From Summer 2017.
The “Chinese People’s Manifesto”[1] song played non-stop in every store and every restaurant. The tune blasted from huge black stereo speakers at every bus stop and from megaphones at every police station. There was no escaping it, even when I went to the park. The song played on a repeating loop from little speakers tied to every other tree. The lyrics were sung by the “Multi-Minzu Children’s Choir”[2] in rapid, high-pitched tones that reminded me of Tweety Bird:
Rich and powerful, democratic, civilized, harmonious, free, equal,
just, ruled by law, patriotic, dedicated to work, honest, friendly!
This is the epic of Eastern Civilization,
This is the manifesto of the Chinese person’s soul,
This is the first class we learn in school,
From the time we are small, we will remember this system of values!
Put her carved inscription in your brain;
Let her melt into the middle of your soul.
The sounds penetrated my ears. No matter what I did, I could not block the tune out. I rolled my eyes and sighed. Then I wanted to scream.
Similar to the situation in Tibet, China is nervous about its control over this border region. Playing the “Chinese People’s Manifesto” song to be heard on every square meter of the city was the latest in a series of policies that summer meant to indoctrinate people into the ideology of the Party.
Walking through my neighborhood, I saw a poster reading, among other messages, “Without the Communist Party, The New China Would Not Exist” (see Figure 1). Along with the song, propaganda signs like these covered every exposed surface possible.
Below that, the poster continued its message: “The Communist Party labors for the nationalities, the heart of the Communist Party has rescued China, He has provided the people the road of liberation, He is leading China toward radiance.” The bottom right of the poster attributes its creator: “The Chinese Communist Party Council of the City of Urumqi Propaganda Bureau.”
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| Figure 1: Among other messages, this propaganda poster reads: “The Communist Party labors for the nationalities, the heart of the Communist Party has rescued China; They have provided the people the road of liberation; They are leading China toward radiance.” Source: Photo by author, April 2017. |
Then, I heard them before I saw them. Loud sirens blaring as though in emergency. The military brigade was going south on Solidarity Road: police cars, tanks, and Hummer jeeps. All of them with their red and blue lights flashing and their sirens making an annoying cacophony of alarms crawling down the street at a snail’s pace.
Military patrols on the streets were a common sight. Tanks, jeeps, and dark green khaki colored hummer vehicles blocked traffic and their sirens wailed, carrying propaganda signs reading messages such as, “Don’t be afraid to shed blood and sacrifice a life in the War on Terrorism.”[3]
By this point, it was so normal that most people on the street did not even look up from their phones as it passed. Some looked on with no reaction, just staring. It was as if nobody even heard it. One mother said to her toddler in the stroller, “Look at all the pretty lights! Do you hear the sirens? Woo woo woo woo.”
After a couple minutes of the brigade, some shook their heads and clucked their tongues. One woman shook her head and laughed. One woman said under her breath with a sly smile, “Apparently they’re being careful, aren’t they?”[4] Besides those two comments and the sirens, the street was completely silent. I kept walking toward home. The sirens were part of our everyday vocabulary of sounds.
After the brigade eventually passed, I kept walking. A barbershop blasted a Uyghur radio station on its amplifier as men sat inside getting their faces shaved. The sounds combined with “The Chinese People’s Manifesto” from the police station across the street in a harsh din. Each police station, located every 100 yards or so, had the same scrolling message on an electronic board at the top: “Social Stability, Long-Term Governance and Long-Time Peace.”[5]
Every 50 meters I passed the entrance to a back alley that was blocked off with a large cement wall and barbed wire. Behind the walls were huge ghettos. In them, Uyghur homes and families were closed in by fences. There was only one entrance and exit, which was guarded by security. The security check stations were similar to the turnstiles at a subway station that open when one scans their national ID card. There was another section where a long arm goes up and down to let cars through, as in a parking garage.
I walked past the walls every day and did not give them much thought. “We’re used to it,”[6] everyone agreed. Each wall had a different message painted in red Chinese characters. The Uyghur translation was also written in red, in smaller Arabic letters, above the Chinese characters. One read: “Stable Harmony is Fortune, Divisive Destruction is Disaster!” (see Figure 2).[7] Below the message, in the bottom right corner, reads the source of the message: “Nanwan North Street Community Center Announcements.”
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| Figure 2: Example of propaganda on a wall topped with barbed wire blocking the entrance to a residential alley. Source: Photo by author. |
Some (as pictured below) also included pictures of Uyghur and Han people smiling together: A Han person bending over an open book, for example, pointing to it while two women with headscarves smile widely. The message read, “Speak of Solidarity, Study the Archetype, Be a Model of Ethnic Solidarity”[8] and “Strengthen the Shared Construction of a Family Garden of Ethnic Solidarity and Harmony.”[9]
- Ethnic harmony and solidarity between majority Han and ethnic minorities were main themes in the government’s propaganda in the region, where Uyghurs and Han have clashed for centuries. The ironic thing was, this propaganda and the military brigades only made obvious that China was deeply insecure about its control over the region. The toxic mix of strong state power combined with insecurity and fear is a recipe for ethnic genocide and violence.
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