Something happenned in Xinjiang at around 2017 and for at least a couple of years that did not happen in the other regions of China.
We can’t really deduce anything about what’s still happenning there, either way, from that graphic.
EDIT: There is a response to this post where a link is provided to a report by a Think Tank created by and openly funded by the Australian Government (as shown right there: https://www.aspi.org.au/about-us/, second paragraph). The post were I pointed out that such a source has a conflict of interest, hence that report can’t just be outright trusted, has been moderated away as “misinformation” even though my claim is proven by their own website. Feel free to draw your own conclusions as to why such a comment was removed by a moderation action backed by a false justification (as the page above proves), especially in light of the specific subject we’re talking about here.
There was also per county data available, showing a correlation between the size of the decline and the ethnic makeup of the county: “The largest declines have been in counties where Uyghurs and other indigenous communities are concentrated. Across counties that are majority-indigenous the birth-rate fell, on average, by 43.7 percent in a single year between 2017 and 2018. The birth-rate in counties with a 90 percent or greater indigenous population declined by 56.5 percent, on average, in that same year.” https://www.aspi.org.au/report/family-deplanning-birthrates-xinjiang/
I assume that when they claim that the official Chinese county data is showing certain things, that that county data is indeed showing those things. Otherwise they would have no credibility and their propaganda efforts would be wasted.
Yeah, there is still some level of uncertainty as they could just have crafted that data, but Reports (which are mainly talkie talkie with selected pieces of information - hence prone t cherry picking) are even more distant from raw data hence harder to confirm as “the whole truth” and when they’re from Think Tanks funded by Governments (or, worse, with undisclosed funding sources) in nations that see China as an adversary (or China, or one of its allies) you know with absolute certainty that the makers of such reports have a huge incentive to push the viewpoint of the mainstream politicians of those nations.
Ultimatelly Trust is a scale rather than just two absolute points, and highly processed selective data wrapped with lots of text is itself less trustworthy because it’s harder to check that it’s both true and complete (i.e. hasn’t been cherry picked), and sources which are funded by those who openly have very specific views of the target of such reports are much less trustworthy on that subject than sources not suffering from such a conflict of interest.
It’s a report that has been widely reported on in the media at the time. They could not just “craft data” and get away with it. Forging verifiable data is the stupidest thing that a think tank could do if they want their future reports to also be picked up by mainstream media. They can be creative with their conclusions or accusations, but claiming that official government data says X, while it doesn’t, that’s not going to fly and they know it.
It’s a report that has been widely reported on in the media at the time.
Well, yeah, that’s the whole point of Think Tanks - it’s to produce reports for the media to unquestioningly parrot and in this day and age they definitelly unquestioningly parrot Think Tank reports without actually checking them, especially when they align with what the Government says and the target is a different nation’s Government (they’re more likely to actually check those things and even question them if the target is an internal group in a country, but even in certain countries you see for example reports of the words of spokespersons from, say, representatives of the industry treated with more implicit trust than those from unions, even though both sides should be thought of as equally biased towards certain interests),
Australia specifically falls in the “Country with wholly captured Press” category, same as the US, the UK and China itself.
As an example, a lot of the Propaganda pushed out around the 7 of October attack of Hamas on Israel was also pushed out by amongst others similar organisations and was widely reported in the media at the time as well as repeated by countless politicians in the West, and in the fullness of time most of that turned out to be wildly exagerated, misportrayal of events and even complete total bollocks.
Given the present day levels of “journalistic” “integrity” of the Press, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, “widely reported on the media” isn’t the stamp of trustworthiness you seem to think it is.
The report is 4 years old and as far as I can find, since then there have been no retractions of anything in it, nor has anyone shown that their were flaws with their methodology. You may not want to acknowledge it, but that data is real. This is something that has really happened.
Plenty of things published about the 7 October attack have never been retracted, most notably the count of deaths assigned to Hamas which in light of the activation of the Sampson Doctrine by Israel was almost certainly wildly exagerated since the Israeli Military was activelly murdering any of their own citizens that had been captured by Hamas.
It took almost a year of Israel doubling down almost daily on Murdering and Lies for those retractions to happen and even then they were only in a few Western News media, not as far as I know in the actual Israeli News Media who still now and almost without expection (the notable exception being The Hareetz) keep on unqestioningly publishing whatever the IDF and the Israeli Government says as God’s Own Truth.
Using “the Press didn’t retracted it” as measure of trustworthiness of something published by the Press is just circular logic: News Media who knowingly published Propaganda aren’t going to retract it unless it blows up in their face to such a level that they are forced to do so, and that almost never happens with wordy “reports” that don’t stay long in the spotlight, are hard to validate and which basically say that “country we see as adversary are bad people”.
But even more simpler than that: replace everything with China and Chinese - if a Chinese Think Tank funded by the Chinese Government and even receiving funding from whatever is equivalent to the Department Of Defense in China, put out a report saying that the Uyghurs have been treated just as well as everybody else in China and all Western talk about an Huyghur Genocide are outright lies, would you believe them?
Because if you believe it when it’s all Australia and Australians but not when it’s the exact same structure but with China and Chinese instead, then your trust is entirelly anchored on your biases, not on any objective analysis of the problem space and the actors involved.
