The British Press and the Uyghur Story It Wants You to Believe

It was the kind of piece the British broadsheets love to print, heavy with moral perfume and light on proof. The writer said she had spoken to countless victims, twice. She did not name one. Every line trembled with emotion, as if the tears were doing the typing. What she tried to prove was not what China had done, but what Britain still is, the last custodian of conscience, the noble press that fights against oppression in faraway lands, while incarcerating people at home for the most trivial offences, clamping down on speech, and quietly forgetting a one hundred and fifty year record of support for colonial atrocities across the world. It was touching, in a self flattering sort of way.

Beijing makes no apology for its version of the story. Since the creation of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in 1955, it has cast itself as a multiethnic state of fifty six peoples, united under one constitution but with different regional rights. Minority regions like Guangxi and Ningxia have long held exemptions from population limits, subsidies for cultural projects, and funding to close what Beijing calls the development gap.

A State Council white paper in 2004, titled National Minorities Policy and Its Practice in China, set it out plainly. In the official line, equality is not a gift but a pillar of national unity. Between 2012 and 2024, more than three million people in Xinjiang were lifted out of poverty. Per capita incomes rose significantly. Living standards began to converge with the coastal cities.

Islam remains officially recognised. The Tang era Huaisheng Mosque still calls the faithful in Guangzhou. In Xinjiang there are well over twenty four thousand mosques. Beijing presents restorations and cultural funding as evidence of coexistence. Delegations from Muslim majority countries have often echoed that message in public.

By 2024, Xinjiang’s development profile looks very different from a generation ago. Life expectancy is around seventy five. Output per person is above ten thousand dollars. Tourism has surged past three hundred million domestic visits a year. The Uyghur population has grown from eight million to about eleven million in two decades. These are the figures Beijing cites to claim that its model works, a strong centre with diverse edges.

At the same time the pattern of movement matters. Large numbers of Han Chinese settled in traditionally Uyghur majority areas across the twentieth century and after. Settlement towns and regiment farms reshaped local demography and labour markets. Parts of what had been lived culture now function as museum culture. Historic mosques, old city streets, and craft districts draw long queues of domestic visitors.

The way memory is curated is plain in Tibet as well. Visitors to the Potala Palace queue to see the dungeons where the last regime held four hundred prisoners, many for years in chains, and they pass exhibits that describe a cruel serf system that preceded what Beijing calls enlightened rule. The same museum logic now colours parts of Xinjiang. Culture is preserved behind glass. Faith is explained at a ticket window. The story told is one of rescue and order.

The counter story persists. Western groups and United Nations assessments argue that stability has been bought with coercion. They cite vocational centres, mass monitoring, and sharp falls in minority birth rates from 2017 to 2019. A major report in 2022 spoke of credible evidence of arbitrary detention and forced labour. Beijing rejects this as false and political. Officials reply that the hard measures ended a long terror cycle and saved lives.

Cultural preservation is another contested front. Hundreds of mosques and heritage sites have been renovated. Independent imagery has also shown demolitions and standardised rebuilds. Tourism brings money and visibility. It can also turn a living culture into a stage set.

Supporters argue the training centres from 2017 to 2019 blocked a slide into wider violence. Critics say they were re education by any other name. Both claims may carry pieces of truth.

Seventy years after the autonomous region was founded, the phrase socialist modern Xinjiang captures the paradox. Unity through order. Diversity by permission. Whether that holds will depend on whether the next generation of Uyghurs sees opportunity when it looks to Beijing, or only surveillance.