Data from the Communist Party’s seventh national census claim that the population of various ethnic minorities has grown by more than 10 percent in the past decade. This claim has been widely disputed. Overseas ethnic minority human rights organizations have argued that the Uighurs in Xinjiang, who have been subjected to discriminatory policies such as forced sterilization and abortions, could not have experienced significant population growth, adding that authorities have replaced ethnic minorities with Han Chinese.
The latest official census results released by the Communist Party on Tuesday (May 11) show that China’s total population will be 1.41 billion in 2020, an increase of 5.38 percent compared to 2010. Of the total, the Han population will be 1.286 billion and the population of various ethnic minorities will be 125 million. Compared to the 2010 population figures, the Han population increased by 4.93% and the population of ethnic minorities increased by 10.26%.
In response to the figures, Serikzhan Bilash, founder of the Kazakh human rights organization ATAJURT, told Radio Free Asia (RFA) on Tuesday that the claim that “the birth rate of ethnic minorities is twice as high as that of the Han Chinese” is a false statement. The claim that “the birth rate of ethnic minorities is twice as high as that of Han Chinese” is unfounded.
He explained that the Chinese Communist Party has been implementing a strict family planning policy in Xinjiang, encouraging and forcing party members and civil servants to have only one child or to marry late and have children later. In addition, since 2017, the CCP has been arresting Kazakhs and Uyghurs on a large scale in Xinjiang, and almost no children have been born in the whole of Xinjiang for five years, “and it is certain that the birth rate of Kazakhs and Uyghurs in Xinjiang has been almost zero over these years.” Because of this, many maternal and child health centers in Xinjiang have been converted into concentration camps, “which we have proof of.”
Bilai Xi condemned the Communist government for falsifying data and allowing Han Chinese to replace Kazakhs and Uighurs to fill the population vacuum created by the Communist Party’s “ethnic cleansing policy” in Xinjiang in recent years.
“Falsehoods! Numerous Han Chinese were deliberately made to change their identities to Kazakhs and Uyghurs, posing as real Xinjiang people.” Bilai Xi noted that the Chinese Communist Party uses this tactic “to disguise the real thing, to put these fake Xinjiang people in office, and to deprive (real) Xinjiang people of their right to autonomy.”
Dilishati, a spokesman for the World Uighur Congress, also questioned the official figures released by the Chinese Communist Party. He told RFA that the birth rate of the Uighur population in Xinjiang has dropped significantly in the past two years.
He noted that the CCP government claims that the population of the so-called ethnic minority is growing faster than the Han Chinese as a cover for its systematic destruction of the Uighur people. According to statistics previously released by the Chinese Communist government, Xinjiang’s population began a sharp decline in 2017. the local birth rate fell from 15.88 percent to 8.14 percent between 2017 and 2019.
The natural growth rate of Xinjiang’s Uyghur population, Dilishati added, has shown an even sharper decline in the past two years.
“The natural growth rate of the population fell from 11.4 percent in 2017 to 3.69 percent in 2019, a drop of more than 67 percent.” Dilishati believes this is related to the Communist government’s “systematic” population control measures against the Uyghurs, including forced sterilization and abortion.
Kazakh scholar Rais Khan also said he did not believe the official Chinese Communist Party claim that “the population growth of ethnic minorities is higher than that of Han Chinese.
He noted that this is a figure set by the CCP to suit its needs, “in order to use this census data to give more leverage to the CCP’s war-wolf diplomacy on human rights in Xinjiang. He also noted that a few years ago, some Kazakh scholars privately conducted a census of the Kazakh population in Xinjiang, and the results were “vastly different” from the official figures released by the CCP.
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