If you browse other regions of China there, in some (mainly the ones whose names I didn’t recognize which I expect are the most provincial hence why I’ve never heard of them), you will find a fall in birth-rates from aproximatelly the same values to the same values (i.e. around 1.4 to around 0.6, for example https://www.ceicdata.com/en/china/population-birth-rate-by-region/cn-population-birth-rate-jiangxi and https://www.ceicdata.com/en/china/population-birth-rate-by-region/cn-population-birth-rate-shaanxi) but none but Xinjiang have that steep drop in 2017.
Something happenned in Xinjiang at around 2017 and for at least a couple of years that did not happen in the other regions of China.
We can’t really deduce anything about what’s still happenning there, either way, from that graphic.
EDIT: There is a response to this post where a link is provided to a report by a Think Tank created by and openly funded by the Australian Government (as shown right there: https://www.aspi.org.au/about-us/, second paragraph). The post were I pointed out that such a source has a conflict of interest, hence that report can’t just be outright trusted, has been moderated away as “misinformation” even though my claim is proven by their own website. Feel free to draw your own conclusions as to why such a comment was removed by a moderation action backed by a false justification (as the page above proves), especially in light of the specific subject we’re talking about here.
There was also per county data available, showing a correlation between the size of the decline and the ethnic makeup of the county: “The largest declines have been in counties where Uyghurs and other indigenous communities are concentrated. Across counties that are majority-indigenous the birth-rate fell, on average, by 43.7 percent in a single year between 2017 and 2018. The birth-rate in counties with a 90 percent or greater indigenous population declined by 56.5 percent, on average, in that same year.” https://www.aspi.org.au/report/family-deplanning-birthrates-xinjiang/
Removed by mod
I assume that when they claim that the official Chinese county data is showing certain things, that that county data is indeed showing those things. Otherwise they would have no credibility and their propaganda efforts would be wasted.
Yeah, there is still some level of uncertainty as they could just have crafted that data, but Reports (which are mainly talkie talkie with selected pieces of information - hence prone t cherry picking) are even more distant from raw data hence harder to confirm as “the whole truth” and when they’re from Think Tanks funded by Governments (or, worse, with undisclosed funding sources) in nations that see China as an adversary (or China, or one of its allies) you know with absolute certainty that the makers of such reports have a huge incentive to push the viewpoint of the mainstream politicians of those nations.
Ultimatelly Trust is a scale rather than just two absolute points, and highly processed selective data wrapped with lots of text is itself less trustworthy because it’s harder to check that it’s both true and complete (i.e. hasn’t been cherry picked), and sources which are funded by those who openly have very specific views of the target of such reports are much less trustworthy on that subject than sources not suffering from such a conflict of interest.
It’s a report that has been widely reported on in the media at the time. They could not just “craft data” and get away with it. Forging verifiable data is the stupidest thing that a think tank could do if they want their future reports to also be picked up by mainstream media. They can be creative with their conclusions or accusations, but claiming that official government data says X, while it doesn’t, that’s not going to fly and they know it.
Well, yeah, that’s the whole point of Think Tanks - it’s to produce reports for the media to unquestioningly parrot and in this day and age they definitelly unquestioningly parrot Think Tank reports without actually checking them, especially when they align with what the Government says and the target is a different nation’s Government (they’re more likely to actually check those things and even question them if the target is an internal group in a country, but even in certain countries you see for example reports of the words of spokespersons from, say, representatives of the industry treated with more implicit trust than those from unions, even though both sides should be thought of as equally biased towards certain interests),
Australia specifically falls in the “Country with wholly captured Press” category, same as the US, the UK and China itself.
As an example, a lot of the Propaganda pushed out around the 7 of October attack of Hamas on Israel was also pushed out by amongst others similar organisations and was widely reported in the media at the time as well as repeated by countless politicians in the West, and in the fullness of time most of that turned out to be wildly exagerated, misportrayal of events and even complete total bollocks.
Given the present day levels of “journalistic” “integrity” of the Press, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, “widely reported on the media” isn’t the stamp of trustworthiness you seem to think it is.
The report is 4 years old and as far as I can find, since then there have been no retractions of anything in it, nor has anyone shown that their were flaws with their methodology. You may not want to acknowledge it, but that data is real. This is something that has really happened.
Plenty of things published about the 7 October attack have never been retracted, most notably the count of deaths assigned to Hamas which in light of the activation of the Sampson Doctrine by Israel was almost certainly wildly exagerated since the Israeli Military was activelly murdering any of their own citizens that had been captured by Hamas.
It took almost a year of Israel doubling down almost daily on Murdering and Lies for those retractions to happen and even then they were only in a few Western News media, not as far as I know in the actual Israeli News Media who still now and almost without expection (the notable exception being The Hareetz) keep on unqestioningly publishing whatever the IDF and the Israeli Government says as God’s Own Truth.
Using “the Press didn’t retracted it” as measure of trustworthiness of something published by the Press is just circular logic: News Media who knowingly published Propaganda aren’t going to retract it unless it blows up in their face to such a level that they are forced to do so, and that almost never happens with wordy “reports” that don’t stay long in the spotlight, are hard to validate and which basically say that “country we see as adversary are bad people”.
But even more simpler than that: replace everything with China and Chinese - if a Chinese Think Tank funded by the Chinese Government and even receiving funding from whatever is equivalent to the Department Of Defense in China, put out a report saying that the Uyghurs have been treated just as well as everybody else in China and all Western talk about an Huyghur Genocide are outright lies, would you believe them?
Because if you believe it when it’s all Australia and Australians but not when it’s the exact same structure but with China and Chinese instead, then your trust is entirelly anchored on your biases, not on any objective analysis of the problem space and the actors involved.