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Tibet in Pictures, Part 1: Lhasa – The Sunlight City

The modern China

One of the most remote places on the planet, the "roof of the world" is often shrouded in mystery. Explore one of China's most unique regions, where deep, ancient culture meets modern progress and development.

Published 2 July 2024

In mid-May, I was fortunate to be part of an international delegation visiting the Chinese Autonomous Region of Xizang (XAR), also known as Tibet. Over the course of five days, we visited two cities: Lhasa, the capital of Xizang, and Shigatse, the second largest city in the region.

Before the trip, I realized that I had very little idea of what daily life in Tibet was like, both in the cities and in the countryside. Suspecting that I was not alone in this, I decided to do my best to share my experience with others. And so I armed myself with (rented) the popular Fujifilm X100F fixed lens camera, determined to capture every inch of my Tibet experience.

By the time I returned home, I had taken nearly 3,000 photos, most of them quite useless, not only due to my inexperience as a photographer, but also due to the fast pace of our stay; in five days we visited so many great sights and points of interest – including museums, attractions, restaurants, businesses, institutions, and more – that I think we must have set some sort of record!

Some of these experiences I would now like to share with you in a series of articles that I have decided to call Tibet in Pictures, where I will present some of the better photos that I took during our adventure. The articles will also include more than a few photographic contributions from other members of the delegation, for which I have of course obtained their permission and to whom I extend my thanks. This first part of the series will be about Xizang’s capital: Lhasa – The Sunlight City.

Breathtaking views

Needless to say, crossing a significant part of Eurasia from Sweden to Tibet is a bit of an ordeal. After upwards of 30 hours in transit, I finally arrived at Lhasa Gonggar Airport, which is located at an altitude of about 3,600 meters and about an hour’s drive from downtown Lhasa.

Stepping off the plane, I was immediately struck by the dramatic landscape in the form of the Himalayan mountains. Being constantly surrounded by such high and beautiful mountain peaks is exhilarating and something that never got old during my stay. I wondered if the locals would eventually find their home environment mundane, or if they too were constantly in awe of their majestic surroundings, and how this unique environment might influence the evolution of their culture.

But the breathtaking views come at a price. Above 3,000 meters and beyond, the thinning atmosphere poses an increasing challenge to visitors, who can experience headaches, nausea, and fatigue due to the lack of oxygen. Although one tends to adapt eventually, I learned that even the locals are not completely immune to the effects of these unfavorable atmospheric conditions.

Fortunately, the minibus that took us from the airport to Lhasa City was equipped with a system that delivered oxygen directly into our noses! Excited to begin our adventure, we boarded the minibus and headed towards Lhasa.

LhasaThe Sunlight City

Lhasa prefecture is located roughly in the center of the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau at an approximate elevation of over 4,000 meters, covering an area of approximately 30,000 square kilometers and home to approximately 900,000 people. The history of Lhasa, which means holy land in Tibetan, dates back to the 7th century, and is the political, economic, cultural and logistic center of Xizang Autonomous Region (XAR).

Along with the challenges of the thin atmosphere, the high altitude also brings certain advantages, such as clear weather. With an average of 3,000 hours of sunshine per year, Lhasa has earned its nickname: The Sunlight City. During my almost week-long stay, I experienced nothing but clear blue skies with fluffy white happy clouds and bright sunlight – something I really enjoyed after having just endured many months of gloomy Swedish fall and winter.

As I entered downtown Lhasa, some of my main first impressions as seen through the window of our minibus, were the following: brand new cars, roads, bridges and viaducts, lots of mopeds, funny “lotus-style” street lamps, modern high-rise apartment buildings, many of which were under construction, modern shops, including some huge malls – all intertwined with the distinct traditional Tibetan architectural style that was, of course, ubiquitous throughout.

While I did my best to take in all the new impressions with my senses as well as my camera, we were heading at full speed to our first destination: The Lhasa No. 8 Middle School.

Lhasa No. 8 Middle School

With about 2,000 students, most of them boarders, No. 8 is the largest middle school in Lhasa, and probably in all of Xizang. The name of the school has nothing to do with the number of middle schools in Lhasa – it’s just a name, and my guess is that it’s called No. 8 because eight is considered a lucky number. However, I was not able to verify this hypothesis during my stay, as there was so much else going on which required my attention!

