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INTRODUCTION: AUTO-BIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT

I have been a foreign EFL teacher in China now for almost 10 years, since first arriving in 2011 to take up a middle school teaching position in Xinjiang [XUAR].  It was my formative pedagogic experience, shaping my subsequent professional practice in China, which included work in both the private, corporate EFL sector in Shanghai (for then market leading companies) and the government-run tertiary education sector in both Shanghai and Shandong.  So too, during the Ministry of Education [MOE] response to Covid-19, I participated in the switch to online and Blended Learning [BL] while designing and delivering Content-Based Instruction [CBI] Inter-Cultural Communication Courses.
I arrived in XUAR in 2011, remaining there for one year (into 2012) as an EFL teacher.  While I was beginning my career in XUAR, the Australian government held a private Refugee Review Tribunal hearing on a Uygur male seeking residence in Australia although not entitled to refugee status.  The Tribunal transcript reveals that the male was in Urumqi during the 2009/07/05 riots and directly communicating and coordinating actions with the World Uyghur Congress [WUC] in Washington DC in the US, ostensibly in collaboration with then WUC leader Rebiya Kadeer,  Despite evidence of the Uygur male's direct role in spreading terrorism in China, he was granted a protection visa to remain n Australia (primarily through intervention by Kadeer and Uygur "human rights" lawyer Nury Turkel) where he continued his anti-China radicalism in association with East Turkestan Australia Association [ETAA].

I ventured into experimental auto-ethnographic digital videography with two trial videos about my experience in XUAR (using authentic footage I shot while there) and text-based contextual narration.  Incomplete and subject to revision, I temporarily (prior to re-editing) include them here for autobiographical context.

 
In fact, I filmed extensively on a hand-held video camera over my year in XUAR, offering the resultant travelogue to Australia's National Film & Sound Archive [NFSA] where I had been a SAR Research Fellow prior to coming to China: they refused to add it to the collection or even view it.  The above videos were an attempt, using available software, and without budget, to attempt to frame the basis for an autoethnographic documentary about my experience as a foreign EFL teacher in China (specifically XUAR),  Due to financial limitations, this project was temporarily shelved after completion of the above videos, which were an attempt to potentially find a suitable style.  I retain all travelogue footage of my time in XUAR (unseen and unreleased to date) and am currently seeking sponsorship to complete a releasable feature length film: details and further information about this project can be obtained through direct contact.As part of a transmedia project, it is coordinated through this website and its linked social media accounts, beginning with a series of digital publication.




Videos about XUAR from vloggers inside China are routinely policed by social media giant Twitter in association with ASPI.  Accounts on Twitter that post videos from XUAR counter to the official "human rights abuse" narrative lead to the suspension of these accounts.  Below are videos of XUAR that feature a vastly different perspective to that portrayed by Western MSM.


 

DAILY LIFE IN XUAR: VIDEO

The last of these videos features Jerry Grey, who has been to XUAR multiple times and developed a presence on social media by sharing his travelogue details.  Although in China he is considered a "bridge-builder", outside of China he is excoriated for his views, as are many supporters of China.

 

UYGUR SEPARATISM, EXTREMISM & TERRORISM IN XUAR

CGTN released a series of documentaries on the reality and extent of XUAR terrorism.  None of this evidence was cited in the 2022/08/31 UN OHCHR Assessment on XUAR.  While Western MSM seeks to discredit China's response to terrorism, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has revealed what the West would suppress in its campaign to police so-called "disinformation".  It is thus essential that this Western "disinformation" management drive is contextually deconstructed.

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Since 2017, “forced labor in Xinjiang” has been strategically deployed alongside two related (emotionally charged) terms - “genocide” and “human rights abuse” - as rhetorical constructs framing Western mainstream media [MSM] discourse on CPC land reform, poverty alleviation and transformation-through-education policies in Xinjiang [XUAR].  Strategic discursive deployment of these rhetorical constructs (within an identity-politic episteme’s core concept of “religious freedom”) systematically integrated a historically / historiographically revisionist account of XUAR so as to correspondingly frame populist discourse on the CPC leadership under Xi Jinping as “authoritarian”.  During the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, however, this cumulative discursive framework on “authoritarianism” coalesced Western MSM into an engineered moral panic over what was coined “genocide games” in a deliberate effort to undermine and ultimately dismantle China’s position in “global supply chains” by calling for the sanction by the World Bank of IMF financial support for vital BRI infrastructure in XUAR.  Underlying a US political platform launched during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, this initiative used a coordinated international Western MSM publicity campaign based on a strategic historical analogy to WW2 Nazi Germany’s 1936 Berlin Olympics to manufacture consent for “financial decoupling” from China on the basis of “human rights”.

US WARMONGERING IN THE GUISE OF "HUMAN RIGHTS"

CGTN responded to US criticism of supposed "human rights abuses" by contextualizing US warmongering.  Since the US withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council its influence has been to weaponize "human rights" in order to undermine China's rise.  The history of US foreign policy is, in this context, a manipulation of "human rights" to suit US political purposes, now clearly evident in the campaign against China's poverty alleviation and land reform BRI initiatives in XUAR. 

LEXICAL TACTICS IN MANIPULATING "FORCED LABOR IN XINJIANG" DISCOURSE

The "forced labor in Xinjiang" narrative was essentially devised by Adrian Zenz and followed through by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute [ASPI]. Zenz attempted to broaden the ILO definition of "forced labor", using the lexical substitution "coercive labor" to infer systematic malpractice without evidence and despite conflicting evidence from US company audits into XUAR labor practices.  Although Zenz and ASPI's tactics have been exposed by Brian Berletic and Jaq James, they remain covertly influential.

POTENTIAL LEGAL ACTION AGAINST ASPI & ZENZ

Moves to launch legal action against ASPI and Zenz for the consequences of their flawed "research" have been discussed for some time. Following her debunking of the ASPI "Uyghur for Sale" Report (indebted to Zenz) independent Australian lawyer / legal analyst Jaq James is currently involved in liasing with aggrieved Chinese business and Uygur workers to secure legal representation to mount such a lawsuit.  To which, James is increasing gaining a media platform after being interviewed by the Australian Citizen's Party.

POTENTIAL LEGAL ACTION AGAINST ASPI & ZENZ

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