‘End the dominance of the Uyghur ethnic group’: an analysis of Beijing’s population optimization strategy in southern Xinjiang

ABSTRACT

Chinese academics and politicians argue that Xinjiang’s ‘terrorism’ problem can only be solved by ‘optimizing’ its ethnic population structure. High ethnic minority population concentrations are considered a national security threat. ‘Optimizing’ such concentrations requires ‘embedding’ substantial Han populations, whose ‘positive culture’ can mitigate the Uyghur ‘human problem’. Scenarios that do not overburden the region’s ecological carrying capacity entail drastic reductions in ethnic minority natural population growth, potentially decreasing their populations. Population ‘optimization’ discourses and related policies provide a basis to assess Beijing’s ‘intent’ to destroy an ethnic minority population in part through birth prevention per the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention. The ‘destruction in part’ can be assessed as the difference between projected natural population growth without substantial government interference and reduced growth scenarios in line with population ‘optimization’ requirements. Based on population projections by Chinese researchers, this difference could range between 2.6 and 4.5 million lives by 2040.

KEYWORDS:

• Xinjiang
• Uyghurs
• ethnic minorities
• birth control
• population
• genocide

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the four anonymous peer reviewers as well as international law expert Erin Rosenberg and Matthew Robertson from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation for their very helpful feedback. The author would also like to thank Cheryl Yu, China Programs and Research Manager at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, for assistance with translation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Prefecture and county socio-economic development reports (guo min jing ji he she hui fa zhan tong ji gong bao 国民经济和社会发展统计公报). Some counties in the sample are represented by data for the prefecture that governs them.

2 Kashgar’s 2018 death rate was 5.56 per mille, while Yingjisha, Yopurga and Shufu counties reported 2019 death rates of 5.13, 6.60 and 6.66, respectively (sources: county socio-economic development reports).

3 While the source is not a government website, the details of the report can easily be authenticated, including the existence of the other mentioned public document: zizhiqu ‘guan yu jia qiang he gai jin Nanjiang si de zhou ji hua sheng yu gong zuo de yi jian’ (xin dang ting zi [2017] 38 hao) [Autonomous Region “Opinions on Strengthening and Improving Family Planning Work in the Four Prefectures of Southern Xinjiang”]; or the identity of the hosting vice-governor (Wuqia County Government 2018; Kizilsu Prefecture Government n.d.).

4 The speech is summarized on Xinjiang University’s website (Xinjiang University School of Economics and Management 2020).

5 The term is also employed for China in general, but then typically with a broader range of meanings.

6 Chinese: Zhong hua min zu (中华民族).

7 Extrapolating projections for Hotan to the rest of southern Xinjiang is not as accurate as modelling based on prefectural data, but sufficient for the purpose of achieving a general baseline estimate. Due to incomplete data, the CAS study also had to rely on interpolation for Hotan. The CAS study accounted for small migration flows reported in the 2010 census, with only minor impact on projections. This is ignored, given that the state would deliberately engineer much greater population flows.

8 The initial set of 2020 Xinjiang census data published in June 2021 could not be used for any aspect of the calculations, given that it contained neither ethnic population breakdowns by region nor natural population growth rates.

9 The calculations assume that southern Xinjiang’s natural population growth in 2019 and 2020 was 2.00 and 1.00 per mille, respectively, which is broadly based on the limited available evidence presented above.

10 Southern Xinjiang’s average death rate for in 2018 weighted by population was 6.37 per mille (China Statistics Press 2019, tabs 3-6, 3-7).