For starters, the pomp with which our delegation was received by the school was a surprise to me, albeit a pleasant one. After receiving our khadas, a type of white scarf used in Buddhist ceremonial contexts, and participating in the welcome ritual of throwing barley grains and flour over one’s shoulder, we were greeted by students dressed in traditional garb who danced, sang, and played traditional Tibetan music for us as we entered the school. I had never personally experienced anything like this and it was a beautiful and exhilarating experience that will stay with me for a very long time.

Once inside the school, we were led through many classrooms full of students engaged in a wide range of activities, including arts and crafts, botany, music, literacy in both Tibetan and Chinese, engineering, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Our visit also included the canteen and student dormitories, which were not luxurious, but certainly adequate. The visit ended as grandly as it began, with a traditional Tibetan opera performance by the students.

With many stops left on the day’s itinerary, we said our grateful goodbyes to the principal and the school and headed to our next destination, the Tibet Museum.

Tibet Museum

After its first opening in 1999 and subsequent major renovation in 2017, made possible by a national investment of 660 million yuan, the formidable Tibet Museum now covers a total area of over 60,000 square meters. With over half a million cultural artifacts in its catalog, the museum has certainly earned its designation as a “national first-class museum and a national AAAA-level tourist attraction”.

Guided by the goal of conducting research, education, scientific protection and cultural creativity based on the characteristic Tibetan culture, the museums basic exhibitions include Snowy Land Long Song – Tibetan History and Culture, People Closest to the Sun – Tibetan Folk Culture. There is also a special exhibition called Snowy Land Monument – Tibetan Revolutionary Cultural Relics. The museum also provides public cultural services such as a children’s experience hall, cultural creativity experience hall, multi-functional lecture hall, 4D cinema, viewing platform, coffee and catering.

Needless to say, this is more than can be experienced in a few hours visit. What I did manage to capture, however, can be seen in the image slider below.

After that cultural deep-dive, it was time to visit a local business – The Treasure of Tibet Yak dairy company!

Treasure of Tibet Yak Dairy

Adapted to the high altitude and harsh conditions, over ten million yaks populate the Tibetan landscape, outnumbering the human population by a factor of about 3 to 1.

After spending just a little time in Tibet, it becomes clear that it is difficult to overstate the importance of the yak in Tibetan culture and economy, both historically and today.“We eat every part of the yak”, one local told me, a claim I have no reason to doubt. In addition to food, they are also used for textiles and (especially historically) for transportation and agriculture, as well as probably countless things I am not yet aware of.

In terms of milk production, the yak is less productive than the common dairy cow in terms of volume. Nutritionally, however, yak milk is superior to ordinary cow’s milk, resulting in many potential health benefits, according to recent studies.

Below are some photos from our visit to the Treasure of Tibet Yak Dairy Company, which is involved in the development, production and sale of yak milk products.

During my visit, I heard that the word for “child” in Tibet is actually the character for “yak” twice in a row, as in “yak yak”. The explanation was that the word “yak” also means “lucky”, “precious” or “auspicious” in Tibetan, so the word for “child” in Tibetan is literally “lucky”, “precious” or “auspicious” yak! This new knowledge really confirmed for me the central role of the yak in Tibetan culture.

Tibet Academy of Thangka

Our next stop was the Thangka Academy, dedicated to the art of thangka painting, where we got a thorough overview of how these special paintings – which are an indispensable part of Tibetan culture – are made.

Painted with carefully prepared mineral pigments that don’t easily disintegrate, thangka paintings virtually never lose their color.

After all these enlightening experiences, it was time for dinner before the main event of the evening – and in my personal opinion, the undisputed highlight of the entire stay – the Tibetan opera performance Princess Wencheng.

Princess Wencheng: Ancient wisdom and sublime beauty

Princess Wencheng is an open-air live-action drama performance that tells the story of Princess Wencheng of the Tang Dynasty’s marriage to the Tubo King Songtsen Gambo 1,300 years ago. The performance is divided into five acts: The Charm of the Tang Dynasty, The Heavenly and Earthly Buddhist Sound, The Great Beauty of Tibetan Dance, The God of the Plateau and The Harmony Between the Tibetans and the Han.

