Day: April 5, 2023

Qasimjan Abdurehim remembers Kashgar’s centuries-old Khan Bazaar as a thriving marketplace where Uyghur merchants traded fabrics and modern-day tourists strolled along the pedestrian street that ran down the middle of it.

Last month, Chinese workers began demolishing the bazaar for “optimization” purposes — renovations to upgrade the area and replace what they said were dilapidated structures with modern ones. 

Uyghurs such as Abdurehim believe the move is another step by the Chinese government to force the mostly Muslim ethnic group to assimilate into the mainstream culture and wipe out their culture and heritage.

A short video posted on the TikTok app showed that most of the shops’ stairs, windows and doors had been destroyed. Market supervision officials confirmed that demolition and reconstruction efforts were under way.

“They tore down the old structures and built new ones, which they claimed to be earthquake-resistant,” said Abdurehim, who is in his 40s and now works as a real estate agent in Virginia.

This isn’t the first case. When Chinese authorities razed Kashgar’s iconic Grand Bazaar, the largest international trade market in all of Xinjiang, in 2022, they did not retain any of the culturally distinctive traits of the market.

Three arrested

Fearful they would lose their businesses forever, some Uyghur shop owners in the Khan Bazaar quarreled with government workers when the demolition began, a neighborhood committee member said. 

Police arrested three people including Bahtiyar, a 16-year-old whose father was imprisoned after 2017, when Chinese authorities began detaining Uyghurs in “re-education” camps and prisons and subjecting them to severe rights abuses that the United States and some western parliaments have said amount to genocide and crimes against humanity. The teenager was helping his mother run the shop on weekends, the member said. 

Ongoing demolition and construction of Uyghur structures in northwest China’s Xinjiang region have deprived some families of their residential homes, businesses and arable lands. Some communities have lost their mosques and ancient bazaars to authorities’ modernization efforts. 

Claims by Chinese authorities that they are now demolishing the Khan Bazaar to renovate the old buildings “do not fit with reality,” Abdurehim said when he heard about the recent demolition.

He said authorities had renovated the bazaar several times since the 1980s, including another “optimization” campaign that occurred sometime between 2000 and 2010 to improve building quality and safety.

But each renovation project deprived some Uyghurs of their homes and shops because they could not afford the renovation fees, he added. 

Chinese businesspeople with ample financial means and political backing intervened and bought the property at below-market prices, thereby gaining stakes in the Khan Bazaar, he said.

“That was, I think, a deliberate ploy devised by the government,” he told Radio Free Asia.

Residents’ comments drew attention

The bazaar sits across from the 15th-century Id Kah Mosque, which has been mostly closed for worship since 2016 amid a severe crackdown by Chinese authorities on the religion and culture of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

“Standing in front of the famous Kashgar Id Kah gate and looking through it, one could see a bustling street bazaar on the left side,” recalled Abdurehim, who last saw the place in 2017, when the former teacher and school principal went to the U.S. on a business trip and did not return.

Remaining Uyghur families, especially those whose heads had been detained in camps or prisons in recent years, worried about losing their homes and shops in the bazaar because they would not be able to pay the renovation fees, said a person familiar with the situation. The source declined to be identified for safety reasons.

Because of the repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the families carefully shared their concerns to local cadres, who issued and distributed demolition notices to area residents. But instead, their comments drew the attention of local political and legal organizations, the source said.

As a result, police officers, political and legal cadres and neighborhood committee members went to the scene to surveil shop owners and homeowners during the March destruction, he said.

One policeman told RFA by phone that officers, along with the political and legal committee, market supervision, and neighborhood committee members, were present. They all reminded the residents and shop owners to pay attention to social stability, he said.

An employee at the Kashgar-Central Asia International Travel Agency said authorities were tearing down the bazaar because the buildings were old, and that the renovation work would be completed by May 1.

“The shops and buildings there were shabby, and the government wants to improve its image by renovating this place,” he said.

