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1·13 hours agoThailand denies planning Uyghur return in face of UN pleas
Thai authorities have denied any immediate plan to send 48 Uyghur refugees back to China after UN experts urged a stop. Rights groups accuse Beijing of widespread abuses of Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim minority in China.
“One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.” ― George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
@chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de
Thank you for your informed opinion.
That’s a good article, thanks for sharing.
Many (most?) experts agree that the crisis isn’t yet over (and possibly has not peaked yet), and China is in for long-term trouble. Many Chinese have ploughed their life savings (in the form of pre-payments) into their properties, and are now left alone with homes half-built, with no water or electricity, leaving their buyers with a shattered future and debts that they have to pay for the next 20 or so years. The Chinese government doesn’t provide compensation of any form for the damage done to these buyers.
Real estate was once considered a safe investment in China, but younger Chinese -if and when they can even afford it at all- might reconsider buying a house, and this in turn will be another major obstacle for the market to revive imo.
For example, the Institute of International Finance has long been estimating China’s debt-to-GDP ratio as more than 300 percent (and that was even before the pandemic), and so did many other independent analysts (Fidelity is among them if I am not mistaken). You’ll find ample evidence across the web about this.
Official numbers are not available, and even if they are in some subset categories, they often appear to be not very accurate. But the "350%-400% hidden debt to GDP ratio” estimate is widely considered reasonable from several independent analyses.
Addition: The Chinese government mixes a range of financial and education incentives with coercive measures such as threats to families to promote intermarriage between majority Han Chinese and ethnic minority Uyghurs in the occupied Xinjiang region.
As a report from 2002 says:
In December 2021, the Uyghur Tribunal convened in London found that “Uyghur women have been coerced into marrying Han men with refusal running them the risk of imprisonment for themselves or their families […]
[As one example, there is also the so-called] “Becoming Family” (结对认亲 – jie dui renqin) program.79 Under this program, mostly Han cadres stay in Uyghur homes to monitor the conduct of families and promote assimilation.80 Many Uyghur men are absent from their households on account of having been detained. As a result, these “relatives” – including men – have sometimes slept in the family bed, with consequences including sexual harassment and rape.81 Indeed, two Uyghur survivors living outside China, Zumrat Dawut, who was detained in an internment camp, and Qelbinur Sidiq, who was forced to teach in two camps, have said that “Uyghur girls and women have been sexually assaulted in their homes” as a result of the Becoming Family policy.
Source: Forced Marriage of Uyghur Women: State Policies for Interethnic Marriages in East Turkistan
Seems there are people for whom whataboutism never ends. In this context, I personally find this particularly disgusting.
Addition: There is also a BBC documentary about it.
Troublemakers: Drugged, Framed and Detained – (Alternative Invidious link, 49 min)