Original title: L'impensé colonial du nouvel empire chinois

Original publication media: https://www.mediapart.fr

Original link: https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/190820/l-impense-colonial-du-nouvel-empire-chinois?page_article=1

Original author: FRANÇOIS BOUGON

Original publication date: August 9, 2020

Translation: Ozgur

 - Since China decided to integrate into the global capitalist system in the late 1970s, the meaning of the Communist Party of China has only been to retain the name of the Communist Party. Their legitimacy today is rooted in nationalist narratives built under Western influence in the late 19th century.

 The two meetings in March each year (this year, it was pushed to May due to the Covid-19 epidemic), and the congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which is held every five years. In Tiananmen Square, the heart of Beijing, which has been completely locked down and emptied of tourists, delegates from across the country headed to the Great Hall of the People. The surrounding factories have been temporarily closed, and in a beautifully crafted "idyllic" atmosphere, under the blue sky, representatives of ethnic minorities - Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, etc. - dressed in beautiful national costumes. Always especially popular among a group of photojournalists. This has become a ritual at every major national meeting.
  What this political show is trying to convey is the diversity of the mighty Chinese nation, and its remarkable unity: the representatives of the 55 ethnic minorities that coexist with the Han, who make up more than 90 percent of the 1.4 billion population, always Xiaoyingying praised those policies that benefited them. In official discourse, China is a country where multicultural elements coexist harmoniously. Those rich costumes prove it.
  But even aside from its 'propaganda' essence, this form of "performance" itself reflects that it is a way of the central regime's marginalization and style of ethnic minorities. These minorities are endowed with a certain identity, an identity that has been defined since the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949.
  And this "scenery" comes from an unconsciousness of colonialism. In fact, the Han people do rule these minority areas. The Han Chinese were sent to these areas and led those serving the economic development projects dictated by "Beijing." Such as the famous "Silk Road" project initiated by Xi Jinping shortly after he came to power in 2012. Other nations must accept this centrally shaped narrative. State media coverage of the activities of those delegates reflects this.
   For example, on China Global Television Network cgtn, the article about Rehangul Yimir, the youngest representative of Xinjiang Province (northwest) published in 2017 (Link to related articles https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d49544f79417a4d/share_p.html? t=1489643058359) In this province, the minority Uyghurs who believe in Islam and are also Turkic languages are the biggest victims of China’s repressive policy in the name of opposing Islamic terrorism. 's repressive policy was revealed to be a genocidal policy. (Related article link https://theconversation.com/the-ominous-metaphors-of-chinas-uighur-concentration-camps-129665?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=bylinefacebookbutton&fbclid=IwAR0geEN7rP66JiH-kl1eWQIqzep2ijGMKXzWtAqlueEc9TBO-AGfl5bpBXE)
About a million Uyghurs were placed in re-education camps, perhaps we should call them concentration camps, because some of them are forcibly distributed to more than 30 factories in China after their release. In all, the measure involved about 80,000 people, according to a report released in March by an Australian think tank for strategic policy research Manufacturing plants that make profits for international brand companies such as Nike, Bombardier, Apple, Huawei or Lacoste.
  
