Yale's Junk Science About Xinjiang

How did a 'prestigious institution' like Yale allow this junk to be published with their name on it?

Another day, another institution respected by western liberals proving how they only exist to maintain western capitalist hegemony by propagandizing about the enemies of it. Yale released some of the most egregiously sinophobic propaganda I’ve ever seen last week. Yes, that Yale. The Ivy League school. It’s riddled with direct CIA sources and some absolute bottom-of-the-gutter junk science. Let’s dive in.

Uyghurs sentenced to cumulative 4.4 million years in prison: study
- Radio Free Asia

This propaganda is so egregious that Radio Free Asia, which was started by the CIA during the cold war to propagandize against America’s communist enemies, like China, posted an article about it. But hey, at least these Yale researchers didn’t cite Radio Free Asia. Well, not directly at least. But their direct citations aren’t much better.

Here is the actual report (PDF Warning).

UYGHUR RACE AS THE ENEMY

China’s Legalized Authoritarian Oppression & Mass Imprisonment
Written by Rayhan Asat and Min Kim
Yale MacMillan Centre Genocide Studies Program

Love that title. That’s not a quote or anything, it’s just editorializing by the main author, Rayhan Asat. She’s a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, which is an American think tank run by feds that’s part of the Atlantic Treaty Association, essentially ‘NATO-lite’.

She is also a senior fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, a Canadian NGO that has received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). She’s in good company, as Carl Gershman, one of the founders of the NED, is also a senior fellow there. He admitted that the NED was created because, and I quote, “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA.” The NED is a CIA cutout, a regime change organization of the US Government.

Rayhan is Uyghur, and her brother was arrested in China because he was also working directly with the US government. Now she’s working for multiple fed institutions and spreading fed propaganda about her home country. Sad.

From the ‘Executive Summary’ of the Yale report:

In response, this report aims to contribute to the ongoing documentation and efforts by civil society—including the lead author Rayhan Asat’s continued effort to put an end to China’s human rights abuses—by demonstrating that China’s systematic, large-scale imprisonment of Uyghurs not only amounts to a crime against humanity and genocide, but also dangerous lawfare at mass scale … In addition, it calculates that if the mass imprisonment continues, the Uyghur population is currently set to suffer from a cumulative total of 4.4 million years of imprisonment.

Emphasis theirs.

Interesting wording here, if the ‘mass imprisonment’ continues, the Uyghur population is currently set to suffer… But Radio Free Asia and other various western media organizations have worded their articles as if these 4.4 million years have already been served, which is an outright lie. Not surprising though. But ignoring that, how did Rayhan Asat come to this conclusion?

Garbage Methodology

The ‘Methodology’ section states that:

Data was sourced from the Xinjiang Victims Database (XJVD), which compiles several datasets on victims who have been affected by China’s persecution of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims.

The XJVD is a crowdsourced database, meaning anyone can submit to it. These submissions often provide a source to try to prove that someone has been imprisoned. These sources are often straight from the CIA.

The database has an export function. I used it to generate a PDF of a small portion of the entries, 4,497 out of about 82,000 (that’s all that could fit in one file). I hit CTRL-F to do a keyword search. ‘Radio Free Asia’, 374 results. ‘Adrian Zenz’, 323 results. Adrian Zenz is a Senior China Fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which was started by an Act of Congress and is majority funded by Congress. It was created, like Radio Free Asia and the NED, to propagandize about America’s communist enemies. Zenz is the originator and key architect behind the ‘Uyghur Genocide’ lie.

This is what this report is based on. A database that anyone can contribute to, that cites CIA cutouts with anonymous sources to try to prove a genocide is being perpetrated by the USA’s principal enemy. The junk science doesn’t end there, that’s just the beginning.

Section 2E: ‘Damage to the Uyghur Population’:

Database analysis reveals that of the 13,114 entries that include a prison sentence (excluding the 25,155 entries that do not), the average prison sentence was approximately 8.80264 years. In February 2022, the Xinjiang High People’s Procuratorate reported that between 2017 to 2021, a total of 540,826 individuals have been prosecuted in the region. The Xiniang court has stopped publishing new data. With the missing data of 2022, 2023 and 2024, the actual numbers are much higher. For the purposes of this paper, we will use a conservative estimate of 500,000 incarcerated individuals. Multiplying these figures together results in a cumulative 4,401,320 years of prison for the Uyghur people.

