China promotes Xinjiang as tourist heaven while holding Muslim Uygurs in re-education camps
- Authorities in Xinjiang have created a parallel universe of smiling locals, exotic food and ‘ethnic’ dance, and are promoting the region to tourists
- Meanwhile, Turkic-speaking Muslims are subject to mass internment and tight security, and denied the right to cultural expression
From the expansive dunes of the Taklamakan Desert to the snow-capped peaks of Tianshan, Chinese authorities are selling troubled Xinjiang as a tourist idyll, welcoming travellers even as they send locals to internment camps.
The government has rounded up an estimated one million Uygurs and members of other mostly Muslim Turkic-speaking minorities into re-education camps in the tightly controlled region in China’s northwest, while creating a parallel universe for visitors, who are shown a carefully curated version of traditional customs and culture.
In the Old Town of Kashgar, an ancient Silk Road city, smiling food vendors serve mouthwatering lamb skewers while children play in the streets.
“It did not look to me like – unless you were picked up and put in a camp – that these Uygur communities seemed to be living in some kind of fear,” says William Lee, who has taught at universities in China for 10 years and visited the region in June. “That is just my impression,” he says.
Xinjiang, where flare-ups of inter-ethnic violence have led to unprecedented levels of surveillance, is one of the fastest growing areas for tourism in China.