Culture

posts related to Chinese culture

Hong Kong forum on Xinjiang relays Chinese state propaganda

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The independent Hong Kong-focused magazine《棱角 The Points》published an interesting article on Aug. 20, 2025, about an invitation-only Hong Kong academics gathering to promote the Chinese Party line on the Xinjiang atrocities.

Here I offer some preliminary comments and also a link to the article in the original Chinese, plus a lightly edited machine translation, below.

It is interesting yet somewhat predictable. Some of the people involved are recognizable as longtime, well-known propagandists and denialists. It is also no surprise that it was invitation-only, not public. These scholars seem to be using their universities’ name recognition not to further discussion, but to further Chinese state propaganda.

The lead poster names include Nury Vittachi, a rather vicious propagandist, whose actions as a journalist and writer are well summarized. Barry Sautman, too: this is a scholar who once wrote decently on Tibet, but then in recent years has turned into a pro-PRC parrot, also well described here. –I did not know the name of the Xinjiang university Chinese scholar Lin Fangfei 林芳菲 but it is no surprise that they mobilize people like that, to join the chorus and parrot the party line on Xinjiang — in her case to deny the amply documented forced labor. One more participant featured on the poster, listed with a cryptic title on Hongkong matters, is anonymous.

What is something of a surprise to me is the Canadian scholar William Schabas, based at Middlesex in Britain. He is a longtime genocide scholar, who has long been regarded by many as respectable, with general books on international law. He is a recipient of the Order of Canada, elected member of academies, and so on. It seems he moved to England after leaving Leiden U, where he taught for years. Something strange happened with Schabas that has not been fully explained and isn’t mentioned by The Points: In 2019, he surprised the world by taking on the task of defending the Burmese military junta at the ICJ in the Hague against accusations that they are committing genocide against the Rohingya, brought by the Gambia on behalf of a long list of Muslim countries. That was a big shocker. At the time, he was asked by a journalist why he would do that, and he gave no explanation other than chuckling and saying that ‘everyone deserves representation’ (so, even blood-soaked generals) — as if he were not a decent scholar but simply a lawyer for hire by whatever criminal can pay him. In my view, given how he is now parroting Chinese state propaganda on Xinjiang, it could well be that he helped the Burmese military junta simply because Western nations (and the Islamic world) were pretty unified against that junta’s atrocities against the Muslim Rohingya. Continue reading Hong Kong forum on Xinjiang relays Chinese state propaganda →

Those Who Should Be Seized Should Be Seized

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Source: Journal of Peace Research
Review of John Beck (2025) Those Who Should Be Seized Should Be Seized (New York: Melville House)
By Magnus Fiskesjö (Cornell University)

China’s genocide against the Uyghurs and Kazakhs is ongoing since 2017, yet the world is mostly silent. East Turkestan (Chinese Xinjiang, the ‘New Territory’) seems remote, and it is not Biblical land. China has formidable resources to influence those who should be influenced (world opinion); and to intimidate and silence those who should be silenced (witnesses and refugees). This book is a riveting, stark, and beautiful writeup of the testimonies of four key native witnesses. The reader is invited into their real-life experiences over the last several years. There are no scholarly footnotes, bibliography or index. Instead, readers enter the gripping stories, which start well before the genocide launch, describing the previous fraught and unequal coexistence of Muslim natives and Chinese settlers. The deadly 2009 clashes in the regional capital Urumchi form a key watershed. Chinese officials  borrowed the rhetoric of terrorism and enabled settler violence against the remaining native people. (The Palestinian West Bank parallels are obvious.) The pace accelerates as the Chinese state launches the genocide, with massive sweeps of people for the concentration camps. The cruelty, the mass humiliation, the coercion, the drugging, the sterilizations, all emerge, as well as the struggle to escape. The book, a masterful and moving reportage, ends with the few narrators now in exile, struggling to tell us their story. The author could have added a chapter on how China is now completing the genocide, by seizing the future: mass separating all children, erasing their identities, culture, and language, force-replaced with Chinese: ‘Kill the native, save the man’, just like in North America in the last century (compare the UN Genocide Convention, §2E). I warmly recommend this book.

The Films of Ikram Nurmehmet

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Source: China File (7/3/25)
Balancing What Can Be Said with What Can Only Be Implied: The Films of Ikram Nurmehmet
By Shelly Kraicer

A still from Ridiculous Nurshad (2022).