Let’s break this down. We’ve already filtered the 82,000 entries in the XJVD to 13,114 that ‘include a prison sentence’, lowering the sample size. Once again, these entries are submitted by anyone and often cite CIA institutions. From those 13,114, they determined the average sentence length to be 8.8 years. This is almost certainly inflated, if not completely fabricated because of the dubious source.

Next, we’re bringing in a new source, the Xinjiang High People’s Procuratorate. Sinophobic ‘human rights’ organizations like Human Rights Watch recently cited this data, and Mehdi Hasan also cited HRW’s report in his latest Head to Head interview with Victor Gao (he also featured the fed author of the Yale report, Rayhan Asat on the program. It’s all circular). Essentially, the numbers have been twisted and skewed by these western sources.

The Procuratorate’s 540,826 number is of all prosecutions in the entire region of Xinjiang. These western propagandists make several unwarranted assumptions with these numbers. They want you to think that all of them, or the vast majority at least, are unfair persecutions against Uyghurs. They aren’t, of course.

The population of Xinjiang is less than 50% Uyghur. Of the ~25 million inhabitants, approximately 12 million are Uyghur, 12 million are Han Chinese, and the rest is an assortment of some of China’s 56 other non-Han ethnic groups. To believe that the majority of these 540k prosecutions are Uyghur would be absurd, as these prosecution numbers also include Han Chinese and other ethnicities, and there is no breakdown.

We also have no reason to believe that the majority of prosecutions are what these western institutions would call ‘unfair persecution’. The 540k number is for all crimes committed, which can include financial crimes, property crimes, etc. Again, there is no breakdown.

Yet, this Yale report makes what they call a ‘conservative estimate’ (!!!) of 500,000 for unfair persecutions against Uyghurs. They try to justify this by the fact that the Procuratorate has not released data for 2022-2024. This is nonsensical for several reasons, the main one being that the ‘crackdown’ on the tiny portion of violent Uyghur separatists who were radicalized by external forces ended in 2020, successfully (German language article). The data we do have from the Procuratorate shows a huge downward trend between 2017 when the Strike Hard Campaign began and 2022 where the data ends.

This obviously proves that there was indeed a spike in the prosecutions in the Xinjiang region when the campaign began. No reasonable sinophile, myself included, would deny that. The Xinjiang region was somewhat left to its own devices before 2017. The Strike Hard campaign was about more than just combatting Uyghur separatist violence. It was about bringing stability to the region as a whole. It was about eliminating poverty, as many villages in Xinjiang had no running water, no modern medical facilities, no power, etc. This can include cracking down on, for instance, Han Chinese people exploiting Uyghurs, or just general crimes that had gone unanswered before.

I must invoke the infamous Parenti quote now. It’s about the USSR but perfectly applies to China, obviously. China, by western standards, was in a lose-lose situation. Either they continue to leave Xinjiang to its own devices, resulting in high infant mortality rates and low life expectancy, causing the US to accuse them of letting their people suffer, or they take action, preparing the people to integrate into modern society via vocational schools, moving them into developed ‘ghost cities’, and eradicating radicalized extremist thought, which the US calls a genocide. They chose the latter, because it results in the long term stability and success of both the Xinjiang region and the Uyghur people. They chose it because as a communist state they act in the interests of the people.

They cannot win in the eyes of their enemy, of course.

Now, back to Yale. The 500,000 ‘conservative’ estimate is absurd. The 8.8 year average sentence length is absurd. But that doesn’t stop them from multiplying the pair to reach their 4.4 million number. The number that they want you to believe represents the years unfairly taken away from the Uyghur people.

This is egregious, junk science. This is embarrassing, Yale.

Whataboutism? (not really)

It’s also really, really dumb to twist stats this way when you’re citing US government funded or operated sources. Since, you know, the US is the preeminent prison state. They have 25% of the world’s prison population despite having only 5% of the world’s total population. The US disproportionately targets black and brown people for incarceration.

About half of all incarcerated people in America are black, despite making up only 13% of the population. Racists love twisting this statistic to claim that black people are more likely to commit crime, but they aren’t. The truth lies within the white supremacist prison industrial complex and policing institutions which disproportionately target and convict black and brown people.

