Students have a class at the central primary school in the Tokkuzak township of Shufu County, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, September 26, 2017. /Xinhua
The Trump and Biden administrations have relied on the work of a right-wing "religious extremist," Adrian Zenz, for their accusation of "genocide" against the Uygur population in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, U.S. investigation journalism website The Grayzone reported on Thursday.
The Grayzone pointed out that the former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo relied on the researcher's investigation to level his genocide allegation.
"It reveals a pattern of data abuse and fraudulent assertions that substantially undermines the incendiary charge," the website said.
According to the investigation website, the U.S. government's accusation of genocide against China stems from a single source – a report written by Zenz, a right-wing German researcher affiliated with the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and neoconservative Jamestown Foundation in Washington, DC.
"The researcher is a far-right Christian fundamentalist who has said he is 'led by God' against China's government, deplores homosexuality and gender equality, and has taught exclusively in evangelical theological institutions," the website noted, indicating a far-right ideology may undermine the reliability of his report.
Data abuse and fraudulent claims are more severe problems of the report, said The Grayzone, claiming that Zenz's assertion of genocide "is contradicted by flagrant data abuse, fraudulent claims, cherry-picking of source material, and propagandistic misrepresentations."
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Branding family planning policy as genocide
According to The Grayzone, Zenz branded the family planning policy as genocide without providing evidence that shows an intent to destroy certain ethnic groups, as preventing birth by itself cannot be evidence of alleged genocide, the website explained.
Furthermore, the statistics he provided showing Uygur population growth rates falling by 84 percent in the two largest Uygur prefectures between 2015 and 2018 contradicted his previous finding, which claims the Uygur population growth in Xinjiang was 2.6 times higher than that of Han ethnic people in the region.
In fact, unlike the Han ethnic people, the Uygur people were exempted from the one-child policy. Urban Uygur couples could have two children, and rural Uygur couples three.
The Grayzone pointed out that Zenz also omitted the fact that China's overall birthrate has fallen precipitously in recent years across the demographic spectrum, underlining that a decrease in the birth rate in Xinjiang cannot be the proof for so-called genocide.
Framing free healthcare as genocide
Moreover, The Grayzone pointed out that Zenz framed the expansion of public healthcare services in Xinjiang as evidence of genocide in the making, ignoring the fact of China's improvement in maternal health and infant mortality reduction.
The documents cited in Zenz's paper as evidence were also cherry-picked and distorted, The Grayzone said, referring to the "evidence" of an August 2019 document from Xinjiang's Wenquan County government office.
Citing the document, Zenz referred to a single mention of 468 "birth control surgeries," which could alternately be translated as "family planning operations," but provided no evidence that the operations were coercive.
Children pose for a photo at a kindergarten at Liangzhongchang Village in Yutian County, Hotan, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, February 13, 2019. /Xinhua
Invented statistics and spun tales are also found in Zenz's paper, the website said.
Among Zenz's "major findings" was the claim that "80 percent of all net added intrauterine device (IUD) placements in China were performed in Xinjiang, despite the fact that the region only makes up 1.8 percent of the nation's population," The Grayzone said.
According to China's official documents, in 2018, the number of new IUD implants in Xinjiang accounted for only 8.7 percent of the total number in China, but Zenz increased the figure by nearly 10 times, The Grayzone said.
What has Western media ignored?
The Grayzone further noted that Western media deliberately ignored Zenz's extreme political leanings.
The BBC, CNN, and Associated Press, which cited Zenz's views or reports, did not identify his extreme political leanings, and the BBC even referred to him as a "China scholar," the website said.
Like the BBC, an AP report relied entirely on an advance copy of Zenz's paper but provided no background and whitewashed his right-wing politics or institutional affiliations. A CNN story published a month later and a CNN follow-up in September 2020 that alleged forced sterilizations in Xinjiang also relied on Zenz without mentioning his political background, said The Grayzone.
The U.S. investigation journalism website also said if President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken had formally adopted the Trump administration's "genocide" narrative, they would have in effect endorsed Zenz's botched and propagandized "research."