  The female representative, Rehangul Yimir, was presented as a childlike image in the narratives of Chinese journalists, just like the status of the ethnic group she belonged to: she could not speak Chinese well, But through her own efforts, after five years in office, she came to Beijing and, according to her own words, "it was like coming to my parents' house."
Reza Hasmath, a political scientist at the University of Alberta, notes that contemporary Chinese government narratives tend to describe ethnic minorities as "exotic, 'backward' with traditions, and often trapped in poverty and poverty. illiterate people". And "the Han Chinese are seen as a united, modern and 'superior' ethnic group" (Related article link https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2319032)
  In 2004, writer Wang Lixiong, one of the few Han intellectuals in China to question its policies on ethnic minorities, expressed pro-Dalai Lama (the religious leader since 1959) in a book by his wife Weise Woeser. After China was in exile in India since the implementation of the autonomous region policy, Wang Lixiong published an article judging that "the Chinese authorities are clearly trying to destroy and stifle Tibetan culture." This article was translated by courrier international in 2005. Link to the original text: https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/2005/02/10/resister-al-imperialisme-culturel-chinois ) "Today's imperialism is no longer limited to military and political The new dimension of "cultural imperialism". When it has penetrated into the spirit of every member of the main nation, it has been integrated into the collective subconscious and is difficult to remove." Wang Lixiong also wrote: "This kind of Cultural imperialism first manifests itself as arrogance and extreme complacency, and this arrogance and arrogance, consciously or unconsciously, touches all spheres, from the collective to the individual.”
He also wrote a book for Xinjiang, in which he pointed out that the name of Xinjiang province means new territory in Chinese. But for the Uyghurs, how can it be called a new frontier when this is their homeland for generations? This is just new territory for the occupier, (relevant link https://chinachange.org/2014/03/03/excerpts-from-my-west-china-your-east-turkestan-my-view-on-the-kunming -incident/)
He also wrote that Uyghurs do not like the name Xinjiang, because it itself shows the expansion of the empire, the pride of the colonizers and the insult to the local people.
  We can easily see the same forced assimilation policy in Tibet as in Xinjiang, and we must align with Xi Jinping's dream of the great Han nation, the "New Silk Road" policy. If the repression in Xinjiang has been more brutal, according to Tibetan historian Tsering Shakya, it is only because the growing popularity of Tibetan Buddhism has prevented the Tibetans from being seen as a security threat like the Uyghurs. Tsering Shakya said: “The Chinese government has successfully portrayed Tibetans and Uyghurs as backward development-resistant populations. As a result, there is a growing aversion to so-called politics based on religious identity in China, which has successfully Use this to describe the situation in Tibet and Xinjiang as part of a fight against the rise of religious fundamentalism worldwide.

Party-state, defender of eternal China

 However, in Wang Lixiong's view, Beijing's security countermeasures command increased violence. In an interview with the New York Review of Books, he believed that the solution can only come from real sovereignty and not just "superficial". These positions revealing the essence of imperialism are clearly at odds with mainstream discourse.
  Because of the establishment of communist China, it not only means that they are the heirs of fighting against European colonists in the 19th century, but also represents that China has since restored the privilege of living by those European colonists by colonizing Hong Kong and establishing ports or concessions in Shanghai. And a century of humiliation.
  Of course, they will not hesitate to use all the "post-xx" theories (post-modern, post-colonial, etc.) originating from the West to weaken their Western competitors out of their own interests. To understand what is happening in China today, as researcher David Bartel writes for American sinologist Arif Dirlik, Twentieth-Century Chinese History, Ideology, Revolution (Recently published by Vincennes University) (Related link https://www.puv-editions.fr/nouveautes/la-chine-au-xxe-siecle-histoire-ideologie-revolution-9782379240812-0-700.html) 1 The book's preface states: "We have witnessed how, in the 1980s, Chinese officials used postmodern colonial theory in a surprising way to shape Chinese nationalism, the latest tool in the service of power."
  This allows the Chinese to easily blame the source of the problem on the legacy of Western imperialism and colonialism, and respond to criticism from the West. Since the People's Republic of China is a victim of imperialism and colonialism, will it follow the same path itself?
  In the "comfortable" position of a former victim, China has indeed found a clever way to absolve itself of responsibility. In order to justify and necessary its treatment of ethnic minorities, the party-state also stated that it is an eternal defender of China, and that in the face of "separatism" and "demands for independence," the official narrative can render China's territorial integrity Sex goes back to ancient times. 
 In November 2017, when Xi Jinping proudly declared to Donald Trump that he was a "descendant of the dragon" in Beijing's Forbidden City, didn't he say "people like us go back 5,000 years."?
  For those in power, the usefulness of myths speaks for itself, and Xi Jinping is neither the first nor the last to use them. France, Macron's speeches at the Louvre, Versailles, and monuments on the Eastern Front of World War I carry narratives of war hero stories that increasingly enhance French national pride and French identity. (Link to related articles https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/culture-idees/180620/macron-au-mont-valerien-le-mythe-cede-la-mystification)
   And the simplistic view of history from the perspective of "China" aims to deny or ignore the dominance and domination of other ethnic minorities by the Han people in the name of eternal China. And those intellectuals who tried to tell the history of their nation paid a heavy price for it.
  In 2004, Dolma Kyab, a young teacher from Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, wrote a history of Chinese colonialism in Tibet "The Restless Himalayas" (Link to related articles https://highpeakspureearth.com/ preface-and-first-chapter-of-the-restless-himalayas-by-dolma-kyab/).
  In the preface, he emphasized that all those who wish to gain a deeper understanding of their Tibetan identity should understand the history and development of the Kingdom of Tibet as an independent country before it was assigned to China. He was jailed for ten years for this. (unfinished)