To make a comparison, I wanted to find a statistic for how many people passed through the US prison system in a 7 year period to match Yale’s propaganda about Xinjiang. The closest I can find is 650,000 ex-offenders being released each year. We can times that by 7 years to get 4.55 million.

Now, let’s divide by two to get the number of black Americans incarcerated within a 7 year period, which is 2.275 million. We should also times it by 0.13 to get the amount of black people that would be incarcerated if the prison system had a fair racial distribution, which is 591,500. Subtract that from 2.275 million to get the amount of black Americans unfairly targeted for racist reasons (the number would obviously be higher in actuality).

We get 1,683,500. Times that by the average prison time served in America, which is 2.7 years, and we get 4,545,450 years stolen from black Americans. A little bit higher than Yale’s propaganda numbers for Uyghurs. Interesting.

Problem is, the white supremacist prison industrial complex has existed for a lot more than 7 years. That number is likely in the tens or hundreds of millions of years. This is why you shouldn’t twist statistics to get bigger, more shocking numbers. It will bite you in the ass every time.

CIA Citations

However, to further cement the propaganda, this article has plenty of other citations that try to convince you that their estimates are valid. Let’s tear them to shreds now.

From the ‘References’ section:

Amnesty International. “Up To One Million Detained in China’s Mass ‘Re-Education’ Drive.” Amnesty International. Accessed March 6, 2024. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/09/china-up-to-one-million-detained/.

This article has no citations, but it’s referencing the magical ‘one million detained’ number that originated from Adrian Zenz. But, Amnesty’s main report from a few years later does have citations. It cites Zenz 8 times, and Radio Free Asia 16 times.

Asat, Rayhan. “No One Is Talking About the Plight of Uyghurs with Disabilities in Detention. The World Owes Them More.” ChinaFile, December 12, 2023. https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/no-one-talking-about-plight-of-uyghurs-disabilities-detention-world-owes.

Rayhan cites herself here. Cringe. It cites Radio Free Asia directly, among other CIA backed sources.

Associated Press. “World’s Highest Jailing Rate Found in Uyghur County of China, Data Leak Suggests.” The Guardian, May 17, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/17/worlds-highest-jailing-rate-found-in-uyghur-county-of-china-data-leak-suggests.

This article is about documents that were leaked to the founder of the Xinjiang Victims Database by an anonymous source (of course). It directly cites Darren Byler, a propagandist from the fed Wilson Center/Kissinger Institute.

BBC News. “Xinjiang: China Defends ‘Education’ Camps.” BBC News. Accessed March 6, 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54195325.

Directly cites the Department of Homeland Security's acting secretary.

Bunin, Gene. “The Elephant In The XUAR: III. ‘In Accordance With The Law.’” The Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia (blog), April 19, 2021. https://livingotherwise.com/2021/04/19/the-elephant-in-the-xuar-iii-in-accordance-with-the-law/.

This is written by the founder of the XJVD. It directly cites the Uyghur Human Rights Project which is funded by the NED, a CIA cutout. It also directly cites Radio Free Asia multiple times, and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), which is funded by the US State Department and defence contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

Byler, Darren. “The Imprisonment of the ‘Model Villagers’: Two Uyghur Sisters on What It Means to Lose Their Family and Way of Life.” The China Project, July 1, 2020. https://thechinaproject.com/2020/07/01/the-imprisonment-of-the-model-villagers/.

Again, Darren Byler is a fed. He sometimes uses a pseudonym when he writes for supposedly left leaning magazines like Chuang to hide that it’s written by a fed.

Carrdus, Ben. Uyghur Human Rights Project. “UHRP Analysis Finds 1 in 26 Uyghurs Imprisoned in Region With World’s Highest Prison Rate.” https://uhrp.org/insights/uhrp-analysis-finds-1-in-26-uyghurs-im prisoned-in-region-with-worlds-highest-prison-rate/.

UHRP is, once again, funded by the CIA cutout NED. This report also directly cites the US State Department and Radio Free Asia multiple times.

“China: Xinjiang Official Figures Reveal Higher Prisoner Count | Human Rights Watch,” September 14, 2022. https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/14/china-xinjiang-official-figures-reveal-higher-prisoner-count.