The young Uyghur filmmaker Ikram Nurmehmet is now in a Chinese prison. Arrested in May 2023, he was accused by the Chinese government of “actively participating in terrorist activities.” Human Rights Watch called the charges “politically motivated,” and reported that Ikram was “tortured . . . until he gave a false confession.” Convicted in January 2024, Ikram was sentenced to six and a half years behind bars. He was likely targeted because he had studied in Turkey between 2010 and 2016. His arrest and imprisonment has occurred in the context of Chinese authorities’ continuing persecution of minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region that has intensified since 2017.

It is always difficult for what China calls “ethnic minority” (i.e. non-Han Chinese) filmmakers to make the films they want to make inside China, where review by the state Film Administration is mandatory for all. Staying inside the system allows filmmakers to have their work shown publicly in China and, if they can get official approval, abroad. What may be surprising is that filmmakers from Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang have succeeded in making important and eloquent works of cinema that grapple, at least indirectly, with the particular situations of their communities in China, despite the constraints under which they work.

Since 2017, a new generation of Uyghur filmmakers, including Ikram Nurmehmet, Tawfiq Nizamidin, Emetjan Memet, Mirzat Abduqadir, and Pahriya Ghalip, has emerged. Most studied at the Beijing Film Academy, and all have made creatively challenging, formally interesting, socially engaged short films that carefully explore—with humor, passion, and a savvy sense of how to balance what can be said with what can only be implied—what life is like for Uyghurs in China today.

A close reading of Ikram’s four short films—from Elephant in the Car’s mysterious energy, through the absurdly dark comedy of Ridiculous Nurshad and rambunctious humor of Tu Cheshang Erbai (200 Per Puke), to the brilliant formal control of A Day by the Sea—can elucidate some ways that a filmmaker under systemic political pressure can navigate the closely regulated Chinese censorship system while preserving an articulate, sustainable, and authentically expressive voice. Continue reading The Films of Ikram Nurmehmet →

Chinese propaganda deflects criticism on Xinjiang

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Chinese propaganda efforts take many forms, to try to deflect world criticism on the Xinjiang atrocities against the Uyghurs and Kazakhs there. This includes new forms, especially online, where naive netizens outside China are lured into traps by professional propagandists, and then hung out to dry on Western social media like X.

Before I get to that new chapter, let’s first note the progressive evolution that has taken place.

They started with the old-style naked propaganda and denial by official Chinese media. This is still going on, of course, including in UN speeches, the People’s Daily, Shanghai Daily, etc. etc.

Now, these same state media are also cleverly flooding Youtube, Facebook etcetera with benign-seeming videos showing things like unspoiled wildlife in Xinjiang’s faraway mountains, or, Kashgar tourist streets with “happy” Uyghur performers.

Sometimes, the propaganda department recruits naive foreign Youtubers, often Westerners willing to be duped and to regurgitate the official picture, and who are kept well away from the camps, the forced labor, the children’s mass Gulag, and all that. Continue reading Chinese propaganda deflects criticism on Xinjiang →

The Red Wind Howls

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Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce the publication of my translation of The Red Wind Howls, a major novel by the Tibetan writer Tsering Döndrup. The book deals with the history of the 1950s-1980s, when the Tibetan region of Amdo was violently incorporated into the PRC. It is available through Columbia University Press:

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-red-wind-howls/9780231213738/

From the publisher’s website:

A remarkable novel by one of Tibet’s foremost authors, The Red Wind Howls is a courageous and gripping portrayal of Tibetan suffering under Mao’s regime. The story delves deep into forbidden history, spanning the famine of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and, most taboo of all, the 1958 Amdo rebellion when Tibetans rose in armed revolt against the Chinese state. Tsering Döndrup self-published the book in 2006, because no publisher would risk accepting it. When the authorities caught wind, all copies were confiscated and the author faced severe reprisals. He lost his job as head of the local archives, his passport was confiscated, and he has been under close surveillance ever since.

This powerful novel is set in part in the punitive labor camps to which Tibetans were sent after the failed rebellion, where many perished from starvation or forced labor. Inside and outside the camps, it depicts with dark humor a world of informers, cruelty, and score settling, against the backdrop of immeasurable environmental devastation and the destruction of traditional Tibetan ways of life. The novel draws on extensive interviews conducted by the author, and the rhythms of oral storytelling are reflected in its fragmented narrative style, which jumps back and forth between periods and events. An unparalleled account of the Chinese Communist Party’s takeover of Tibet, The Red Wind Howls is both a richly imaginative work of fiction and a vital piece of historical testimony.

Christopher Peacock
Department of East Asian Studies
Dickinson College

Chasing Traces open access

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Chasing Traces: History and Ethnography in the Uplands of Socialist Asia
Now available as Open Access from University of Hawaii Press.
Download and share

Table of contents is below, including my own chapter on the Wa people’s history between China and Burma.