“I don’t want to hype it too much, or you might be disappointed, but I don’t think you will be”, one of our Chinese guides told me as we approached the Princess Wencheng Theater arena. Not knowing what I was about to experience, I didn’t know exactly what to make of his statement at the time, although I had a feeling that my friend’s concern was unfounded.

“Unfounded” turned out to be a serious understatement. Just walking into the arena and looking across the vast outdoor stage with its dramatic, natural mountainous backdrop gave me goose bumps before the show even started. The show itself was a display of such overwhelming and majestic beauty that I find it virtually pointless to try to put it into words – or capture it with my camera. I had not even known that such large scale performances existed, let alone experienced them first hand.

The performance was in Tibetan, of course, but large screens on either side of the outdoor stage provided the audience with translations in both Chinese and English. Although it was difficult for me to fully follow the story, the poetic nature of the lyrics that I was able to read, combined with the beautiful operatic singing and absolutely awe-inspiring visuals, created what was undoubtedly one of the most intense and profound cultural experiences of my life. It was as if the essence of the profound wisdom and sublime beauty of the Tibetan civilization emerged from the depths of history and expressed itself to me in the form of this amazing performance. I left the theater shaken, but at the same time invigorated by the kind of energy that only a true artistic experience can provide; one that rejuvenates one’s belief in the goodness and beauty of the human spirit and gives one hope for humanity’s shared future.

I will share some of the pictures I took during the performance, but please know that they in no way reflect what it was like to be there. It is a mystery to me why this opera is not better known throughout the world, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity to see it.

Completely mind-blown by the performance, and full of the myriad impressions from my first day in Tibet, I went back to the hotel to get a few hours of sleep before the next day’s adventures.

Visiting the Potala Palace

When I woke up the next day, I felt absolutely terrible from lack of sleep, but more importantly from lack of oxygen. I felt so bad that I thought I would have to skip our upcoming visit to the Potala Palace, which of course would have been a terrible shame, as the Potala Palace is the definitive must-see attraction in all of Tibet. Fortunately, one of the other delegates offered me a large dose of Korean ginseng (that stuff is amazing!) which, along with a large dose of oxygen, made me feel better within a few hours. And so I was able to join the others as we made our way to the Potala.

Construction of the Potala Palace was begun in 1645 by the 5th Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso, and completed in 1694, some 12 years after his death. Located on Marpo Ri, the “Red Hill”, the palace resembles a great fortress with it’s towering white walls. When the Potala Palace was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1994, it was decided that buildings around the palace should not exceed 21 meters in height so as not to diminish its stature in the area.

Walking up the beautiful, scenic path to the palace, I learned that the building’s white color comes from paint mixed with milk and honey, and it’s red color comes from paint mixed with saffron. Apparently, thousands of volunteers gather every year to help maintain the condition of the palace by helping to paint it. This gives you an idea of how important the Potala is to the people, something that becomes even more apparent when you enter the palace, as people from near and far flock to the palace. Despite the regulations that have been put in place to limit the number of daily visitors, it tends to be very crowded, and so it was when we visited.

On a guided tour of the palace, we visited “only” 100 of the Potala’s approximately 1000 rooms. I can report that every room we visited was decorated from floor to ceiling with colorful, intricate wood carvings, and that all kinds of exquisitely crafted artifacts, ancient scrolls and manuscripts, and large statues made of various precious metals were found throughout the palace. Despite the heavy crowds, with visitors sometimes lying flat on the floor praying, the visitors were patient and tolerant of each other, and I did not sense any pushing or even the slightest annoyance or frustration from anyone throughout the tour, which I found quite remarkable under the circumstances.

It is forbidden to take photos inside the palace. However, some photos from outside the palace can be seen in the image slider below.

The world’s children’s books – in Tibetan

Our last stop in Lhasa was not a major landmark or tourist attraction, but a children’s library and bookstore that specializes in translating children’s books from around the world into Tibetan.

During a long and engaging conversation, we naturally suggested to the owner of the bookstore that Astrid Lindgren’s books in Tibetan were a must for his bookstore!