This is the report I mentioned earlier that Medhi Hasan cites. It indirectly cites CIA affiliated media through chains of hyperlinks, probably on purpose to obfuscate sources. For instance, it cites the 2022 UN Report on Xinjiang, which directly cites Adrian Zenz.

Coleman, Michelle. “Remedies For Religious Persecution In China: An International Human Rights Perspective.” Canopy Forum on the Interactions of Law & Religion, October 7, 2022. https://canopyforum.org/2022/10/07/remedies-for-religious-persecution-in-china-an-international-human-rights-perspective/.

This article directly cites the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a governmental institution. It also indirectly cites CIA affiliated propaganda through various western media articles.

Dui Hua Foundation. “Ban on Islamic Clothing in Xinjiang.” Dui Hua Human Rights Journal (blog), February 27, 2018. https://www.duihuahrjournal.org/2018/02/ban-on-islamic-clothing-in-xinjiang.html.

Directly cites Radio Free Asia twice.

Graham-Harrison, Emma, and Juliette Garside. “‘Allow No Escapes’: Leak Exposes Reality of China’s Vast Prison Camp Network.” The Guardian, November 24, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/24/china-cables-leak-no-escapes-reality-china-uighur-prison-camp.

Directly cites Radio Free Asia twice and has a quote from Adrian Zenz.

Human Rights Watch. “China: Baseless Imprisonments Surge in Xinjiang.” Human Rights Watch, February 24, 2021. https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/02/24/china-baseless-imprisonments-surge-xinjiang.

Directly cites Radio Free Asia.

Kashgarian, Asim. “Relatives of Missing Uighurs Learn Their Fate Years Later.” VOA News, October 23, 2020. https://www.voanews.com/a/east-asia-pacific_voa-news-china_relatives-missing-uighurs-learntheir-fate-years-later/6197486.html.

Voice of America is American state media, just like Radio Free Asia.

Kirby, Jen. “Concentration Camps and Forced Labor: China’s Repression of the Uighurs, Explained.” Vox, Sep tember 25, 2020. https://www.vox.com/2020/7/28/21333345/uighurs-china-internment-camps-forced-labor-xinjiang.

Directly cites the US Senate, US Congress, the Department of Treasury, the US government funded ASPI multiple times, and Radio Free Asia many, many times. It has a quote from Adrian Zenz and even directly cites the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. It directly cites several Adrian Zenz articles from the Jamestown Foundation, another fed institution. Finally, it ends by directly quoting the NED funded Uyghur Human Rights Project.

Ma, Alexandra. “This Man’s Family Vanished in China’s Most Oppressed Region. The next Time He Saw His Son Was 2 Years Later, in a Chinese Propaganda Video.” Business Insider. Accessed August 1, 2024. https://www.businessinsider.com/mans-family-vanished-saw-son-2-years-later-in-china-propaganda-video-2019-2.

Directly cites the US Embassy in Iran, and indirectly cites Radio Free Asia through a chain of their own articles to obfuscate sources.

Maizland, Lindsay. “China’s Repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.” Council on Foregin Relations, September 22, 2022. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-xinjiang-uyghurs-muslims-repression-genocide-human-rights.

The Council on Foreign Relations is a fed institution whose “membership has included senior politicians, secretaries of state, CIA directors…”. The report directly cites the US Senate, the State Department, Adrian Zenz/Jamestown multiple times, the ASPI multiple times, the Center For Strategic and International Studies multiple times (which is essentially the American version of the ASPI with the same funding sources), and the fed Wilson Center.

May, Tiffany. “Star Uyghur Scholar Who Vanished Was Sentenced to Life in China.” The New York Times, Sep tember 24, 2023, sec. World. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/24/world/asia/rahile-dawut-uyghur-china.html.

Indirectly cites the ASPI through a self-citation.

Murphy, Emma. “Being Uighur in China: ‘After Nazi Germany the World Said Never Again, but It Is.’” ITV News, September 3, 2020. https://www.itv.com/news/2020-09-03/being-uighur-in-china-after-nazi-germany-the-world-said-never-again-but-it-is.

Directly cites the Uyghur Tribunal, which was created by the NED funded World Uyghur Congress.

Nebehay, Stephanie. “U.N. Says It Has Credible Reports That China Holds Million Uighrs in Secret Camps.” Reuters, August 10, 2018. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rights-un/u-n-says-it-has-credible-reports-that-china-holds-million-uighurs-in-secret-camps-idUSKBN1KV1SU

Directly cites the NED-funded Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

OHCHR. “OHCHR Assessment of Human Rights Concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China.” Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), 21 August 31, 2022. https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf.