First, the book’s description:

In the connected highlands of southwest China, Vietnam, and Laos, recalling the past is a highly sensitive act. Among local societies, many may actively avoid recalling the past for fear of endangering themselves and others. Oral traditions and rare archives remain the main avenues to visit the past, but the national revolutionary narrative and the language of heritagization have strongly affected the local expression of historical memory. Yet this does not prevent local societies from producing their stories in their own terms, even if often in conflict with both national and Western categories. Producing history, ethnohistory, historical anthropology, and historical geography in the Southeast Asian highlands raises significant questions relating to methodology, epistemology, and ethics, for which most researchers are often ill-prepared. How can scholars manage to competently access information about the past? How is one to capture history-in-the-making through events, speech acts, rituals, and performances? How is the memory of the past transmitted—or not—and with what logic? Continue reading Chasing Traces open access →

Satirical Tibet

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New Publication: Satirical Tibet: The Politics of Humor in Contemporary Amdo
By Timothy Thurston
University of Washington Press, 2025.

What does comedy look like when the wrong punchline can land you in jail? Humor has long been a vital, if underrecognized, component of Tibetan life. In recent years, alongside well-publicized struggles for religious freedom and cultural preservation, comedians, hip-hop artists, and other creatives have used zurza, the Tibetan art of satire, to render meaningful social and political critique under the ever-present eye of the Chinese state. Timothy Thurston’s Satirical Tibet offers the first-ever look at this powerful tool of misdirection and inversion. Focusing on the region of Amdo, Thurston introduces the vibrant and technologically innovative comedy scene that took shape following the death of Mao Zedong and the rise of ethnic revival policies. He moves decade by decade to show how artists have folded zurza into stage performances, radio broadcasts, televised sketch comedies, and hip-hop lyrics to criticize injustices, steer popular attitudes, and encourage the survival of Tibetan culture. Surprising and vivid, Satirical Tibet shows how the ever-changing uses and meanings of a time-honored art form allow Tibetans to shape their society while navigating tightly controlled media channels.

Timothy Thurston’s groundbreaking book Satirical Tibet is the first major study of Tibetan humor. Drawing on years of research in Amdo, Thurston reveals the cultures of comedy that have thrived in Tibetan-language literature, radio, television, and oral and performing arts into the digital age.”— Christopher Rea, author of The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China

Aftermath of Thai handing Uyghur refugees to China

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If you read just one article about Thailand handing Uyghur refugees to China, this may be the one — it situates this stunning debacle in the context of the global US withdrawal from commitments, promises, and values:

“US Ally Kowtows to China as Old Order Crumbles Under Trump,” by Matthew Tostevin. Newsweek (Feb. 28, 2025). 

The Newsweek piece was published the day after the forced deportation, so it could not yet note the absolutely stunning admission from the Thai government, on March 6, that they knowingly lied about there being no other governments (or the UNHCR) ready to take the refugees — as top officials all the way to the PM had been insisting, until that day, as one justification for setting aside the Torture Convention.

Links on this and on the Thai government’s shocking parroting of various other Chinese talking points (the refugees are “safe”, because there is pictufre proof from Chinese-arrangeded photo ops, etc.):

“In reversal, Thai official acknowledges other countries offered Uyghurs resettlement“… (Radio Free Asia)

“Thailand had offers to take Uyghurs but deported them to China anyway: MP.” (Radio Free Asia)

“US offered to resettle Uyghurs that Thailand deported to China, sources say.” (The Guardian)

For more, including some of the Chinese propaganda around this whole incident, see my online bibliography (periodically updated) on the genocide in the Uyghur region (East Turkestan): https://uhrp.org/bibliography/

Sincerely,
Magnus Fiskesjö

Thailand deports Uyghur refugees

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This morning, on Feb. 27, 2025, Thailand deported over forty Uyghur refugees to China, despite a pending court hearing set for next month. This was simply set aside — and was perhaps a lie to begin with. The shameful deportation was done under the cover of night, in buses with black-out windows, to prevent the press from seeing the prisoners [https://prachataienglish.com/node/11322]. A Chinese plane flew them direct from Bangkok to Kashgar in the Uyghur region, where China’s concentration camps now await them.

Thailand has now violated both the UN convention on torture, which it signed, and the principle of non-refoulement, against sending refugees in harm’s way. Thailand’s betrayal of human rights also overrides the Thai politicians and lawyers and others who tried to protest, arguing that refugees had suffered enough, languishing in Thai jails for over ten years, with five dying, including two children.