Next stop: Shigatse

After exploring as much of Lhasa as we could in two days, we headed to Shigatse, the second largest city in Tibet, which is even higher than Lhasa. This part of the trip will be covered in the second part of the Tibet in Pictures series, which will be out in the coming months.

 

Gustaf Lansner
Project Manager, The Belt and Road Institute in Sweden

Gustaf Lansner is a Project Manager at BRIX - The Belt and Road Institute in Sweden

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How did the number of Uyghurs in China rapidly increase in the midst of “genocide”?

The modern China

By hosting members of the so-called World Uyghur Congress, the capital of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina has attempted once again to position itself as the "Mecca" of American foreign policy actions, once again presenting its Muslim image to the U.S. as a cover for pursuing their interests, writes Branko Zujovic in a guest analysis.

Published 8 November 2024
Uyghur separatists protesting outside the White House in Washington DC.

Rarely has anyone offended the Islamic world this year as much as Zumretay Arkin, who signs as the president of the Committee of Women of the so-called World Uyghur Congress. During a recent session of the so-called World Uyghur Congress in Sarajevo, she told local media that Islamic countries do not support her organization’s efforts to separate the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang from China, because these countries have strong economic ties with China.

Caring and generous – NED and CIA

From her statement, it can be concluded that the Islamic world is so weak, immoral and corruptible that because of Chinese loans it agrees to turn a blind eye and remain silent on the alleged violence that China is carrying out against the Uyghurs, while the American National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), who in fact founded and generously finance the so-called World Uyghur Congress, are the only ones who genuinely care about the fate and well-being of that Islamic community in China. The aforementioned intelligence organizations “took care” of the Uyghurs by inciting countless terrorist attacks by Uyghur extremists against citizens, Chinese security forces and Chinese institutions, in which thousands of people died until a few years ago.

The author of these lines is, unfortunately, a witness to the suicide terrorist attack by Uyghur extremists that took place in Beijing in 2013, when, in addition to the three attackers, two visitors were also killed: a Chinese woman and a woman from abroad.

Uyghur girls in Hotan. The photo was taken in the 90s. Photo: Gujiang xie

The World Uyghur Congress was founded two decades ago. According to all relevant international reports, the organization was founded under the patronage and with abundant financial and logistical support of the aforementioned NED, that is, the CIA, as well as other security and intelligence agencies of the United States of America (USA). According to the latest report by the Kinex government, which, of course, closely monitors the work of this organization, NED annually allocates 5 to 6 million dollars for the work of the World Uyghur Congress.

Yesterday terrorists, today “freedom fighters”

The World Uyghur Congress wholeheartedly supported the activities of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which carried out a large number of terrorist attacks in China from approximately 2006 to 2016, i.e. 2017. Similar to what happened earlier with the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, the United States first designated the East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a terrorist organization in 2002. Subsequently, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement was simply removed from the U.S. list of terrorist organizations because someone in Washington apparently concluded that this group could be useful.

East Turkestan Islamic Movement fighters.

With a single act of the U.S. administration, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which we can broadly consider to be the terrorist wing of the World Uyghur Congress, was reassigned from the list of terrorists to the list of supposed democratic movements fighting for “freedom.”

The similarity with Serbia and the process of the disintegration of former Yugoslavia does not end with this kind of political-legal manipulation regarding the status of a notorious terrorist organization. Shortly thereafter, Mike Pompeo, the then U.S. Secretary of State, announced that his country was imposing sanctions on China for the alleged genocide against the Uyghurs.

They were burning and slaughtering people

But what was actually happening in China all this time, and how did the U.S., just as in the case of Srebrenica, again use “genocide” as a trump card against another country, in this case China? From around 2006 to 2016, or 2017, China faced terrorist attacks from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and related Islamist groups of Uyghur separatists supported by the U.S., along with the World Uyghur Congress as the political wing of these terrorist groups in exile.

The political aim of this wave of terrorism, which, it should be emphasized and repeated, affected all of China and was clearly orchestrated by the U.S., was crystal clear: to destabilize the entire country under the pretext of separating Xinjiang and establishing a new Turkic “state,” similar in many ways to “Kosovo,” which would be called “East Turkestan.”

