About 20 Hong Kong members of national legislature will visit Xinjiang to better understand human rights conditions and local governance
- Team will spend nearly week meeting officials in autonomous region and vows to return with comprehensive report
- Xinjiang has been a persistent source of tension between China and the West, which claims more than million Uygurs are being held in political re-education camps
Tam Yiu-chung, Hong Kong’s sole delegate on China’s top legislative body, the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, on Monday said about half of the city’s 36-strong NPC delegation was expected to join the trip.
Asked whether the visit was aimed at helping Beijing to promote its controversial policies in Xinjiang, Tam said: “When we come back, we will surely share what we saw and take media interviews, so that’s for sure.”
The politicians are required to isolate themselves at home for three days this week and will leave the city on Friday for a week of quarantine in Shenzhen before flying to Xinjiang for a trip that will last for five to six days.
Hong Kong entrepreneurs have long invested in the northwestern mainland region, which produced about 85 per cent of the country’s cotton and about a fifth of the world’s supply last year.
In 1979, Hong Kong “Textile King” Tang Hsiang-chien was one of the first businessmen to set up a woollen textile factory in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. Hong Kong-based textiles company Esquel Group, one of the world’s top shirt makers, has maintained a presence in the autonomous region for a quarter of a century.
In recent years, the West has accused China of detaining at least a million mostly Muslim Uygurs and members of other ethnic minority groups in re-education camps. In June, the European Parliament adopted a position stating that human rights abuses in Xinjiang posed a “serious risk of genocide”.
Beijing denies the claims and describes the camps as vocational training centres, part of its efforts to counter extremism and terrorism, while helping to lift the residents out of poverty. The central government also considers the European Union’s criticism interference and part of efforts led by the United States to counter China.
NPC member Wong Yuk-shan said that as deputies to the Chinese legislature, they had a duty to visit at least one mainland province or region each year to learn more about its social and economic developments.
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Between 2014 and 2019, teams visited Sichuan, Hubei, Zhejiang and Hainan, among other places. The trip was called off in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, and a series of meetings with senior Xinjiang officials was held online last year as the health crisis continued.
“It is our job to understand each province or region’s social development, people’s livelihood and the economic trends, as well as to meet the senior leadership,” Wong said. “A lot of us have never visited Xinjiang, so we want to go there … Not just to look into its human rights condition, but also its overall situation and industrial development.”
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NPC member Ip Kwok-him said he believed the delegation would discover both the strengths and weaknesses in Xinjiang’s governance.
“We hope to see the vocational training centres, which were linked to Western countries’ accusations about a so-called genocide in Xinjiang,” he said. “From my past experience, we won’t be just satisfied with whatever their government shows us. We hope to identify problems, as well as the deficiencies in the region’s administration.”
Ip added that he believed Xinjiang’s top officials would be forthcoming in their discussions with the delegation.
