US State Department accusation of China ‘genocide’ relied on data abuse and baseless claims by far-right ideologue
The Trump and Biden administrations have relied on the work of a right-wing religious extremist, Adrian Zenz, for their “genocide” accusation against China. A close review of Zenz’s research reveals flagrant data abuse and outright falsehoods.
by Gareth Porter and Max Blumenthal
Part 3 - Cherry-picking and distorting source material, framing free healthcare as genocide
Also in 2017, China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission announced a $5.2 billion healthcare investment in Xinjiang, stating its intention to strengthen a brittle health infrastructure in impoverished, rural areas of the region.
According to Chinese government statistics, maternal and infant mortality rates in Xinjiang were nearly halved by 2018, while average life expectancy rose as a result of increased public health investments. A 2019 study by Lancet described China’s improvement of maternal health and infant mortality reduction as a “remarkable success story.” Another study that year by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences arrived at a similar conclusion. How these positive health indicators could serve as proof of genocide was left unexplained by Zenz, who simply omitted the numbers from his report.
Throughout his paper, Zenz framed the expansion of public healthcare services in Xinjiang as evidence of a genocide in the making. For example, Zenz pointed to a photograph of Uyghur residents of rural regions of Xinjiang receiving medical consultation at a free health clinic as part of an “effort to enforce the thorough implementation of increasing intrusive birth control efforts.”
However, the photograph depicted an elderly couple who were far too old to have children, and was dated May 2017 – months before the Chinese government announced an end to the child limit exemption for Uyghurs.
According to the original source of the photograph, an article in China News, it depicted a regiment from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps deploying to a rural province as part of the government’s poverty eradication program. There, the doctors “measured blood pressure, electrocardiogram, blood sugar, height and weight for poor villagers who came to see the doctor for free… More than 200 poor people were diagnosed and treated, and more than 100 common drugs were distributed on the spot.”
At another point in his paper, Zenz cited an August 2019 document from Xinjiang’s Wenquan County government office as evidence of “greater pressure to implement intrusive birth control methods.” He referred to a single mention of 468 “birth control surgeries,” which could alternately be translated as “family planning operations,” but provided no evidence that the operations were coercive. Revealingly, Zenz omitted the next line, which expressed satisfaction with a birth rate of 8.11 percent.
Zenz proceeded to ignore the rest of the document, which touted the increased provision of free mental health services, polio vaccinations and AIDS prevention treatment as well as poverty alleviation measures and the construction of new hospitals and medical clinics for the population of Xinjiang.
How did a massive investment to improve the health of previously neglected rural communities fit within the framework of a policy of genocide? Once again, Zenz avoided the issue entirely.
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