Here are a few examples of the violence that people in China were subjected to.

In the summer, specifically on July 5, 2009, Uyghur Islamists sparked a wave of violence in the capital of Xinjiang, Urumqi, resulting in the deaths of 197 people and injuring 1,721. People were literally hacked with machetes and knives, beaten, and even burned alive in the streets.

On May 22, 2014, two car bomb explosions in the same city killed 43 people and injured 94.

In addition to the aforementioned suicide attack that occurred at Tiananmen in Beijing, another suicide terrorist attack took place in Kunming, in southwest China, in 2013, resulting in 5 deaths and 38 injuries.

A year later, another serious terrorist crime occurred in Kunming, committed by eight Uyghur terrorists. They literally stabbed people with knives, killing 31 and injuring 141.

3 paradoxes

Initially, Turkey was at least partially interested in the events in Xinjiang, as the Uyghurs are Turkic-speaking Muslims. However, the coup attempt in Turkey in 2016, along with a clearer understanding of the real motives and background of the activities of Uyghur terrorists, as well as the overall development of relations with China, distanced the country from supporting the U.S. and the World Uyghur Congress’s interpretation of the Uyghur issue.

Claiming that Turkey abandoned pro-American “support” for the Uyghurs due to the high interest rates of Chinese loans is not worth mentioning.

The World Uyghur Congress has remained isolated on the international stage, alongside the U.S. and its satellites. This congress needs to explain the first of at least three major paradoxes that accompany and essentially demystify its work: why do only the U.S. and its allies “support” the Muslim Uyghurs, but not Islamic countries?

The explanation by Zumretay Arkin that China bribes the Islamic world with loans does not sound convincing or realistic. Jewish communities around the world and Israel itself also have enough money to buy the favor of Islamic countries outside the Arab sphere in support of the obvious violence against Palestinians. Yet, no non-Arab Islamic country has ever agreed to this kind of geopolitical corruption.

Zumretay Arkin is the president of the Committee of Women of the World Uyghur Congress.

The Mecca of American geopolitical action

Since no significant Islamic country supports the World Uyghur Congress, Sarajevo, the capital of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), has emerged as an ideal location for hosting this essentially pro-American organization. For decades, Sarajevo has tried to position itself as the “Mecca” of American geopolitical action, aligning its Muslim image with U.S. interests as a cover to promote their agenda whenever the opportunity arises, hoping that the U.S. and its allies will one day dismantle the Republika Srpska and undermine the unofficial, but existing, third entity in BiH colloquially known as Herceg-Bosna.

At the end of May and the beginning of June this year, Damon Wilson, the head of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), along with his colleague responsible for BiH, Brian Joseph, visited the capital of the Federation. It is hard to believe that this visit, along with the visit of CIA Director William Burns to Sarajevo shortly afterward, was unrelated to the organization of the World Uyghur Congress’s session in that city.

Given that radical Muslim forces in BiH were similarly used during the breakup of Yugoslavia – removing democratically elected Fikret Abdić and refusing to finalize a pre-war agreement with their Serbian neighbors that was acceptable to all – it was not difficult for them to come to an understanding with their colleagues from the World Uyghur Congress today.

The common denominator of this joint action by the U.S., the World Uyghur Congress, and Sarajevo is “genocide”.

Not a word about Gaza, but tears for the Uyghurs

Representatives of the World Uyghur Congress first visited the massacre site in Potočari, which the U.S. is interested in solely within the context of its geopolitical utility, particularly in exerting pressure on Serbia and Republika Srpska. Outside of this strained assessment of the crimes committed by Serbian forces in Srebrenica, the U.S. and its satellites show as much interest in Srebrenica as they do in the nearby Serbian massacre sites from the same war.

This brings us to the second paradox: Sarajevo has never issued a diplomatic note to Washington regarding the evident support for the even more apparent genocide against Muslims in Gaza, yet it sheds crocodile tears for the nonexistent genocide against Uyghurs in China on behalf of the U.S.

The narrative of American institutions and media about the so-called genocide that China is allegedly continuously committing against the Uyghurs is ‘supported’ by unprovable claims that can only be either believed or disbelieved.

