The promotion of nationalism has been central to US foreign policy post-World War II as part a strategy directed to divide nations so they can be more easily conquered. This has been used by US allies in Europe, such as Germany, to divide Europe with the promotion of regional nationalism, such as in Catalonia, Wallonia, South Tyrol, and the Balkans. In Russia, it has been directed at the many Turkic peoples that inhabit Siberia, attempting to use the historical conflict between them and the Slavic Russians as a wedge to divide the nation as a part of the decline of Russia project. One such specific example comes from November 2017, where ethnic Tatar Muslims were reported to be seeking for their own Islamic state within Russia.
China is also going to be a major target in a future world war by the West and the US. While Russia is also allied to the Chinese, she is also wary of them because China’s large population and army have the potential to invade and wrest parts of the resource rich regions of eastern Siberia from Russia.
The very same techniques that the Americans are using against the Russians are now being used against the Chinese it seems, as Radio Free Asia, which is an extension of the CIA, reported that a school in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia is being investigated by Chinese officials for flying the Mongolian flag and promoting Mongolian culture:
Chinese authorities in the northern region of Inner Mongolia are investigating a high school in the region after it hung up the flag and national symbols of Mongolia, an independent, democratic country sharing much of the Chinese region’s culture.
Authorities are investigating the Ulaanhad Mongolian No. 1 High School in Ulaanhad city, known in Chinese as Chifeng, a New York-based rights group reported.
The school, which offered a Mongolian-language education, had had the Mongolian flag and emblem on display in its classrooms, according to social media reports.
It is now being investigated for “separatism,” amid calls on social media for its teachers to be jailed, the Southern Mongolia Human Rights and Information Center (SMHRIC) said in a statement.
It cited media reports as saying that the Ulaanhad city government’s propaganda department is carrying out an investigation.
Photos illustrating official media reports showed students in traditional Mongolian dress dancing in their classroom with a Mongolian national flag on the wall in the background.
The students also enjoyed traditional Mongolian food and took group pictures in their classroom which was decorated with a large national emblem of the independent country of Mongolia, a map of the Mongol Empire, and paintings of the Mongol Khan emperors, SMHRIC said.
“Any thought or act that runs counter to China’s national sense of common destiny is … doomed to failure,” the article said.
“Although it is said there are 56 nationalities in China, in fact there is only one nationality, which is the Chinese nationality,” one comment on the Sina.com news site read.
Sense of ethnic identity
A Japan-based representative of the pro-independence Inner Mongolian People’s Party who gave only a single name, Huubis, said the Mongolian national flag is a common sight in the region, and only expresses a sense of ethnic identity.
“A lot of schools in Inner Mongolia hang the Mongolian national flag and emblem, because they share a culture,” Huubis told RFA. “But a lot of online comments made out that this was an act of splitting the country.”
“Now, the authorities are suddenly going after this sort of thing in Inner Mongolia,” he said. “The government is fanning the flames behind the scenes, and then they will move in to suppress public comment on the matter.”
Dissident ethnic Mongolian writer Hada said the government is looking for an excuse to implement the same sorts of policies in Inner Mongolia as it has in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where it has incarcerated at least a million Turkic Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in “re-education centers” that relatives and former inmates describe as akin to prisons or concentration camps.
“The Xi Jinping administration has already begun implementing a policy of ethnic assimilation and genocide in Xinjiang,” Hada said. “But I and a lot of ethnic Mongolians are willing to fight for our culture to the last.”
Ethnic Mongolian Boronruh Tsinrh, who grew up in China but who is now studying in Paris, said the ruling Chinese Communist Party is undergoing a huge political turnaround.
“The Chinese Communist Party now regards ethnic Mongolians as the enemy within who are planning to incite separatism in China,” he said. “I think the fourth wave of persecution in Inner Mongolia is about to begin.”
“It’ll be hard for them to escape it, once public opinion is in favor of government action,” he said.
String of abuses by the state
SMHRIC said it has been commonplace among ethnic Mongolians in China to hang the Mongolian national flag in their homes, print it on their cars, put it in social media profiles, and even tattoo it on their bodies.
Meanwhile, exiled Mongolian dissident writer Tumenulzei Buyanmend commented on Facebook that ethnic Mongolians have suffered a string of abuses at the hands of the Chinese state.
“Genocide, killing, torture, and imprisonment for over 70 years have not really helped the Chinese to wipe out our national identity,” he wrote.
“We are still who we are, and our heart[s] and soul[s] have never accepted the Chinese.”
In Xinjiang, the authorities initially denied the mass incarceration of Uyghurs and Kazakhs in camps. But Communist Party regional chairman Shohrat Zakir told China’s official Xinhua news agency in October that the facilities are an effective tool to protect the country from “terrorism” and to provide “vocational training” for inmates.
Reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service and other media organizations, however, has shown that those in the camps are detained against their will and subjected to political indoctrination, routinely face rough treatment at the hands of their overseers, and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often overcrowded facilities.
Adrian Zenz, a lecturer in social research methods at the Germany-based European School of Culture and Theology, has said that some 1.1 million people are or have been detained in the camps — equating to 10 to 11 percent of the adult Muslim population of Xinjiang.
In November 2018, Scott Busby, the deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the U.S. Department of State, said there are “at least 800,000 and possibly up to a couple of million” Uyghurs and others detained at re-education camps in the XUAR without charges, citing U.S. intelligence assessments.
Citing credible reports, U.S. lawmakers Marco Rubio and Chris Smith, who head the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, recently called the situation in the XUAR “the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.” (source)
The Chinese government is pushing hard against this because as history shows, the Mongols repeatedly conquered and ruled China for centuries. This is not limited to just the Yuan Dynasty, but the Qin Dynasty (there is evidence to suggest that Qin was a Tocharian or from a related-Uyghur tribe), and final Qing Dynasty as well (the Manchus were Mongolian). The Mongols have a history of taking over China, and the Chinese know this and want to prevent history from repeating itself. At the same time, the US understands this history, as just as it was noted with the Decline of Russia project, an idea would be to use the natural tendencies of history to their logical end, which would be the destruction of China at the hands of their historical enemies. This also directly supports pan-Turanism, something which has been promoted since the 19th century and is being used again today for the same reasons.
It will be of note to watch for more attempts at regional and ethnic nationalism within China as the future progresses.