It is obvious this was done only to obey China — where state media celebrated getting their hands on the refugees.

For more see: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c14jjxz8re6o

A week ago, I explained the global stakes of Thailand’s Uyghur refugee drama, that has now ended in such a gruesome way. Listen on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/wrfihumanrightsshow/magnus-fiskesjo-feb-21_4upload
(first aired Friday, Feb. 21 on the “Human Rights and Social Justice” local FM radio show hosted by Ute Ritz-Deutch, on WRFI.org, at FM 88.1 in Ithaca)

Sincerely, with great sadness, and frankly disgust at the Thai authorities’ betrayal,

Magnus Fiskesjö

Thailand obeys China on refugees and kidnapping

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On the burning issue of Thailand’s pending forced repatriation to China of forty-some Uyghur refugees, to certain torture and probably death there, because of international protests (even from UN-appointed experts), and global media attention, top Thai political leaders and the national police chief have now come out, to tie themselves in knots while trying to defend their country’s actions and shore up an image of decency.

Thailand’s police chief has the audacity to say that the refugees, WHO HAVE BEEN DETAINED FOR TEN YEARS NOW, are “doing OK”.

This article also mentions the brave Thai senator Angkhana Neelapaijit, chairwoman of a Senate committee that has now asked to at last be allowed to see the detained men, and who also “expressed concerns shared by human rights organisations that the Uyghur group could face danger if they are sent back to China.”

She also reminded us all about how the coup government of general Prayut Chan-o-cha in 2013 already forcibly returned 109 Uyghur men to China at Beijing’s request, and to this day, their fate remains unknown. (Of course, we can assume they have all long since put to death).

In another report, a deputy PM and defence minister says Thailand will handle this decently (again, that’s after holding these refugees for 10 years!!), and “promises to adhere to human rights.” This minister’s pronouoncement has been seized upon as a hopeful sign, by Uyghurs in exile.

But I for one wonder, about Thailand and human rights. The country has refused to sign the international refugee convention on refugee treatment, and that same coup general once mocked the very same Uyghur refugees he sent to their probable death, as lowly animals. Continue reading Thailand obeys China on refugees and kidnapping →

Pema Tseden retrospective

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For the complete retrospective of the films of Pema Tseden that I’ve curated for TIFF Cinematheque in Toronto, I’ve written a brief introductory essay on his work, and capsule descriptions of the 8 features and two shorts that we are showing in Toronto. This retrospective, if all goes well, will travel to several other venues in 2025: the Harvard Film Archive, the National Museum of Asian Art at the Smithsonian Institution, and at the VIFF Centre in Vancouver. I’m open to other suggestions – Shelly Kraicer <shellyk@mac.com> (Toronto, Canada)

Source: TIFF.net
Compassionate Light: Stories of Tibet by Pema Tseden
By Shelly Kraicer

Tibetan director Pema Tseden (1969–2023) became, during his all-too-short life, one of the most remarkable filmmakers of this century. He revolutionized the representation of Tibet and Tibetans and shared his visions of authentic Tibetan life with the entire film-going world by reimagining how narrative cinematic fiction could operate within so-called “Chinese minority cinema”. His alterative formal strategies and narrative framings were inspired by the contemporary lived experience of Tibetans, centering in his works their culture, language, religion, and ways of inhabiting and interpreting their world.

Pema Tseden died mid-career, at the age of 53. Born to farmer-herder parents in the Tibetan highlands of Qinghai Province, China, he went to rural schools and trained as a teacher. After studying Tibetan literature at Northwest Minorities University, he discovered a passion for making films. A scholarship enabled him to enrol in the prestigious Beijing Film Academy (BFA), where he studied screenwriting and film directing. He was the first Tibetan to graduate from the BFA in 2004. Since 1991, he has published short stories in both Chinese and Tibetan that use humour and a seemingly simple yet eloquent style to depict aspects of contemporary Tibetan life. Continue reading Pema Tseden retrospective →

Statement on Uyghur asylum seekers in Thailand

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See below for information on signing a statement protesting the Uyghurs being held by Thailand and who are at risk of being deported to China. –Magnus Fiskesjö

======================

Dear Friend and colleagues,

You will have seen the tragic news that 48 Uyghurs face immediate deportation from Thailand to the PRC where they will certainly face persecution.

We urge you to sign the following statement addressed to the Thai authorities asking for the group of detained Uyghur men to be given safe haven: https://forms.gle/zWw3GbTvvqiuNLRX7.

We hope that this statement will raise awareness of the detainees’ situation and prevent their deportation to the PRC.

