naraburns nihil supernum
8mo ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
Since there are no realistic, viable solutions on hand, I wonder: what would/could China do in this situation?
There is Xinjiang, of course, but Muslims there were not nearly so well-armed as Hamas (their big terrorist attack being a knifing at a train station), and Uyghers weren't nearly as hostile to Han people as Palestinians are to Israeli Jews. And the ratio of Han to Uygher is much better than Israeli to Gazan.
China also has substantially more informal state capacity than Israel as well: subduing Xinjiang wasn't a project of the PLA but 1.5 million CCP cadres deployed to control ~20M Uyghers. Given there are 2M Gazans, this suggests Israel would need at least 150k and more likely 300k for a similar project in Gaza. Maybe offer some kind of multi-year Birthright trip to subdue Gaza? Doesn't seem plausible.
It seems like, even if Israel did have the will to go full Xinjiang, it just doesn't have the capacity to. (Which I don't think you or anyone serious is calling for.)
China also has substantially more informal state capacity than Israel as well: subduing Xinjiang wasn't a project of the PLA but 1.5 million CCP cadres deployed to control ~20M Uyghers.
FYI Xinjiang has a population of 25M, and apparently Uyghers only comprise 45% of that (11.6M, concentrated in certain areas), while Han comprised 42% (10.9M). Im not sure about the 1.5M number you gave here, but basically the ratio would demand even more Israelis to govern Gaza.
Another thing people forget about China/CCP's towards Xinjiang is that it started basically since Xinjiang was absorbed into the PRC in 1949. Actually the ideas of settling non-Turkic (aka non-Uygher), non-Muslim Chinese (mostly Han) in Xinjiang started in the 1830s during the Qing Dynasty. More of the Han migration into XJ were spurred by the Sino-Soviet split. By 1970s XJ was already 40% Han, and it's only increased since then.
This means China/CCP has had a lot of time to experiment and try different policies etc in Xinjiang. All the while, China was experiencing unrest and protests inside Xinjiang, and terror attacks/bombings/killings outside of Xinjiang. Seriously read through the timeline here, there's a ton of interesting events and stories. I mean, who knew China was training and equipping some of the Afghan Mujahadeen against the Soviets!?
And as China has gotten richer, it has been able to allocate more resources to controlling XJ. Combine more resources with the aforementioned experience, China/CCP has only become more effective at governing XJ and pacifying the population there.
But yeah in the end, Israel is a tiny place and they only have so many people, and a country that is always cognizant of being surrounded by potential/historical enemies. Plus Israel does respect some (?) press freedoms, and Gazans can freely access the internet, so the PR battle can be quite difficult for Israel.
Meanwhile, to a normal Chinese living in Beijing or Shanghai, Xinjiang is this near-mythical faraway place that produces grapes and now is starting to become a ski destination. There used to be more visible Uygher population in big cities, most visible in halal restaurants (and it personally felt like all marijuana dealers were Uygher, apparently grown in Xinjiang. No the weed was not good at all). They are a lot less visible in cities today, from personal experience. Unless a big terrorist act succeeds (2014 train station attack for example), the general Chinese public really doesn't think about Xinjiang. Then you add on information restrictions for internet, and the internal censorship, and the lack of any foreign press in Xinjiang - occasionally some news article can "shed light" but in the end, no foreign journalist would be able to access Xinjiang like they can access Gaza. The PR battle is totally different versus TikToks made by Palestinians showcasing what it's like on the ground when Israel bombs Gaza.
China also culturally out-muscles the universe of Xinjiang's culturally-compatible neighbors. Israel does not. Egypt alone is a cultural powerhouse in film and television, and the rest of the Arabic-speaking world is producing mountains of music and TV and literature. They'd have to cut off the Palestinians from the outside world on a permanent basis to avoid outside influences.
In 2022, Israel published 6971 books, so about as much as the entire arab world.
Reports and studies have shown significantly low reading levels in the Arab world. The average reading time for an Arab child is six minutes a year compared with 12,000 minutes in the West, according to the Arab Thought Foundation’s Arab Report for Cultural Development. The reading rate of an Arab individual is a quarter of a page a year compared with 11 books in the US and seven books in the UK, according to a study conducted by the Supreme Council of Culture in Egypt.
In the 1980s, number of books translated per million people, per five years: Arab world 4.4, Hungary 519, Spain 920 .
In terms of quantity, and notwithstanding the increase in the number of translated books from 175 per year during 1970-1975 to 330, the number of books translated in the Arab world is one fifth of the number translated in Greece. The aggregate total of translated books from the Al-Ma’moon era to the present day amounts to 10,000 books - equivalent to what Spain translates in a single year (Shawki Galal, in Arabic, 1999, 87)
Spain isn't really relevant here. How many books are written by Uyghur authors outside China? Or by authors speaking mutually intelligible languages from similar cultural groups.
