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  1. China’s Ideological Tools of Genocide: Punishment in Legalism

China’s Ideological Tools of Genocide: Punishment in Legalism

China’s intention of genocide today stems from its recent colonialist efforts in East Turkistan. In the implementation of the genocide, the state mobilizes the legalist concept of punishment first pioneered in Qin dynasty. Ancient Chinese Legalism was originally developed to harshly control and exploit people under state rule, but it has now become one of the tools of genocide in its application on China’s colonized region of East Turkistan. In the following sections, we discuss how the ancient idea of punishment, as seen in legalist thinking, is applied to Uyghur women as a tool of genocide in recently colonized East Turkistan.

The head of the Chinese state, Xi Jinping, was quoted in a leaked secret speech as saying that there should be “absolutely no mercy” toward the Uyghurs. This clearly indicates 58 the intent to target the Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslims in East Turkistan, portraying them as a deadly threat that must be eliminated if China is to build its new empire. This intention also aligns with the classic Chinese philosophy of Legalism (Fa Jia) that emerged during the Warring States period. The main ideas of Legalism focus on about power and position, as well as how to ignore moral issues and dominate those ruled. The famous Chinese legalist thinker and official Shang Yang argued: “If strength remains on the other side, one perishes; but if strength is removed on the other side, one attains supremacy.”59

The Chinese government has always considered the people of East Turkistan as a threat that needs to be destroyed. This follows from the zero-sum thinking in legalism, formulated to help those in power to gain supremacy over any region. As one of the tools for enforcing supremacy, Legalists advocated punishments applied even to people who were innocent, much like China’s cruel and punitive policies being applied to Uyghurs and Turkic Muslims today. Indeed, as detailed in the accounts of Tursunay Ziyawudun as well as others cited above, East Turkistan women are punished despite having committed no real crime (other than their identity as Uyghur women). The Book of Lord Shang described punishment as follows:

Therefore, if you govern by punishments, the people will fear; being fearful, they will not commit villainies; there being no villainies, people will be happy in what they enjoy. If, however, you teach people by righteousness, they will be lax; if they are lax, there will be disorder; if there is disorder, the people will suffer from what they dislike.60

57Jeff Desjardins, “Mapped: China’s Most Ambitious Megaproject—The New Silk Road,” Business Insider, March 19, 2018, accessed September 14, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-most-ambitious-megaproject-thenew-silk-road-mapped-2018-3.

58Austin Ramzy and Chris Buckley, “‘Absolutely No Mercy:’ Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims,” The New York Times, November 16, 2019, accessed March 21, 2020, https:// www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html.

59Shang Yang, The Book of Lord Shang: A Classic of the Chinese School of Law, trans. Jan Julius Lodewijk Duyvendak 59 (London: Arthur Probsthain, 1928), 155.

60 Ibid., 65

The righteousness referred to here is, of course, the Confucian idea that has helped underpin Chinese patriarchy, but which legalists saw as an obstacle to their ideology of total power. Cruel punishment methods were encouraged by legalists, such as when Shang Yang advocated heavier punishments in order to make it easier to control the people: “In applying punishments, light offences should be punished heavily; if light offences do not appear, heavy offences will not come. This is said to be abolishing penalties by means of penalties, and if penalties are abolished, affairs will succeed.”61

As we have seen, China’s policies in East Turkistan today reject and grossly violate human rights and are reinforced by legalist thought. The devastating policies of sterilization and forced labor, as well as the state-sponsored forced marriages and sexual torture applied to Uyghur women as legalist-styled punishments are evidently intended for genocidal purposes— to destroy the Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim people. For example, in mass rape camps, Uyghur women are sexually tortured after they are raped. Their body parts used for childbirth become the enemy of the perpetrators, since they regard Uyghur women as the vehicle of Uyghur population growth. As a result, attempts to eliminate the Uyghurs are being implemented using the barbaric punishment methods disclosed in the testimonies.

Clearly, the Chinese government’s intention is not only to instill fear in people, as the legalists advocated, but also to commit genocide through legalist-style punishments applied to its colony of East Turkistan.