Kind regards,

Nyrola Elimä, Rune Steenberg, David Tobin <d.tobin@sheffield.ac.uk>, and Emily Upson.

Call for article retraction

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Greetings and Happy New Year. We write to bring to your attention a recent article on Tibetan children and “racial empathy bias” that was published in the US psychology journal, Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology (the journal of the American Psychological Association’s Society for the study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race), by a pair of Han Chinese psychology scholars (Jing Sheng and Li Wang) and their graduate students at South China Normal University. In their article, they claimed that their research in the TAR among Tibetan “primary school” students received the approval of their university’s “human ethics” board, but we and others think the scholarship is deeply suspect both ethically and theoretically, in that they make racist claims about Tibetan children’s alleged “racial empathy bias” toward Han Chinese.

The scholars’ claims were so explicitly racist that the journal received complaints after it was published. To their credit, the editors published an apology, and required the authors to strike the most egregious statements (see below). However, the article was NOT retracted, and remains published in the journal. Given recent Chinese state efforts to shape scholarly discourse on Tibet abroad, we feel strongly that this article needs to be completely retracted and that the continued presence of this article and others like it in US academic journals threatens the credibility of these journals and the well-known scholars on their editorial boards (this journal seems to have a huge editorial board, as well as a large list of “editorial consultants,” scholars from major colleges and universities across the U.S.).

Please support our call to the journal editors to retract this article by signing the open letter (see below) to the editors through the Google Form link at the top of the letter. Your name and affiliation will be automatically added to the letter. Continue reading Call for article retraction →

How China is erasing Tibetan culture

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Here’s snippet of a long, multimedia-based article on the Chinese government’s efforts to erase Tibetan culture.–Kirk Denton

Source: NYT (1/9/25)
How China is Erasing Tibetan Culture, One Child at a Time
By Chris Buckley

China Central Television

Across China’s west, the party is placing children in boarding schools in a drive to assimilate a generation of Tibetans into the national mainstream and mold them into citizens loyal to the Communist Party.

Tibetan rights activists, as well as experts working for the United Nations, have said that the party is systematically separating Tibetan children from their families to erase Tibetan identity and to deepen China’s control of a people who historically resisted Beijing’s rule. They have estimated that around three-quarters of Tibetan students age 6 and older — and others even younger — are in residential schools that teach largely in Mandarin, replacing the Tibetan language, culture and Buddhist beliefs that the children once absorbed at home and in village schools.

When China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, visited one such school in the summer, he inspected a dormitory that appeared freshly painted and as neat as an army barracks. He walked into a classroom where Tibetan students, listening to a lecture on Communist Party thought, stood and applauded to welcome him.

Mr. Xi’s visit to the school in Qinghai Province in June amounted to a firm endorsement of the program, despite international criticism. Education, he said, must “implant a shared consciousness of Chinese nationhood in the souls of children from an early age.”

Chinese officials say the schools help Tibetan children to quickly become fluent in the Chinese language and learn skills that will prepare them for the modern economy. They say that families voluntarily send their children to the schools, which are free, and that the students have classes in Tibetan culture and language. . . [READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE (paywall)]

Politically correct designations for China’s borderlands

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Source: Ethnic ChinaLit (1/2/25)
The Battle over Politically Correct Designations for China’s Borderlands
By Bruce Humes

The word “Tibet” has been replaced by “Himalayan World” accompanied by “Tibetan art.”

Labels matter. As Confucius (reportedly) said:

名不正，則言不順
言不順，則事不成

If names are not rectified, then words are not appropriate.
If words are not appropriate, then deeds are not accomplished.

— The Analects (Trans. Raymond Dawson)

New politically correct designations for China’s traditional frontiers — homelands to Tibetans, Mongols and Turkic Muslims  — are emerging, but their usage outside the Middle Kingdom is proving controversial.

According to a report by Radiofrance (le mot “Tibet” supprimé), two major museums in Paris made changes to their labeling of Tibetan art in 2023 and 2024. On the explanatory panels in its galleries, Quai Branly began replacing “Tibet” with “Xizang,” China’s name for the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Then Musée Guimet — which houses one of the largest collections of Asian Art outside of Asia — repackaged its “Nepal-Tibet” section as “Monde Himalayen” (Himalayan World).

These changes were noted and vigorously critiqued by French scholars, who accused the museums of bowing to pressure from China in its campaign to force the outside world to accept its colonialist terminology. “Is it the job of museums to rewrite history at the behest of an authoritarian regime? “ queries French Tibetologist Katia Buffetrille, according to Radiofrance. Continue reading Politically correct designations for China’s borderlands →