s Position in the New Cold War.” The China Africa Project. August 7, 2020.

• Former Liberian Minister of Public Works W. Gyude Moore unpacks the hypocritical fear mongering of the Western powers when it comes to Chinese infrastructure investment in Africa, which Moore argues better aligns with African development objectives than any Western alternative. As Moore writes: “If China has built more infrastructure in Africa in two decades than the West has in centuries, China is also our friend.”

Onunaiju, Charles. “China and the End of Poverty: Implications for Africa.” Vanguard. December 24, 2020.

Qiao Collective. “China’s Response to 2020 Guangdong Anti-African discrimination.” June 3, 2020. [Twitter thread]

Umi, Ahjamu. “China in Africa: A Critical Assessment.” Hood Communist, November 21, 2019.

• Ahjamu Umi offers a Pan-Africanist, scientific socialist perspective on the question of Chinese investment in the African continent. Umi argues that so long as Africa remains subjugated by structural underdevelopment and neocolonialism, Chinese engagement alone will not transform the African condition. However, recognizing the advantages of Chinese infrastructure deals in Africa, Umi pushes back against painting China with the same brush as the Western imperialist powers.

Umi, Ahjamu. “China, Africa(ns), White Supremacy & the White Left.” Hood Communist, June 17, 2021.

Research Papers

Bräutigam, Deborah. “A Critical Look at Chinese ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’: The Rise of a Meme.” Area Development and Policy 5 No. 1 (2020): 1-14.

Bodomo, Adams. “Is China Colonizing Africa? Africa-China Relations in a Shifting Global Economic Governance System.” In Global Economic Governance and Human Development, edited by Simone Raudino and Arlo Poletti. Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2018. [full PDF]

Carmody, Pádraig, “Dependence not debt-trap diplomacy.” [full PDF] Area Development and Policy 5 No. 1 (2020).

• Abstract: “Every few years in the West – in the media and in political circles – there is a moral panic about the rise of China. Africa often plays a central role in this: as a supposedly predatory China is counterposed against representations of hapless and powerless African victims. As Deborah Bräutigam notes in her paper, this currently takes the form of the meme of ‘debt-trap diplomacy’, which is largely unjustified. However, intensified relations of dependence are being established between China and Africa, and increasing levels of debt are both a vector and an outcome of this, which in some instance may result in a debt trap. The construction of a debt trap implies intentionality, but while this may not be the case, development outcomes may include excessive overseas borrowing.”

Chatelard, Solange. “Unpacking the ‘New Scramble of Africa’: A Critical and Local Perspective of Chinese Activities in Zambia.” In States, Regions and the Global System: Europe and Northern Asia-Pacific in Globalised Governance, edited by Christoph Schuck and Reimund Seidelmann. 2011.

• This paper reviews the academic and political debate over China’s so-called ‘New Scramble of Africa’ in the 21st century, using local perspectives of Chinese activities in Zambia to highlight cultural, political, and economic dynamics that challenge the monolithic depiction of Chinese neocolonialism.

Crescenzi, Riccardo and Limodio, Nicola. “The impact of Chinese FDI in Africa: evidence from Ethiopia.” 2021 discussion paper, London School of Economics.

• This study, led by two London School of Economics faculty, examines Chinese foreign direct investment in Ethiopia over a 20 year period. As a case study for the broader impacts of China-Africa economic relations, the authors find “‘significant and persistently positive” long-term outcomes that contradict common allegations against Chinese FDI in the African subcontinent. The authors write that their findings “cast some doubts on the fierce and often-times ideological debate around Chinese presence in Africa,” and encourage further facts-based research on the topic.

Deych, Tat’yana L. “China in Africa: a case of "neo-colonialism" or win-win strategy?” Outlines of Global Transformations 11 No. 5 (2018): 63-82.

Oya, Carlos and Schaefer, Florian. “Chinese firms and employment dynamics in Africa: A comparative analysis.” Report of SOAS University of London, July 2019. [full PDF]

• Based on four years of fieldwork and worker surveys in Angola and Ethiopia, this report similarly complicates the familiar narratives of Chinese labor exploitation and labor importation in Africa. As lead author Dr. Carlos Oya (Professor of Political Economy of Development, SOAS University of London) writes: "One of the common perceptions of Chinese firms working in Africa is that they do not employ locals, the working conditions are exploitative and that they don't contribute to skills development. However our findings after four years of research have drawn up a very different picture. In Angola, for example, the firms employ some of the poorest where accommodation and food is provided, which in many ways can be seen as a route to actively help with poverty reduction in the region."

Singh, Ajit. “The myth of ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ and realities of Chinese development finance” Third World Quarterly. [full PDF]

• Abstract: “In recent decades China has emerged as a leader in international development finance, with the potential to provide sorely needed funds to address major global developmental gaps. However, not everyone is optimistic about this new source of lending. A narrative of ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ has emerged to describe Chinese lending to developing countries – most ardently advanced by the United States – contending that China seeks to ensnare smaller countries with onerous levels of debt in order to realise neocolonial aims. This article argues that the theory of debt-trap diplomacy does not accurately describe Chinese finance. First, investigating China–Africa relations, it will demonstrate that Chinese loans are not a major driver of debt distress. Second, it will demonstrate that China does not engage in predatory behaviour towards borrowing countries, using debt to facilitate takeovers of strategic assets and natural resources, or to promote military expansion. Finally, comparing Chinese and Western financial relations with Latin America and the Caribbean, it will demonstrate that, in contrast to the debt-trap narrative, China’s non-interventionist approach has opened space for developing countries, particularly those with governments facing hostility from the US and its allies.”

Books

Bräutigam, Deborah. Will Africa Feed China? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Lee, Ching Kwan. The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. [full PDF]

Liang Haoguang and Zhang Yaojun. The Theoretical System of Belt and Road. Singapore: Springer Nature, 2019.

Monson, Jamie. Africa's Freedom Railway: How a Chinese Development Project Changes Lives and Livelihoods in Tanzania. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. [PDF of chapters]

• This book details the history of the first major development project between China and Tanzania and Zambia, begun in 1967. The TAZARA railway represented a Third World construction project designed to provide participating nations with economic independence from apartheid Rhodesia and South Africa. TAZARA is often invoked today as a symbol of Sino-African friendship, and the principles of anti-colonialism, sovereignty, and national determination outlined during this project sets the tone of Chinese international development projects to this day.

Van Ness, Peter. Revolution and Chinese Foreign Policy: Peking’s Support for Wars of National Liberation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.