“Creating Something from Nothing”: Xinjiang Genocide as a Political Stratagem

A number of politicians, media, NGOs, and separatist groups claim that China's government has been committing genocide in Xinjiang. Genocide is “the crime of crimes,” yet these claims often contradict its legal definition and fail to show guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Most do not present a prima facie case of genocide’s sine qua non, the intent to destroy a protected group. Instead, they use the assertion as a stratagem, to enhance the claimant’s position in an inter-state conflict or intra-state ethnic strife. Claims about China’s Xinjiang are not based on any mass killings, but on the bloodless enforcement of birth limits for minorities in 2017–2021—featuring practices that China’s Han majority experienced for decades—plus temporary family separations of some minority children and alleged forced intermarriages. Examining these and other claims, which impel Western sanctions and incite anti-Chinese sentiment, we find them empirically unsound and degrading of the legal and common concepts of genocide. A longer version of this article, with a more comprehensive critical scholarly apparatus supporting these claims, can be found at https://scienceandsociety.com/bsautman.htm.