During US President Donald Trump’s visit to China, pay close attention to China’s history of information manipulation. The Chinese government distorted the statements of foreign visitors and used them to further its own power over the population under its control.
For example, during UN High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet’s visit to China in 2022, her statement “I admire China’s economic development” was expanded and promoted as “I admire China’s economic and human rights development”. China ignored the corrections issued by the UN office and the misleading report remained on the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s website for more than two years.
Another distortion occurred in 2019, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited China and said, “I wish Uyghurs live happily,” which became “Uyghurs live happily.” The Turkish government later acknowledged China’s distortion and issued a clarification.
These distortions occur often. For a government like China, which governs not only by force but also by strict control of information, this practice is common.
Words such as “my friend,” “smart” or “brilliant” could easily be taken out of context and misinterpreted by Chinese state media. Such words can be used to describe the United States as supporting or at least tolerating Chinese policies.
On January 19, 2021, the United States was the first country to officially declare the situation of the Uighurs a genocide. Following this, more than 20 governments and parliaments, as well as two other members of the UN Security Council, described the situation in the same way.
RFA has learned that 15 days before President Trump’s planned visit this week, a series of security measures were implemented in the Uyghur region. In addition to routine measures such as banning the dissemination of information online and blocking calls from abroad, authorities also restricted the travel of petitioners to file complaints, particularly those traveling to Beijing.
These restrictions make it clear that China does not want anything out of the Uyghur region so that it can control the discourse while the US delegation is there. It is therefore very likely that Beijing will look for opportunities to distort even the most innocuous statements made by the delegation to reinforce its claims about the Uyghur region.
Shohret Hoshur is a journalist at RFA Uyghur. He fled the Uighur region in 1995 after his reporting on Beijing’s repressive policies against Uighurs made him a target of the Chinese government. An 18-year veteran of Radio Free Asia, he has won awards for his exclusive reporting on the Uighur region, where Beijing denies human rights abuses and closely monitors the flow of information. Shortly after joining RFA, Chinese authorities began monitoring anyone known to have had contact with Hoshur, even arresting many of his family members.
Edited by Eugene Whong and Charlie Dharapak.