China’s plan to suppress its Muslim population could lead to 4.5 million lives lost by 2040, says study

Introduction and methodology

In July 2009, decades-long tensions between the Uyghur minority population in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and the nation’s Han majority population erupted into violent clashes (Roberts 2020). Following a series of high-profile violent attacks, Xinjiang embarked on a massive police and surveillance build-up (Zenz and Leibold 2017). In 2017, the government initiated a campaign of mass internment (Zenz 2018, 2019). In 2021, the US government determined that Beijing was committing genocide in the region, predominantly based on evidence of birth prevention measures targeting ethnic minority women (Pompeo 2021; Zenz 2020).

The 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide stipulates that the act of ‘[i]mposing measures intended to prevent births within the group’ constitutes an act of genocide if it is ‘committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such’ (United Nations 1948).

Whether Xinjiang’s birth prevention campaign reflects such an intent is disputed. Some experts argue that while ‘[d]estruction in the form of physical or biological extermination will always fulfil this [intent] criterion’, the ‘intention to destroy the Uyghur population of XUAR as a group – that is, as a cohesive social and cultural entity’ can be established (Macdonald et al. 2021). Others suggest that the Convention requires evidence of ‘physical destruction, not cultural or spiritual, destruction’ (Lim 2021, 101).

This research pursues neither a legal determination nor a sociological discussion of the concept of genocide. Taking the Genocide Convention as its vantage point, it aims to provide systematic evidence of the state’s likely intent to substantially reduce ethnic minority natural population growth. The ‘destruction in part’ is then assessed as the difference between (1) projected natural population growth without substantial government interference (based on past growth figures) and (2) reduced growth scenarios due to birth prevention, in line with the state’s intent to achieve crucial counterterrorism goals by ‘optimizing’ (you hua ??) the ethnic population structure (Li 2017a, 72). ‘Counterterrorism’ refers to Beijing’s portrayal of Uyghur acts of violent resistance as ‘terror’, a rendering that disregards complex interethnic relation issues, including long-standing sentiments of discrimination. The analysis focuses on southern Xinjiang, the Uyghur heartland region and main site of violent clashes (Roberts 2020).

Chinese family planning policies were introduced in the 1980s to reduce population growth, but they have also been associated with eugenic purposes of ‘upgrading population quality’ (su zhi ??) (Hong-Fincher 2018, 180). Kipnis (2007, 393) has pointed out the intimate link between discourses of improving population ‘quality’ (su zhi ??) and limiting population quantity through family planning. Discourses of ‘population quality’ have been especially pertinent regarding ethnic minority women, who are assumed to possess a ‘lower quality’ (di su zhi ???): Xinjiang’s officials have argued that ‘worryingly high birth rates’ among Uyghur women have a negative effect on ‘population quality in the region, posing risks to social stability’ (Hong-Fincher 2018, 180).

In the context of Xinjiang’s ‘people’s war on terror’ since 2014, official discourses shifted. Rather than just being a population with a ‘low quality’ (Byler 2020), Uyghurs began to be framed as something akin to a biological threat (Roberts 2020). Xinjiang’s officials have argued that the Uyghur population suffers from an ‘illness’ of the mind that must be ‘cured’ through re-education, and that rooting out religious ‘extremism’ is akin to ‘eradicating?…?tumors’ (Zenz 2018, 20–21). Ethnic minorities are divided into ‘safe, average, and unsafe’ populations (Tobin 2020, 237; Zenz 2020a, section 3.4).

This research taps into a largely unexplored body of work by Xinjiang-based academics and officials who argue that the region’s terrorism problem requires optimizing Xinjiang’s ethnic population structure – particularly in the south. Overly populous and concentrated ethnic minorities are seen as a breeding ground for religious extremism.

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. The next section discusses the most recent data on natural population growth in southern Xinjiang. The third section analyses official and academic discourses on ethnic population optimization, which basically calls for increased Han population shares. The fourth section evaluates the state policy of interethnic ‘embedding’ (qian ru ??) (e.g., Li 2019, 110), which represents a concrete measure for mitigating the perceived Uyghur population threat by diluting ‘problem’ populations and mitigating their ‘negative energy’ by embedding Han populations; it also examines official concerns about overpopulation in southern Xinjiang given its fragile ecology, which limits the number of Han migrants and thus necessitates further ethnic minority birth reductions. The final section estimates the ethnic minority population loss that could result from this set of policies. These estimates are relevant to the Genocide Convention’s reference to ‘destruction in part’.

The PRC’s goal of ‘optimizing the population’ appears as a metanarrative through this literature, and informs our understanding of the wider, longer term intentionality of the state regarding its ethnic minority populations. Population optimization discourses when focused on Han often deal with ageing and shrinking workforce sizes; when focused on Xinjiang’s ethnic minorities, they are predominantly concerned with counterterrorism and national security (besides also dealing with gender ratios). In this view, the existence of Uyghur population centres with distinct religion and culture is considered a threat.

