On this episode of China Uncensored—
ISIS is now going after China.
And now the Chinese Communist Party versus ISIS.
No, not that ISIS.
Though now I have a cool idea for season 9.
I’m talking about the real ISIS,
the one so evil that it forced the writers of Archer
to quietly drop the name from the show.
This ISIS, also known as ISIL.
One of the world’s most brutal terrorist organizations.
ISIS has killed tens of thousands of innocent people.
Well ISIS is now targeting the Chinese Communist Party,
which...is also one of the world’s most brutal organizations,
and has killed tens of millions of innocent people.
So who do you root for?
It’s like Alien vs. Predator.
Whoever wins, humanity loses.
Back in March, ISIS released a video threatening the CCP.
ISIS said it would to “come to [China]
to clarify to you with the tongues of our weapons,
to shed blood like rivers and avenging the oppressed.”
The oppressed?
In China?
Sorry, you’ll have to be more specific
about which group of oppressed people in China
you’re talking about.
But you get the gist:
It’s a threat.
But you know,
there’s something I don’t get.
It’s not like China is sending its troops
into the Middle East to fight ISIS.
Actually, the United States has been complaining
that China isn’t doing its part
in the fight against global terrorism.
And in some ways,
it seems the Chinese regime is doing the opposite.
Like when they defended their close ally Pakistan,
saying Pakistan is totally not a harbor for terrorists.
And that came just months after ISIS
killed two Chinese nationals in Pakistan.
And the Chinese regime—
just to prove it really, really didn’t care—
blamed the Chinese victims.
ISIS killed those Chinese citizens
because they were illegally preaching Christianity
in Pakistan.
Although, to be fair,
that could have been their fate
for illegally preaching Christianity in China, too.
The Chinese regime has basically stated
it won’t join the global fight against ISIS.
This is not to say the CCP
is buddy-buddies with ISIS.
It’s mainly that their strategy
for dealing with the complexities of terrorism
in the Middle East is basically:
Meh, you guys sort it out.
I mean, I told you in the last segment
that other BRICS countries got China
to sign a joint statement
to “express concern” about ISIS—
and that’s considered a big win,
but still doesn’t require China to do anything.
As Business Insider puts it,
“While relying on the region for oil supplies,
China has tended to leave Middle Eastern diplomacy
to the other permanent members
of the UN Security Council.”
Take Iraq for example.
The US initially led the war effort to liberate Iraq—
from its oil reserves.
But now it’s China buying most of Iraq’s oil.
The Chinese regime also recently announced
an almost half-a-billion dollar construction deal in Iraq…
...to rebuild after the defeat of ISIS.
I mean, not that the Chinese regime
is specifically planning for the defeat of ISIS.
It’s more that the Chinese regime
wants to include Iraq in its
One Belt One Road initiative.
And by and large,
this has been the Chinese regime’s
international strategy in the Middle East
since the Cold War:
“an ‘offend no one’
and ‘attach no strings’ strategy.”
Offend no one and attach no strings.
Sounds more like my friend Chad’s dating strategy.
And much like Chad’s love life,
the Middle East is still a hot mess.
So how did ISIS get so offended
by the Chinese Communist Party?
I mean they seem so reasonable.
Well, it’s because the Chinese regime
is fighting a war against terrorists...
And by terrorists,
they mean the Uyghur people in Western China,
in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
In China, an “autonomous region”
is like a province.
“Autonomous” means “self-governed”—
in the same way that the “People’s Republic of China”
means it’s runs by the people.
Because in the case of Xinjiang,
the CCP has been ridiculously heavy-handed
in how things are run.
About 10 million of Xinjiang’s 22 million residents
are the Turkic-speaking Uyghur people.
Who are these Uyghur people?
In a lot of ways,
they’re just like you and me.
They enjoy riding horses
through golden hills on a warm September day.
Eating spicy noodles at the local street market.
Sitting through boring college PowerPoint presentations.
And loading up on carbs
when they know they really, really shouldn’t
but it’s my cheat day so don’t judge me.
Of course, there’s one thing that distinguishes
the Uyghur people from most other Chinese.
