The more than 87,000 dams China has built have displaced 23 million people. There’s no shortage of reporting on the construction of hydropower stations and how people have been forced to move away from their homes. However, rarely do we see follow-up stories about the people who have been affected by damming. Photographer Li Junhui met some of these families in Sichuan and Yunnan, and made this series of portraits.
China has spent the last four decades liberalizing its economy. But in the country’s remaining collectivized villages, nostalgia for yesteryear is strong. Sixth Tone multimedia journalist Shi Yangkun spent several months, beginning in March 2018, traveling to several of these villages where the local government owns and operates a corporation that the residents work for, and the profits from the corporation are directed back into the village.
The Evenki (or Ewenki) are an ethnic minority who traditionally lived in the forests of Inner Mongolia. They were seminomadic hunter-gatherers and earned a living by raising reindeer and harvesting their antlers, which are often used in Chinese medicine and can sell for U.S.$700 per kilogram. Since the 1950s, the Chinese government has launched several resettlement campaigns to relocate Evenki in an attempt to “modernize” the group, according to Sixth Tone. They were given free housing in close proximity to urban areas, an attempt to help them gain access to the market economy.
In testimony last week before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats asserted that “China’s actions reflect a long-term strategy to achieve global superiority.” With China’s global influence and tensions between Washington and Beijing growing apace, what is the best way to understand how China envisions itself in the world? Some contend China’s leaders seek global preeminence; others, that they are principally focused on restoring China’s dominant position within the Asia-Pacific; and yet others, that the country’s engagement abroad is still primarily rooted in fulfilling domestic imperatives. Which conclusion is correct? Which documents, statements, and actions should observers pay attention to in rendering their judgments?
When U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton announced Washington’s new strategy for Africa last December, he mentioned China 14 times in his speech. So often, in fact, that a lot of observers commented that the new policy seemed to be more focused on containing China’s rising influence on the continent than on Africa itself.
In a courtroom in Zharkent, Kazakhstan, in July 2018, a former kindergarten principal named Sayragul Sauytbay calmly described what Chinese officials continue to deny: a vast new gulag of “de-extremification training centers” has been created for Turkic Muslim inhabitants of Xinjiang, the Alaska-sized region in western China. Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh, had fled Xinjiang and was seeking asylum in Kazakhstan, where her husband and son are citizens. She told the court how she had been transferred the previous November from her school to a new job teaching Kazakh detainees in a supposed “training center.” “They call it a ‘political camp’ . . . but in reality it’s a prison in the mountains,” she said. There were 2,500 inmates in the facility where she had worked for four months, and she knew of others. There may now be as many as 1,200 such camps in Xinjiang, imprisoning up to a million people, including Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and especially Uighurs, who make up around 46 percent of Xinjiang’s population.
Anna Holzmann is a Junior Research Associate at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS). Her research focuses on China’s industrial policies, especially with regard to emerging technologies. Prior to joining MERICS, she worked as a Research Assistant at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and gained professional experience in Austria’s information and communications technology industry. Holzmann earned a B.Sc. in International Business Administration, a B.A. in Chinese Studies, and and M.A. in East Asian Economy & Society in Austria, Australia, and China. During her studies, she completed a one-year intensive Chinese language and culture program at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou.
Larry Hong earned his Bachelor’s degree in 2013 from Columbia University and is currently a J.D. candidate at Duke Law School. He previously interned at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, American Bar Association, and Council on Foreign Relations. He has worked as a research assistant for distinguished scholars from several leading law schools, and is warm to the idea of life in academia. Outside of law, Hong is also interested in political economy, history, cinema, and theory.
The United States indictments against Huawei look set to significantly worsen already tense relations between China and the U.S. As America pressures allies to drop Huawei and other Chinese firms, U.S. and European officials point to China’s own laws as evidence that even private firms are potential arms of the Chinese state, and the political atmosphere grows ever colder in Beijing, the vision of a world brought together through technology feels ever more distant.
Bertram Lang and Heike Holbig recently published an overview of the Foreign NGO Law’s effect on Europe-based non-profits, titled “Civil Society Work in China: Trade-Offs and Opportunities for European NGOs.” Though the article is primarily focused on Europe, much of its analysis is pertinent to international groups hailing from elsewhere in the world.