A brief overview of Xinjiang’s birth control regime and recent developments

In early 2016, the Chinese government abolished its decade-long one child policy, permitting all families to have two children (PRC Government 2016). Since then, the state has actively encouraged couples to have more children – what researchers call ‘political steering’ to optimize population trends (Alpermann and Zhan 2018).

In China’s north-western XUAR, high natural population growth rates have long been a subject of concern for the authorities (Zenz 2020b). Mandatory family planning was implemented for Xinjiang’s Han starting in 1975 (Sautman 1997, 6). In 1983, the region sought to limit urban ethnic minority families to two children, rural minority families to three children and those in remote areas to four. The enforcement of these measures sparked a demonstration in 1985, and predominantly Muslim ethnic groups were subsequently permitted to have up to four children (Sautman 1997, 7).

Amid criticisms of preferential policies towards ethnic minorities by proponents of the PRC’s Second Generation Ethnic Policy, efforts to roll back preferential birth quotas gradually gathered pace (Leibold 2014). In 2014, after Xi Jinping’s visit to Xinjiang, the region’s party secretary Zhang Chunxian argued that all ethnic groups should have equal birth quotas (Cliff 2016, 204). In 2015, a senior Xinjiang official argued that the region needed to combat ‘worryingly high birthrates’ (Hong-Fincher 2018, 180). In 2017, when large numbers of ethnic minorities were interned in re-education camps, the region issued an updated family planning policy that permitted Han to have the same number of children as minorities: two children for urban and three for rural families (Zenz 2020b, 10).

Since then, Beijing’s family planning policies in Xinjiang rapidly became draconian. Starting in 2018, birth control violations were liable to be punished with extrajudicial internment, with a leaked internal document (the Karakax List) showing that a violation of birth control measures was the most common reason for such internment (Zenz 2020a, 2020b, 10–11). In 2018, the region performed 243 sterilization procedures per 100,000 population, compared with 33 per 100,000 in the rest of the country (Zenz 2020b, fig. 9). By 2019, at least 80% of women of childbearing age in rural southern Xinjiang were subject to ‘birth control measures with long-term effectiveness’, including the placement of intrauterine devices or sterilization (Zenz 2020b, 12).

Between 2015 and 2018, combined natural population growth rates in the four prefectures of southern Xinjiang (Hotan, Kashgar, Aksu, Kizilsu), where 91.6% of the population in 2018 was ethnic minorities, declined by 72.9% (population-weighted average; China Statistics Press 2016, 2018, 2019, tabs 3-5, 3-6). In 2019, rates continued to decline (Table 1). Prefectures with data for both 2018 and 2019 (Aksu and Kizilsu), and individual counties for prefectures without such data, were weighted by their respective populations. For the prefecture of Bayingol, frequently considered part of southern Xinjiang, Table 1 lists the three counties with an ethnic minority population share of > 50%. In the resulting population-weighted sample, the average natural population growth rate fell from 5.19 per mille (per thousand) in 2018 to 1.66 in 2019.

A second sample consisted of 35 counties with ethnic minority population shares > 50%, and 28 counties with Han majority populations, all with published birth rate figures for 2019.¹ In this sample, the population-weighted average birth rate in ethnic minority counties fell by 50.1% in 2019, while the birth rate in the Han counties declined by only 19.7%. This is consistent with plans for mass sterilization for 2019 published by counties in southern Xinjiang (Zenz 2020b, 16–19).

The 2020 Xinjiang Statistical Yearbook ceased to publish all breakdowns of total populations and population growth by region or ethnicity (China Statistics Press 2020a). Similarly, Hotan and Kashgar prefectures published neither birth nor natural population growth rates for 2019, breaking with a decades-long practice. However, data from the counties under their jurisdiction indicate further declines. In Kashgar, Bachu county’s 2019 birth rate stood at 4.15 per mille; given an expected death rate of between 5 and 7 per mille, its 2019 growth would likely have ranged between ?1.00 and ?2.50 per mille.² For 2021, Aksu’s Xinhe county planned for a birth rate of ? 6 per mille, which at the county’s current death rate of 6.62 would result in an estimated negative population growth between ?0.50 and ?1.00 per mille.

In Kizilsu, the prefecture planned a 6.14 per mille reduction in its natural population growth rate for 2020, which would result in a negative 3.14 per mille. In an August 2020 report, Kizilsu noted that in 2019 nobody was born outside of the government’s plan, and that 88% of all women of childbearing age had adopted ‘long-term effective birth prevention’ measures (Kizilsu Prefecture Government 2020).

Southern Xinjiang’s growth rates are trending near or below zero. Below, I argue that such declines are consonant with the state’s goal of optimizing the ethnic population structure.

‘End the dominance of the Uyghur ethnic group’: the urgency to optimize southern Xinjiang’s ethnic population structure