A lot of them are Muslim—
mostly secular Muslims,
although of course there are lots of
religious Muslims there, too.
The Chinese regime has effectively labeled
all Uyghurs as a threat.
But it’s not like they’ve singled them out
for their religion or anything.
Remember, over the years
the Chinese regime has persecuted
all sort of groups:
Tibetans, intellectuals,
wealthy people, poor people,
Christians, lawyers, activists,
and even those people who just sit there quietly
in yellow shirts.
It’s equal opportunity oppression.
I’m sorry, Uyghurs.
You’re just not that special.
But according to this policy paper,
over the years,
“the Chinese government gradually turned
Uyghur national identity and Islamic practices
into national security threats.”
You see, after 9/11,
the Chinese regime realized that they had
a golden opportunity to finally get international support
for one of their insane persecutions—
because these victims were Muslim.
So any locals who were angry at the CCP for,
really any number of reasons,
were suddenly labeled as “terrorists.”
And you don’t want to stand up for terrorists, do you?
And the CCP thinks that nothing is effective at stopping terrorism
like going after people’s traditions.
So the CCP banned burqas and abnormal beards.
Plus they banned traditional Muslim clothing,
the name Muhammad,
and fasting during the holy month of Ramadan
for students and civil servants.
The CCP has also put
extreme surveillance measures in place
in the entire Xinjiang region—
like requiring a GPS in every car,
and forcing residents to install
spyware on their mobile phones
that tracks everywhere they go,
every website they visit,
and every text message they send.
Yeah, that’s not going to make anyone mad.
Of course, to keep them in line,
the CCP has added a heavy military presence in Xinjiang.
Incidentally, the Communist Party chief
in charge of Xinjiang is this guy.
Previously, he was in charge of Tibet for five years.
He did excellent work in Tibet,
making sure no one there had freedom, either.
So after years of the CCP
treating its Muslim population horribly,
guess what?
It actually ended up driving
some of them to terrorism.
Over the years,
there have have been several acts of terror
carried out by Islamic extremists in Xinjiang.
Like the 2014 car bomb attack
that killed 31 people.
Actually, Chinese state-run media
has labeled about 15 incidents in Xinjiang
to be “acts of terror” in the two decades,
although it’s hard to know how much of that
is really terrorism and how much
is just regular crime,
spun by state-run media to justify
the heavy-handed treatment of locals.
None of the incidents were claimed by ISIS.
But after ISIS became an evil,
global sensation in 2014,
ISIS tried to take advantage of Uyghur people’s
widespread anger with the CCP.
This study from a US think tank found that
114 ISIS fighters came from Xinjiang.
And now, you have ISIS actively recruiting in Xinjiang,
even rolling out slickly produced songs in Mandarin to do it.
And ISIS is threatening the CCP.
But as I mentioned,
the CCP kind of created their own problem.
For instance,
if the Chinese regime hadn’t
actively destroyed Tibet—
killing monks, burning temples,
and trying to wipe out the culture—
and instead treated everyone reasonably well,
there’d be no anti-China movement
in the Tibetan community.
And the world might never have seen
the Beastie Boys and Smashing Pumpkins
together on stage at the same time.
And in Xinjiang,
the CCP’s oppression has also bred resentment.
Most of the Uyghurs there are very moderate
in terms of their religion,
and just want to be left alone by the CCP—
don’t we all?
But once the CCP started destroying their culture,
monitoring their every move,
and labeling them as terrorists,
it’s no wonder some of them have turned violent.
And it’s no wonder ISIS is now trying to use
that anger for its own terrible agenda.
Although actually,
in a region with 10 million Uyghurs,
ISIS has only been able to recruit 114 fighters—
which is really, really few.
And the number of Islamist terrorist attacks in Xinjiang
has also been pretty small,
compared to the size of the population at least.
But it’s a great excuse
for the world’s biggest totalitarian regime
to blame the world’s scariest terrorist group—
and oppress millions of innocent Uyghurs, just in case.
Thanks for watching this episode of China Uncensored,
once again I’m Chris Chappell,
see you next time.
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