State media reported on Friday that the visit from Tuesday to Thursday included stops at a university and commercial zone in the regional capital, Urumqi. A photo from the official Xinhua news agency showed an unmasked Xi surrounded by smiling and clapping residents, many of them apparently Uighurs wearing traditional costumes and Muslim prayer caps. It comes after a trip to the region in May by UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet, who has been accused by activists of colluding with Beijing to expose China’s human rights abuses. Western nations have urged the UN to release a long-awaited report on Xinjiang. The United Nations reported that in 2018 Beijing had put 1 million Uyghurs in “massive internment camps” set up for political indoctrination. China has repeatedly denied any mistreatment of Uyghurs, calling reports of mass detention “fake news.” Beijing initially denied the camps existed, then said it had set up “vocational training centers” with dormitories where people could “voluntarily” check in to learn about the law, the Chinese language and job skills. He said in 2019 that all trainees had “graduated”. Chinese commentators are keen to point out that Xinjiang has not reported any violent attacks since the centers were established. But critics have described the crackdown as cultural genocide. The U.S. and others have placed officials under visa bans for their involvement in extrajudicial detentions, family separations, and jailing of people for study abroad or foreign contacts. During his visit this week, Xi met with leaders of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a supra-governmental body that operates its own courts, schools and health system under the military regime imposed on the region after the rise of Communist Party in power in 1949. Xi “learned about the XPCC’s history of cultivating and guarding border areas,” Xinhua reported. Li Mingjiang, an associate professor at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said: “The purpose of Xi’s trip to Xinjiang is to see the results of the policies he has implemented in recent years to stabilize Xinjiang and to conclude that The approach and strategy for Xinjiang was a success.” It was Xi’s first public appearance since visiting Hong Kong for events on July 1 to mark 25 years of Chinese rule in the former British colony, another area where Beijing has dramatically tightened its grip after sometimes violent pro-democracy and anti-China demonstrations. Xi’s last reported visit to Xinjiang was in 2014, when he called for an all-out “fight against terrorism, infiltration and separatism,” according to leaked documents reported by the New York Times. Local authorities later stepped up efforts to monitor, control and retrain Uyghurs. Xi has also cracked down on the Tibet Autonomous Region and last year made the first visit to the region by a Chinese leader in three decades. Last December, Chen Quanguo, the Communist Party official widely associated with a crackdown by security forces targeting ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang, resigned from the post. Ma Xingrui, former governor of coastal economic powerhouse Guangdong Province, is now in charge. With Reuters and the Associated Press