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

An influx of Chinese investors and business owners to Laos in recent years is crowding out Lao entrepreneurs, who say the visitors have an unfair advantage in capital and are taking away their clientele.

Some 7,500 Chinese nationals have settled in Laos within the last 4-5 years, according to official estimates – most following the opening of a U.S.$6 billion high-speed railway connecting the two Communist neighbors in December 2021.

While the railway promises to offer land-locked Laos closer integration with the world’s second largest economy, most of the trade has been one way – with China exporting its machinery, auto parts, electronics and consumer goods. Laotian exports, on the other hand, were hindered by China’s strict COVID policies at the border.

But now, business owners say another Chinese export is driving up competition in their own country: Chinese people.

“Chinese merchants compete for customers with Lao merchants, making Lao merchants earn less income,” said one Lao entrepreneur who, like others interviewed by Radio Free Asia for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisal.

The entrepreneur said there are now Chinese merchants in “most markets” in the country, adding that with their higher amounts of capital and know-how, “we won’t be able to compete with them.”

Prior to the influx, there were already 31 Chinese companies operating within Laos and 20 Chinese-led projects underway in the capital Vientiane. But sources said Chinese nationals operating independently are increasingly entering into sectors previously dominated by Laotians, such as guesthouses, restaurants, and grocery stores.

At the same time as Chinese businesses are thriving, Lao businesses are beginning to shrink in places like Vientiane, said another Lao entrepreneur.

“Stores that sell clothes and food now mostly belong to Chinese and Vietnamese merchants,” he said. “Most Lao merchants are now forced to sell their goods at markets outside the city, while Chinese and Vietnamese merchants run the markets inside the city.”

Other Lao merchants noted that their Chinese counterparts tend to operate within their own community in Laos, keeping their profits within a sort of enclave.

A leg up in local markets

When asked whether Chinese merchants have any specific advantages over their Lao counterparts in Laos, one Chinese national told RFA that the playing field is equal, as both must adhere to the same regulations.

“My store pays the same import fees and taxes as stores owned by Laotians,” he said. “We enjoy no special privileges.”

But Lao store owners said that a strong yuan and weak kip has given Chinese nationals a leg up in local markets.

“[While] the rental rate is the same for both Lao and Chinese store owners, the rent is high at markets in the city” and Chinese entrepreneurs can more easily afford it, said another Lao businessman.

A Lao intellectual who focuses on the relationship between social and economic matters in the country told RFA that the increase in Chinese entrepreneurs has affected Laos in both positive and negative ways.

“[Chinese investment] is developing the cities, but the bad part is that Lao merchants can’t compete with them,” he said. “When we talk about investment know-how and experience in trade, Lao merchants have less than them.”

And the size of China’s footprint is only growing in Laos.

Kham Jane Vong Phosy, the Lao minister of planning and investment, told a meeting of government officials in July that there have been a total of 933 Chinese-led projects launched in Laos since 2015, valued at around U.S.$16.4 billion. Among the projects are new rail lines, highways, and dams.

As more Chinese flock to Laos, a Lao trade official told RFA that the government is monitoring the newcomers to ensure they play by the rules.

“In the past, we have received reports that some Chinese investors have violated our rules and regulations,” he said. “Trade officials strictly monitor Chinese investment in Laos in order to make sure investors are following the rules, and if we find any violations, authorities will address the problem.”

Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Matt Reed.

A former student leader of the 1989 protest movement at Hangzhou University has stood trial in the eastern province of Zhejiang for “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, after he refused food and drink in detention to commemorate the Tiananmen massacre.

Xu Guang appeared in poor health and was extremely weak as he stood trial by video link at the Xihu District People’s Court on April 3, following months of hunger striking and intermittent force-feeding while in a police-run detention center, fellow activist Li Qing told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday.

He told the court that he had refused food and drink in detention to remind the world to “never forget June 4th,” the date of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre that put an end to weeks of student-led protest in Beijing and other major Chinese cities.