Without running a full prison, you can't cut Israeli Arabs off from the rest of the Arab world and their cultural products.
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Notes -
Since there are no realistic, viable solutions on hand, I wonder: what would/could China do in this situation?
There is Xinjiang, of course, but Muslims there were not nearly so well-armed as Hamas (their big terrorist attack being a knifing at a train station), and Uyghers weren't nearly as hostile to Han people as Palestinians are to Israeli Jews. And the ratio of Han to Uygher is much better than Israeli to Gazan.
China also has substantially more informal state capacity than Israel as well: subduing Xinjiang wasn't a project of the PLA but 1.5 million CCP cadres deployed to control ~20M Uyghers. Given there are 2M Gazans, this suggests Israel would need at least 150k and more likely 300k for a similar project in Gaza. Maybe offer some kind of multi-year Birthright trip to subdue Gaza? Doesn't seem plausible.
It seems like, even if Israel did have the will to go full Xinjiang, it just doesn't have the capacity to. (Which I don't think you or anyone serious is calling for.)
FYI Xinjiang has a population of 25M, and apparently Uyghers only comprise 45% of that (11.6M, concentrated in certain areas), while Han comprised 42% (10.9M). Im not sure about the 1.5M number you gave here, but basically the ratio would demand even more Israelis to govern Gaza.
Another thing people forget about China/CCP's towards Xinjiang is that it started basically since Xinjiang was absorbed into the PRC in 1949. Actually the ideas of settling non-Turkic (aka non-Uygher), non-Muslim Chinese (mostly Han) in Xinjiang started in the 1830s during the Qing Dynasty. More of the Han migration into XJ were spurred by the Sino-Soviet split. By 1970s XJ was already 40% Han, and it's only increased since then.
This means China/CCP has had a lot of time to experiment and try different policies etc in Xinjiang. All the while, China was experiencing unrest and protests inside Xinjiang, and terror attacks/bombings/killings outside of Xinjiang. Seriously read through the timeline here, there's a ton of interesting events and stories. I mean, who knew China was training and equipping some of the Afghan Mujahadeen against the Soviets!?
And as China has gotten richer, it has been able to allocate more resources to controlling XJ. Combine more resources with the aforementioned experience, China/CCP has only become more effective at governing XJ and pacifying the population there.
But yeah in the end, Israel is a tiny place and they only have so many people, and a country that is always cognizant of being surrounded by potential/historical enemies. Plus Israel does respect some (?) press freedoms, and Gazans can freely access the internet, so the PR battle can be quite difficult for Israel.
Meanwhile, to a normal Chinese living in Beijing or Shanghai, Xinjiang is this near-mythical faraway place that produces grapes and now is starting to become a ski destination. There used to be more visible Uygher population in big cities, most visible in halal restaurants (and it personally felt like all marijuana dealers were Uygher, apparently grown in Xinjiang. No the weed was not good at all). They are a lot less visible in cities today, from personal experience. Unless a big terrorist act succeeds (2014 train station attack for example), the general Chinese public really doesn't think about Xinjiang. Then you add on information restrictions for internet, and the internal censorship, and the lack of any foreign press in Xinjiang - occasionally some news article can "shed light" but in the end, no foreign journalist would be able to access Xinjiang like they can access Gaza. The PR battle is totally different versus TikToks made by Palestinians showcasing what it's like on the ground when Israel bombs Gaza.
As far as the 1.5 million number, I got it from a admittedly throwaway line in https://interpret.csis.org/imposing-the-partys-core-values-in-xinjiang/
Other sources, suggesting 1.1M as of 2018 and "over a million" at the end of 2019:
https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-prayer-weddings-occasions-9ca1c29fc9554c1697a8729bba4dd93b
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/become-family-china-sends-officials-to-stay-with-xinjiang-minorities-1.4118327
Good catch on Xinjiang's ethnic makeup being only around half Uygher.
Thanks, was curious on how that was sources/calculated
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China also culturally out-muscles the universe of Xinjiang's culturally-compatible neighbors. Israel does not. Egypt alone is a cultural powerhouse in film and television, and the rest of the Arabic-speaking world is producing mountains of music and TV and literature. They'd have to cut off the Palestinians from the outside world on a permanent basis to avoid outside influences.
Don’t know about music, but mountains of literature, definitely not.
Spain isn't really relevant here. How many books are written by Uyghur authors outside China? Or by authors speaking mutually intelligible languages from similar cultural groups.
Without running a full prison, you can't cut Israeli Arabs off from the rest of the Arab world and their cultural products.
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