NWC Lecture 10: China & the Uyghur Issue 🇨🇳

This lecture took place on March 7, 2023.

From Professor Wilson: China: The Uyghur Issue Xinjiang is China’s largest but least populous province. Roughly half of that population is comprised of Uyghurs, a Turkic People related to the Kazakhs, Uzbeks and other Sunni Muslims of Central Asia. Since 2017, the Uyghurs of Xinjiang have been subjected to a comprehensive campaign of ethno-religious repression by the Chinese government. Perhaps as many as two million Uyghurs had been processed through “Re-education Camps” while the rest of the Uyghur population of 11 million has been subjected to intense surveillance, religious persecution, limits on travel, and wholesale destruction of their traditional way of life. Meanwhile, efforts by the large Uyghur diaspora to call attention to Beijing’s repression have been met by intimidation and threats to family still trapped in Xinjiang. China claims that the objective is “de-extremification,” a pre-emptive inoculation of the population against Islamic radicalism, and the authorities further claim that the re-education camps are, in fact, vocational schools designed to teach new trades so as to bring prosperity and social harmony to the region. Professor Wilson will explore the historical origins of the situation in Xinjiang and explain the means of and motivations for the Uyghur crackdown—a campaign of repression that the U.S. Government has called “Cultural Genocide.” He will also delve into Beijing’s long-range plans for the region as a central pivot of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative that seeks to connect China overland to Central Asia, the Middle East and beyond to Europe.

Andrew R. Wilson is the Naval War College’s John A. van Beuren Chair of Asia-Pacific Studies. After majoring in East Asian studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he earned his Ph.D. from the History and East Asian Languages Program at Harvard University. Before joining the Naval War College faculty in 1998, he taught introductory and advanced courses in Chinese history at Harvard and at Wellesley College. Professor Wilson lectures on Chinese history, Asian military affairs, and the classics of strategic theory at military colleges and civilian universities across the United States and around the world and has worked on curriculum development with command and staff colleges in Latin America and Africa. He has written several pieces on Chinese military history, Chinese sea power, and the Art of War, including a new introduction for Lionel Giles' classic translation of Sun Tzu. His books include Ambition and Identity: Chinese Merchant-Elites in Colonial Manila, 1885-1916; The Chinese in the Caribbean; and China's Future Nuclear Submarine Force. Professor Wilson is also featured on The Great Courses with lecture series including The Art of War, Masters of War: History’s Greatest Strategic Thinkers, and Understanding Imperial China: Dynasties, Life, and Cultures.

The views presented by the faculty or other guest speakers do not reflect official positions of the Naval War College, DON or DOD.