“He was very weak,” Li said. “It wasn’t that cold … but he was wearing a padded jacket, so I think he must be pretty thin – his face looked very thin.”

Li said the authorities had removed his nutritional IV drip, and that Xu had asked for it to be brought back before he would address the court.

“I need the nutrient drip if I’m to have the strength to speak,” Xu said, after which his doctor told the judge that he should be able to speak with no problem.

“I can’t talk with the nutrient drip,” Xu insisted, speaking slowly but clearly after it was wheeled over and put in again, according to Li.

Later, he told the court: “I had just one aim in pursuing this hunger strike, which was to remind the world not to forget June 4th.”

Public mourning for victims or discussion of the events of spring and summer 1989 are banned, and references to June 4, 1989, blocked, filtered or deleted by the Great Firewall of government internet censorship.

Tank-shaped ice cream

Beauty influencer Austin Li, part of a generation of younger Chinese people who consequently know little of the massacre, had his June 3, 2022, livestream interrupted after he displayed a tank-shaped ice cream dessert, prompting censors to pull the plug immediately.

Li said he was particularly moved by Xu’s closing statement.

“He said: ‘I love this country, and I love the Chinese people. I want the verdict on the 1989 protests to be overturned,’” Li said.

Xu friend and fellow activist Zou Wei said the prosecution had based its case on comments made by Xu on overseas social media platforms.

“The long arm of the Chinese Communist Party now extends overseas,” Zou said. “Xu Guang’s video comments on Facebook, Twitter and Telegram are being used as a basis for conviction.”

The prosecution requested a jail term of less than five years, sources told Radio Free Asia.

Xu, 54, had been approached by officers from the Xihu district police department and warned to keep a low profile during the 33rd anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre on June 4, 2022.

He was later detained after he held up a placard outside his local police station calling for the official verdict on the 1989 protest movement to be overturned.

‘Never publicly accounted for its actions’

Xu previously served a five-year jail term after trying to formally register the China Democracy Party as a political party in 1998, and has repeatedly called on the party leadership to overturn the official verdict of “counterrevolutionary rebellion” on the 1989 protests.

The New York-based Human Rights in China describes the June 3-4, 1989, massacre as a government-backed military crackdown that ended large-scale, peaceful protests in Beijing and other cities during that year.

But the government described the protests as “counterrevolutionary riots,” a term they later replaced with “political disturbances” which they say were suppressed by “decisive measures.”

“The Chinese government has never publicly accounted for its actions with an independent and open investigation, brought to justice those responsible for the killing of unarmed civilians, or compensated the survivors or families of those killed,” the group says on its website.

“In fact, it has never made public even the names and the number of people killed or wounded during the crackdown, or of those executed or imprisoned afterwards in connection with the protests,” it said.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Matt Reed.

Chinese authorities are harassing and discriminating against relatives of Tibetans who protested against Chinese rule by setting their bodies alight going back to 2008, two sources in Tibet told Radio Free Asia.

For example, students related to such protesters have been denied authorization to take university entrance exams, while others have been denied job opportunities, they say. 

“There is a student here who is related to someone who self-immolated in 2013,” a source from Labrang (in Chinese Labuleng) told Radio Free Asia’s Tibetan Service.

”It is for that reason that the student was denied an authorization letter from the government to sit for a university admission examination, and therefore that student never got to go to university. I have witnessed it myself,” he said.

“Tibetans who took part in the 2008 unrest and also those related to people who were part of those protests are discriminated against in their job opportunities, schools and in other ways,” he said.

Beijing has been collecting detailed information on people who participated in pro-Tibet political activities, especially the 2008 anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan Uprising, when as many as 400 Tibetans were killed as Chinese authorities quelled major protests.

Since 2009, more than 150 Tibetans have self-immolated to protest against repression from the Chinese communist government. Most of the self-immolations took place in the regions of Ngaba (Aba) and Labrang. 

