Beijing is trying to rebut accusations of genocide against the Uighurs by falsifying census figures:
The official statistics indicate that between 2010 and last year, the Uighur population of Xinjiang…increased by more than a sixth to 11.6 million and that the numbers rose each year over the period.
However, critics are sceptical of the population increase because the authorities had earlier revised Uighur numbers down from previous years by hundreds of thousands. At the time, Beijing had said the revisions were normal practice but critics accused the regime of trying to cover up actual demographic declines for the Uighur people, and make the new numbers appear to represent a larger increase.
The official 2020 Uighur population of 11,624,257, as well as the official 2019 population of 11,560,000, are lower than previously reported population numbers from 2017 and 2018. However, they now show year-on-year increases after authorities reduced the 2017 and 2018 tallies by 245,000 and 178,600, respectively.
“The revisions . . . conveniently ensure that there is no reported negative Uighur population growth for any given year,” tweeted Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow in China studies at Victims of Communism, a US organisation. Zenz is known for his research on Xinjiang issues and is denounced by Beijing as a figure who spreads lies about the Communist party….
Human rights groups are also accusing China of fudging population numbers in Xinjiang by overwhelming the region with ethnic Han people who are mainly atheists. The latest census figures show the Han population in the region rose at a faster pace of nearly 25 per cent in the past decade to reach 10.9 million, or 42 per cent of the region’s total population. Most of the growth was driven by migration of Han people into Xinjiang.
By comparison, there were 5.7 million Han people in 1990 in Xinjiang, or 37.58 per cent of the region’s total population.
“That really confirms the strategy of Beijing to ‘optimise’, in their words, the population structure of Xinjiang, which involves the constriction of the Uighur population as well as increasing the size of the Han population, as well as readjusting where those population groups live,” James Leibold, a professor at Australia’s La Trobe University, told the South China Morning Post. He specialises in ethnic conflict in contemporary China.
Leave a Reply