On June 14, the Chinese Communist Party newspaper Global Times published a report on the latest census of China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The article claims that the populations of Han Chinese and ethnic minorities, including indigenous Uyghurs, rose “markedly over the past decade.”
“The population of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region grew more than 18 percent over the past decade, the fourth fastest growth rate among the nation's 31 provincial-level regions, and the populations of the Han and ethnic minorities have increased greatly with the latter accounting for more than 57 percent of the total, regional authorities announced on Monday,” the article states.
“The announcement came after some anti-China forces and media outlets used the population data from the seventh national census, which was released on May 13, as new ingredients to cook up their old lies of ‘genocide.’”
The genocide accusation refers to China’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, who have faced restrictions since 2016. The as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Those acts include “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group” and “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.” Human rights watchdogs and other critics say that China’s mass detentions of Uyghurs and its measures to reduce their birthrate constitute genocide.
The Global Times article cites as sources a Xinjiang regional statistics bureau communique that changes earlier population estimates and an unnamed officials at a news conference:
“The population data for the Uyghur ethnic group in 2018 published by Xinjiang, which was calculated by some research institutes based on relevant materials and sampling data, had some deviations and therefore needs revising according to the census results, the official explained, stressing that both Xinjiang's total population and Uyghur's population have sustained steady growth.”
The article claims that the Han population grew by 24.86 percent, while the Uyghur population grew by 16.2 percent, and attributes the Han population’s rapid growth to a “large influx of migrant workers,” “sustained social stability” and “rapid economic development.”
The article slams an , which previously claimed that a sharp drop in official birthrates in Xinjiang between 2017 and 2019 was evidence of a policy aimed at “lowering the indigenous birthrate.”
According to Global Times, the birthrate dropped because of economic development and urbanization:
“In recent years, as Xinjiang has deepened its poverty alleviation efforts, the production and living conditions in impoverished areas in southern Xinjiang have improved continuously; urbanization has significantly accelerated and the urban population has continued to increase; and the education level and cultural quality of people of all ethnicities improved substantially … Accordingly, people's attitude toward childbearing and upbringing has changed, with more and more people of all ethnicities voluntarily choosing to marry late and to have fewer children.”
The article omits mention of the ongoing detention of Uyghurs. Chinese authorities initially of detention facilities, but when became too obvious to ignore, officials shifted to calling them educational institutions or “job-training centers.” Witnesses, however, have described in which inmates’ Muslim faith is denigrated and
“Beginning in April 2017, Chinese Communist Party authorities in Xinjiang launched a series of ‘strike-hard’ campaigns against ‘illegal births’ with the explicit aim to ‘reduce and stabilize fertility at a moderate level’ and decrease the birth-rate in southern Xinjiang by at least 4 children per thousand people from 2016 levels,” the ASPI report states.
The Global Times article touches on changes in family planning policy in Xinjiang, claiming that in 2017, all ethnic groups in the region were subject to a new policy that allowed two children for urban families and three for rural families.
The , however, says the family planning laws are being applied in a discriminatory fashion:
“In 2017, the Chinese government’s approach to birth control among minority nationalities shifted from ‘reward and encourage’ towards a more coercive and intrusive policing of reproduction processes,” the report states. “Hefty fines, disciplinary punishment, extrajudicial internment, or the threat of internment were introduced for any ‘illegal births.’ Family-planning officials in Xinjiang were told to carry out ‘early detection and early disposal of pregnant women found in violation of policy.’”