China has, for example, been accused of sterilizing Uyghur women and establishing concentration camps. Evidence for these claims often includes blurry satellite images or media reports that have turned out to be false.

One of the most notorious examples of such manipulation involves a convicted drug dealer named Merdan Ghappar, whose videos and text messages from prison, exchanged with a BBC correspondent, were used in Western media as prime evidence for the existence of concentration camps for Uyghurs.

The comical side of anti-chinese propaganda

The narrative goes that where there are concentration camps, there is also genocide. When the imperative is to prove that a nonexistent genocide has indeed occurred, even footage from a regular prison can come in handy. However, this kind of anti-China propaganda also had its comedic aspects. In January 2021, the New York Times published an article by a certain Amelie Pang titled “It Took Genocide for Me to Remember My Uyghur Roots”. Amelie, as can be read in relevant sources, is one-eighth Uyghur. Although she has never been to Xinjiang or interacted with Uyghurs from China, she has published at least 17 articles about the “genocide” against them, claiming that “Chinese policies of forced assimilation have even reached her.”

The best example, however, was the case of a “genocide victim” revealed by YouTuber Daniel Dumbrill, who pointed out that the aforementioned “victim”, whose case was extensively reported by CNN and BBC, had her passport renewed by Chinese authorities at a time when she claimed to have been in prison. In a clip aired on CNN, the date of this “victim’s” passport renewal was conveniently blurred.

The Chinese government has systematically refuted the blurry satellite images used as supposed prime evidence for the existence of concentration camps in Xinjiang, publishing images from the actual locations. This included sites in the Markit district of Kashgar Prefecture, where basic schools, middle schools, and nursing homes were misrepresented as concentration camps. Many similar examples exist, such as a logistics center in the Bachu district, also in Kashgar Prefecture, which was cited as a concentration camp in Western media reports.

Demographics in the time of genocide

Yet, there is a crucial point in the narrative of Western media regarding Xinjiang and the alleged genocide against Uyghurs: the Uyghur population in the People’s Republic of China.

From 2010 to 2018, the Uyghur population grew by 25 percent. It is simply incredible that, under the conditions of the alleged genocide that, according to claims from American and other Western media, China is continuously perpetrating against the Uyghurs, the Uyghur population in the country has been rapidly increasing.

Over the last 40 years, the number of Uyghurs in Xinjiang has risen from around 5.5 million to over 12 million. It’s important to emphasize another very significant fact: like other ethnic minorities, the Uyghurs were never subject to China’s one-child policy. This policy applied exclusively to Han Chinese, the largest ethnic group in the country.

While the numbers of nearly all ethnic groups in China have been stagnating or even declining in recent years, the aforementioned fact indisputably refutes the Western media and institutional narrative of “genocide” against the Uyghurs.

Uyghur girls wearing ethnic dress in Hotan, Xinjiang. The photo was taken in the 90s. Photo: Gujiang xie

China’s response

China initially responded to the challenges of terrorism and separatism by crushing terrorist groups on the ground, which were found to be linked to the Islamic State. Another paradox in this story is that the U.S. held 22 Uyghur Islamists at Guantanamo who fought against American forces in Afghanistan, not within the U.S. itself.

In July 2020, the United Nations identified thousands of Uyghur fighters within the ranks of the Islamic State in Syria and Afghanistan. While the U.S. fought against terrorism immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks, it regarded China as a partner and ally in that struggle. However, when China began defending itself against terrorism shortly afterward, the U.S. supported Uyghur terrorists and separatists as “freedom fighters.”

With the U.S. as the obvious ally of Uyghur separatists, China achieved victory over terrorists on the ground. After this victory, Xinjiang ceased to be a neuralgic point through which Western powers, led by the U.S., attempted to destabilize China (similar attempts have been made in Hong Kong, Tibet, and continue in Taiwan).

China has established temporary educational and vocational centers in Xinjiang, which the pro-Western propaganda machine automatically labeled as concentration camps, but these centers have since been closed. Xinjiang has become an important tourist, agricultural, and commercial hub for China and the “Belt and Road” initiative, with the living standards of its residents rising sharply year by year.