Umide, a 30-year-old Uyghur woman now living in the Netherlands, who traveled to Ürümqi in 2018, and, Eldos, a Kazak Canadian who traveled to Ghulja in 2019, both learned that the threatening and punishing of the male relatives of Uyghur women who refuse to marry Han Chinese men or putting the entire family of the Uyghur woman in a concentration camp is a common issue. Uyghur women are also punished for their lifestyles and tortured because of 62 so-called sins of relatives, which they never committed. These kinds of punishments are 63 referred to as the lianzuo or zuxing system, meaning shared responsibility and family penalty. This originates from legalism, but it has resulted in some contemporary Chinese believing that it is part of Chinese culture to put family above the individual and that an individual’s sin can be the sin of the family, since an individual’s achievement is also considered to honor the family.64

Legalism stressed the related measure of the shiwu (ten-five) system of population control, with groups of five or ten families that become mutually responsible for each other (lianzuo)65. The Book of Lord Shang stressed these extended penalties of Legalism as follows:

If there are severe penalties that extend to the whole family, people will not dare to try (to see how far they can go), and as they dare not try, no punishments will be necessary. If punishments are heavy and rigorously applied, then people will not dare to try (to see how far they can go), with the result that, in the state, there will be no people punished.66

The Book of Lord Shang further explained that the reason for making people responsible for each other was also to have them spy on each other as follows:

61Ibid., 133.

62Umide† (eye witness), phone interview with author, March 22, 2021; Eldos† (eye witness), phone interview with author, January 2, 2021.

63Ziyawudun, interview, March 25, 2021. First mentioned in note 36.

64Yao Lao, “Families that Hang Together,” China Daily, May 17, 2004, accessed March 22, 2021, https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-05/17/content_331252.htm.

65Daniel Haitas, “Shang Yang and Legalist Reform in The Ancient Chinese State of Qin,” Challenges of the Knowledge Society 12 (2018), 524–531, accessed March 22, 2021, https://doaj.org/article/1675416918714f20b18ef6ce5890255f.

66Shang Yang, The Book of Lord Shang, 143.

Now the people in groups of five are responsible for each other ’s crimes, they spy on each other to discover transgressions, they denounce each other and cause hostile relations. By thus establishing enmity the people harm each other, they injure friendly feelings, destroy benevolence and kindness and damage scholarship and culture.67

This ancient method of punishing extended family members or relatives is currently widely applied to the people of East Turkistan. Abdurishit Burhan, an Uyghur witness currently living in Canada explained: “Each 10 families were made into one group and had to be responsible for each other’s behavior, and spy on each other. People know what kind of torture they will receive if they are going to be arrested. Sometimes I have seen people betray their family member to save themselves.” Abdurishit added that the “mutual responsibility policy started in 2013 in Kashgar.”68 This is exactly what legalism promoted:

In a condition of complete good government, husband and wife and friends cannot abandon each other’s evil, cover up wrong-doing and not cause harm to relatives, nor can the men from the people mutually conceal each other from their superiors and government servants.69

According to the Uyghur witness, Umide:

Each local unit in every neighborhood has Uyghur social workers. They must report and arrest 30 persons in certain periods, for so called re-education camps. They start to report and arrest people that they have no relationship with. Later, they will arrest their relatives. One of my friends works in a local unit. They work under the strict surveillance of people’s police. She said she cried and reported her cousin to fill the numbers. When there are no people left to arrest, they have to report themselves. It is a very common and well-known issue.70

The tenets of Legalism have thus become a very useful tool for the implementation of genocide in China’s colony of East Turkistan. Until now, most men and those who are educated, young, and strong have already been eliminated in East Turkistan. This, too, is exactly what Legalism advocated: “To remove the strong by means of a strong people brings weakness; to remove the strong by means of a weak people brings strength.”71

The rest of the population—mostly women—are controlled through forced labor as the Legalist argument also proposed, in the following way:

If compulsory labour service is rare, the people will feel safe; if the people are safe, the ministers will gain no extra power; if the ministers have no extra power, powerful and influential

67Ibid., 35.

68Abdurishit Burhan, in-person interview with author, March 19, 2021, Toronto, Canada.

69Shang Yang, The Book of Lord Shang, 36.

70Umide, interview, March 22, 2021. First mentioned in note 62.

71Shang Yang, The Book of Lord Shang, 153.

men will be extinguished; and if powerful and influential men disappear, all credit will be due to the sovereign.72

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