The Kashgar Dangerous House Reform Program: social engineering, 'a rebirth of the nation' and a significant building block in China's creeping genocide

Hayes, Anna

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the destruction of Old Kashgar under the Kashgar Dangerous House Reform Program (KDHRP). It argues this program was undergirded by desires of social control and social engineering aimed at perceived ‘deviant’ Uyghurs, with the ultimate goal being the purposeful destruction and eradication of Uyghur culture in the Uyghur heartland. Moreover, it identifies that the measures undertaken during the KDHRP paved the way for the increased surveillance, social control, and the mass incarceration of Uyghurs that has occurred under the presidency of Xi Jinping and the regional leadership of Chen Quanguo. Finally, it argues that Uyghurs have long been dehumanised via applied collective labels such as ‘backwards’, a ‘terrorist collective’, and more recently, ‘weeds’. MacGregor and Bowles (2012: 437) have warned: ‘[t]o prevent genocide, we have to understand its root causes. Genocide and mass killing do not simply erupt spontaneously. They are incremental processes, building blocks, which aggregate and develop into their final form’. This chapter identifies the KDHRP as a building block within a pattern of social engineering across XUAR that amounts to creeping genocide.

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The Xinjiang emergency Exploring the causes and consequences of China's mass detention of Uyghurs

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978-1-5261-5311-1

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Manchester University Press

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Manchester, United Kingdom

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