Urumqi is the provincial capital of Xinjiang. Photo: AsianDream

Autumn harvest instead of violence and bloodshed

This brings us to another significant paradox: while discussions were held in Sarajevo at the World Uyghur Congress about the need for Xinjiang to secede from China – an action that inherently generates violence and bloodshed – Xinjiang itself was experiencing a mechanized autumn cotton harvest and the harvesting of fall crops, utilizing the BeiDou satellite system and artificial intelligence to monitor crop conditions and yields.

This situation perhaps most accurately reflects the value difference between the Chinese civilization circle in the 21st century and the civilization circle of the U.S., to which Serbia belongs. In recent years, China has invested hundreds of billions of yuan in Xinjiang. Modern roads and railways have been built, and the state encourages agriculture, private initiative, and market development, while also working to protect the untouched nature of that part of China.

Tens of millions of tourists travel to Xinjiang each year, recording hundreds of millions of overnight stays. This fact does not support the claims of the so-called World Uyghur Congress about Xinjiang being a large concentration camp for the extermination of Uyghurs.

The rapid economic progress of Xinjiang, along with the rising living standards of its inhabitants – where the Uyghur community, by the way, does not constitute an ethnic majority – can be illustrated by the data showing that last year, exports from this Chinese autonomous region to five neighboring Central Asian countries (geographically, Xinjiang belongs to Central Asia) increased by 23.2 percent compared to the previous year. The value of those exports amounted to a staggering 246.57 billion yuan (34.25 billion dollars) for our country, and nearly unreachable for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

All other economic indicators and facts also testify in favor of China’s economic development and the stability of the Chinese state, along with that of Xinjiang itself. These circumstances enjoy the majority support of the population in Xinjiang, which does not want to become prey to geopolitical predators again.

Locals and tourists at the Xinjiang International Grand Bazaar. Photo: kitzcorner

What did the so-called world Uyghur congress try to hide in Sarajevo?

Support from Xinjiang itself is precisely what the so-called World Uyghur Congress lacks in order to truly become Uyghur, instead of, in fact, (pro)American. To obscure this fact, the so-called World Uyghur Congress requested hospitality in Sarajevo, which now has its part of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina – specifically, the area of Sarajevo – Tuzla – Zenica plus Bihać. Let’s reiterate that this should convince the U.S. that it truly cares, uniquely and sincerely, about the welfare of the Uyghurs located 6,000 kilometers away from Baščaršija, and that this American “concern” is the concern of all Bosniaks in the world, while the same U.S. cannot be directed by Sarajevo to issue even a letter of official protest due to its support for the oppression of Palestinians.

The biggest beneficiary of the Sarajevo episode with the so-called World Uyghur Congress is, you guessed it, the Republic of Srpska.

Banja Luka wisely published an interview with the chargé d’affaires of the Chinese embassy just before the opening of the mentioned congress of Uyghur extremists in Sarajevo, who rightly described the gathering in Sarajevo as anti-Chinese. This circumstance further strengthens the position that the Republic of Srpska, as part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, has managed to build in international relations, especially regarding its increasingly intensive cooperation with the People’s Republic of China and its fundamental respect for the one China principle – not just the formally expressed one, which seems uncontested only in Banja Luka.

 

Branko Zujovic

 

The article was originally published on EagleEyeExplore

Quick facts about Xinjiang

Being China’s largest province, Xinjiang spans 1.6 million square kilometers in the country’s northwest. Historically a key Silk Road passage, it connected China with Central Asia and beyond; today, it plays a strategic role in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, with new infrastructure supporting expanded trade routes across Eurasia. The economy of Xinjiang, driven by abundant reserves of oil, gas, and minerals, is also bolstered as China’s top natural gas producer and a leading exporter of cotton.

With a population of about 25 million, Xinjiang’s largest groups include Uyghurs, Han Chinese, Kazakhs, and Hui. Islam is widely practiced among Uyghurs and Hui, while Buddhism and Taoism are common among Han.

Xinjiang is known for its wild horses, which attract tourists eager to experience the region’s unique landscapes and rich natural heritage. Photo: kitzcorner/iStock