Breaking Down the BBC’s Visit to Hotan, Xinjiang — Sun Feiyang

Articles, editorials, and calls to action over the Chinese region of Xinjiang (officially known as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) have filled countless pages of news in the past few years. A chorus of voices spanning the American political spectrum, from Marco Rubio to Ilhan Omar, call for sanctions and condemnation of China’s actions in the region. This full-court press has ramped up in the last few months, with back-to-back “exposés” released by multiple news outlets.

Since the political situation in Xinjiang and broader context has been well covered by many others (which I’ll link at the end) — what I plan to do here is go through a recent video report on Xinjiang by John Sudworth of the BBC and provide my own commentary....

Another side of the story.

Geopolitics Alert
Breaking Down the BBC’s Visit to Hotan, Xinjiang

Sun Feiyang, Medium

Here is a comment from the post at Medium.

NC
Jul 8

As a native Mandarin speaker, I can tell you that the author’s translation is correct regarding the policeman’s suggestion about enrolling in the school. It was not an order. The BBC purposefully mistranslated the Uighur man’s words to say something that was not what he said. He said 可以
kě yǐ which means:
can, may, possible, able to, not bad, pretty good
I would not be surprised if the vast majority of people in these schools enrolled because the Chinese government gave them a stipend to attend. For a relatively poor region like southern Xinjiang, you would have a lot of people who would willingly go for a small stipend, language education, and vocational training.
However, I also would not be surprised if some level of coercion was involved by police in some other cases. It’s possible that some Uighurs do not want extra attention on themselves or their families by the massive surveillance system of Xinjiang so they go in order to “prove” to the authorities they are not Islamists.