The Chinese government keeps the data about the protesters and their family members in an easily accessible online database.

Another Tibetan, from Ngaba, said that the Chinese government routinely harasses relatives of protesters.

 “In 2022 the Chinese government continued to harass and scrutinize a Tibetan who is the nephew of someone who self-immolated from Ngaba,” the Ngaba source said. “He was charged with contacting people outside Tibet and sentenced to three years in prison. Following that his family members were denied all the government assistance that they were receiving”. 

The government is even harsher on former political prisoners, the Labrang source said.

“They are constantly under scrutiny; their lives never go back to normal and they are also denied lodging when they travel to different places,” said the source. 

“Tibetans who have been convicted of offenses that the Chinese government considers illegal are often discriminated against and denied access to proper medical care. They are also denied financial assistance from the government”. 

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster. 

The ruling Chinese Communist Party has appointed a new bishop of Shanghai without approval from the Vatican, in what critics say is a breach of a controversial agreement on the appointment of bishops signed in September 2018.

“Bishop Shen Bin, until now Bishop of Haimen, was installed in the Diocese of Shanghai, China, this morning,” the Vatican News website reported.

“The Holy See had been informed a few days ago of the decision of the Chinese authorities,” it quoted Holy See spokesman Matteo Bruni as saying.

“I have nothing to say about the Holy See’s assessment of the matter for the time being,” Bruni said in remarks reported by several media outlets including Reuters.

The Shanghai Diocese said in a statement dated April 4 on its website that around 200 people attended the inauguration ceremony, including all of the diocese’s priests and nuns.

“Bishop Shen Bin said that he will continue to carry forward the fine tradition of patriotism and love of the Catholic Church in Shanghai, adhere to the principle of independence and self-government, adhere to the direction of Catholicism in China, and better promote the healthy tradition of Catholic evangelism in Shanghai,” the statement said.

‘Without the pope’s mandate’

The statement refers to the ongoing “sinicization” of all religious traditions under Communist Party supreme leader Xi Jinping, who regards Christianity as a potentially destabilizing foreign import, according to a report in the Catholic news site AsiaNews.

The report cited Vatican sources as saying that the appointment was “unilateral,” and made without papal approval. 

“Indirect confirmation also comes from the Catholic faithful in China, who have expressed sadness at the installation, which they say came without the pope’s mandate: a source of great upset for the Catholic community in Shanghai,” it said.

The 2018 Sino-Vatican agreement on the appointment of bishops, which was renewed in 2020 and 2022, requires the approval of both Beijing and the Vatican before a new bishop can be appointed.

A Catholic priest in the northern province of Shanxi who gave only the surname Shen declined to comment on the appointment when contacted by Radio Free Asia on Wednesday.

“I don’t know about this, and don’t want to talk about it,” he said, before hanging up.

A Beijing-based Catholic who gave only the surname Liu said the Shanghai appointment had left many Chinese Catholics dissatisfied, but they wouldn’t dare to say so.

“All churches are run by the government, which wants us all to be patriotic as well as religious,” Liu said.

A Catholic from the eastern province of Jiangsu who gave only the surname Zhong agreed.

“They just ignore the authority of the Pope and the Vatican,” Zhong said. “This appointment of bishop [Shen] shows that the Chinese Communist Party is ignoring the Sino-Vatican agreement, and the authority of the Vatican when it comes to the appointment of bishops.”

“The church has no autonomy,” Zhong said. “Some of my friends who are Catholic priests often express their dissatisfaction with this in private.”

He said many Catholics in China remain loyal to Rome, and take issue with any role for Beijing in the appointment of bishops.

Predecessor had been under house arrest

Shen’s appointment comes after his predecessor Ma Daqin, who was recognized by both Beijing and the Holy See, was placed under house arrest for resigning from the Communist Party-backed Catholic Patriotic Association immediately after his ordination.

