Wanted: Chinese cadres to hold Beijing’s line in Xinjiang as Han Chinese head for the exits

Beijing’s officials are leaving the troubled region where – by some estimates – up to a million Uygurs have been held in detention centres

While Muslim communities are in lockdown, people of Han Chinese ethnicity are voting with their feet and leaving the region, sources say

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While Muslim communities are in lockdown, the Han population is voting with its feet and leaving the region, sources say. Illustration: Brian Wang

Published: 9:45pm, 4 Dec 2019Updated: 7:18am, 9 Dec 2019

China’s Xinjiang autonomous region has attracted international attention for all the wrong reasons – police crackdowns and reports that local ethnic Uygur people are being held in internment camps. What hasn’t gained much attention is the difficulty Beijing has drafting in staff to execute its policies in the far northwest area.

The measures targeting Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang have triggered “widespread discontent among Han Chinese officials and citizens”, a source close to the central government told the South China Morning Post. The source said Chinese President Xi Jinping was aware of the problem because he had been briefed by the country’s chief Xinjiang policy coordinator, Wang Yang.

And as the United Nations wants to send in officials to inspect the internment camps, which some estimates say have held as many as 1 million Uygurs, members of the Han Chinese ethnicity – which dominates both China as a whole and the Chinese Communist Party – are leaving the region in increasing numbers.

“[Wang has] said in his briefings that even the Han people are deeply dissatisfied,” the source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “Life is harsh [in Xinjiang] even for cadres. Officials are exhausted as nobody is allowed days off [even after working for weeks].”

These reports come as China faces increasing pressure to allow international monitors into the internment camps. That’s especially since news outlets in November published reports based on the so-called China cables, or a leak of classified documents that indicate the camps were set up as forced indoctrination centres.

The UN Human Rights Council in July released a statement calling for an end to what it called “arbitrary detention” of Uygurs and other Muslim groups in the region.

Wanted: Chinese cadres to hold Beijing’s line in Xinjiang as Han Chinese head for the exits

Beijing’s officials are leaving the troubled region where – by some estimates – up to a million Uygurs have been held in detention centres While Muslim communities are in lockdown, people of Han Chinese ethnicity are voting with their feet and leaving the region, sources say

Beijing’s officials are leaving the troubled region where – by some estimates – up to a million Uygurs have been held in detention centres

While Muslim communities are in lockdown, people of Han Chinese ethnicity are voting with their feet and leaving the region, sources say