As mentioned earlier, this report directly cites Adrian Zenz many times, including various leaked documents that he ‘verified’ (read: created as propaganda). It also cites the NED-funded UHRP multiple times, and the ASPI multiple times.

Reeducated - Inside Xinjiang’s Secret Detention Camps. Virtual Reality Video Documentary. The New Yorker, 2021. https://www.newyorker.com/news/video-dept/reeducated-film-xinjiang-prisoners-china-virtual-reality.

A Virtual Reality propaganda documentary that was made with help from the ASPI, Darren Byler, and the Xinjiang Victims Database.

The Xinjiang Data Project. “Map - The Xinjiang Data Project.” Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Accessed March 6, 2024. https://xjdp.aspi.org.au/map/?

The ASPI itself, enough said.

The Guardian. “World’s Highest Jailing Rate Found in Uyghur County of China, Data Leak Suggests.” May 17, 2022, sec. World news. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/17/worlds-highest-jailing-rate-found-in-uyghur-county-of-china-data-leak-suggests.

Has a quote from Darren Byler.

Van Schaak, Beth, Leah Kaplan, and Maya Wang. “‘Break Their Lineage, Break Their Roots’ - China’s Crimes Against Humanity Targeting Uyghurs and Other Turkic Muslims.” Human Rights Watch, April 19, 2021. https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/19/break-their-lineage-break-their-roots/chinas-crimes-against-humanity-targeting.

This one is fun. Directly cites Adrian Zenz 20 times and Radio Free Asia 18 times. Directly cites Rushan Abbas, a former Radio Free Asia reporter who runs an NED-funded Uyghur Organization who also worked for the US government in Guantanamo Bay, translating for the 22 Uyghurs the US imprisoned there before they suddenly began to care about their well-being. Too many other fed citations to list.

Various NGOs. “OHCHR Assessment of Human Rights Concerns in the Uyghur Region Must Spur Action at the Council’s 51st Session.” Human Rights Council (blog), September 15, 2022. https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/15/ohchr-assessment-human-rights-concerns-uyghur-region-must-spur-action-councils-51st

Joint statement by various NGOs, including the NED-funded UHRP and World Uyghur Congress.

Wang, Maya. “China’s Algorithms of Repression,” May 1, 2019. https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/05/01/chinas-algorithms-repression/reverse-engineering-xinjiang-police-mass.

Directly cites Adrian Zenz twice.

Wang, Yanan. “China Claims Everyone in Xinjiang Camps Has ‘Graduated.’” AP News, December 9, 2019. https://apnews.com/article/27f00e4feaa2755f25ab514cecda7add.

Directly cites US Congress and their ‘Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act’, which takes jobs away from Uyghurs.

Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. “Opinions Adopted by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention at Its Ninety-Fifth Session, 14–18 November 2022-Opinion No. 88/2022 Concerning Qurban Mamut, Ek par Asat and Gulshan Abbas (China).” United Nations Human Rights Council, March 24, 2023. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4021344?ln=en?ln=en#record-files-collapse-header

Directly cites Radio Free Asia and Rushan Abbas.

Wright, Rebecca, Ivan Watson, and Ben Westcott. “Uyghurs in Xinjiang Are Being Given Long Prison Sentences. Their Families Say They Have Done Nothing Wrong.” CNN, August 1, 2021. https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/24/china/xinjiang-prisons-china-intl-hnk-dst/index.html.

Directly cites ASPI.

Wu, Huizhong, and Dake Kang. “Uyghur County in China Has Highest Prison Rate In The World.” AP News, May 16, 2022. https://apnews.com/article/china-prisons-uyghurs-religion-0dd1a31f9be29d32c584543af4698955.

Has a quote from Darren Byler.

Zenz, Adrian. “The Karakax List: Dissecting the Anatomy of Beijing’s Internment Drive in Xinjiang.” The Journal of Political Risk 8, no. 2 (February 17, 2020). https://www.jpolrisk.com/karakax/#_ftn26.

Finally, we end with a direct Adrian Zenz citation.

If you’ve read this far, all I have to say is, WTF Yale? Who approved this report?

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