Ma later rejoined the government-backed body, but with a record now tainted by the incident, AsiaNews said.

It said the Vatican would have preferred Joseph Xing Wenzhi to lead the diocese of Shanghai, but that he had resigned in 2012 for reasons that have never been made clear.

The Catholic Church-linked newspaper Milan Avvenire Online said “concerns of social control and public order” shouldn’t be allowed to dominate decisions on new appointments.

“The voice of Rome must be adequately listened to,” the paper said. “Sometimes one gets the impression that in China there is a … lack of understanding of the universal nature of the Church.”

It said recent changes at the top of the Communist Party’s outreach and influence arm, the United Front Work Department, could have been behind the decision to move ahead unilaterally with the Shanghai appointment.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Matt Reed.

As students filed into their elementary classrooms this week across North Korea for the start of the school year, entering class sizes in cities were noticeably smaller, a reflection of the declining birthrate in the country as more women become breadwinners to support their families, sources in the country said.

The trend appears to be making authorities nervous, a person who works in education in South Pyongan province, north of the capital Pyongyang, told Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“Yesterday we welcomed the newly enrolled students at Toksong Elementary School, but there were not many new students,” he said. “Ten years ago, we used to divide the new, incoming students into four or five separate classes, but each year the number of new students decreases. So there are only three classes [of first graders] this year.”

Each of the three classes has about 30 students in this particular school. But other city schools seem to be seeing the same pattern, although it is less noticeable in rural areas, where families are larger. 

That’s down from as many as 45 children per classroom in the 1980s, which then dwindled steadily over the years since then.

Female breadwinners

Demographics and economics are driving the trend.

The decline is directly related to more women working and becoming the main source of income for their families, according to a North Korean escapee using the pseudonym Kim Hak-myong, who worked as a high school teacher for 20 years until he fled the country in 2015.

Most North Korean men are in government-assigned jobs, and receive paltry salaries that are not enough to support their families. 

So their wives have had to start side businesses, such as setting up stalls in markets to sell food or other items – which now bring in far more money than most of their husbands.

That’s made it harder for women to bear and raise children.

In cities such as Pyongsong, South Pyongan’s provincial capital, nine out of 10 women were running businesses in the marketplace and serving as their families’ breadwinners, the first source said. 

“With more women running these businesses, they tend to give birth to only one child,” he said. “If you have a lot of children, you will be pushed out of the market by the competition and it will be difficult to make a living.”

North Korea’s birth rate last year was about 1.9 children per woman, just below the replacement rate of 2.1 births, according to the United Nations Population Fund’s 2022 State of the World Population Report. That’s down from around 4 births per woman in the 1970s, and 2.3 births per woman in the 1990s.

‘Only one child’

The government used to provide food subsidies for families with more children, but now that these subsidies have stopped, women are choosing to have only one child, or two at the most, a second source living in the northwestern province of North Pyongan said.

“These days the government simply tells people to have more kids and doesn’t provide any food, so women who have to work to feed their families are giving up on childbirth to focus on business,” she said. “Because of this reality, the number of students enrolled in elementary school is decreasing.” 

When she went to the local elementary school on April 1 to congratulate her nephew on his first day of school, she was surprised at the small class sizes. 

“Five years ago, when my daughter entered [the same] school, there were about 80 students enrolling, but this year there were about 60 students,” she said. “The educational authorities are also paying attention to how much this year’s decrease will be.”  

Intensifying competition

Kim, the escapee and former educator, said that the shrinking class size became visible in the 2010s, “as women began to establish their businesses in the marketplace, [new students] began to decrease noticeably.”

Also, more young women are enlisting in the military, and avoiding giving birth because it costs a lot to raise even one child properly, he said.

The shrinking enrollment has led to competition among families to get their kids into the good schools, Kim said.

“Originally, you were supposed to go to the school near your home,” he said. “But now, when there’s a [highly skilled] math teacher at a good school, the number of students goes up because more students flock toward that school.”

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.