[...]
Starting around March 27, Uyghur Times reviewed multiple videos from Urumqi and Kashgar showing city management workers removing Uyghur-language signs from shops, restaurants, supermarkets, and even private businesses. In many cases, only Chinese-language signage was left behind.
One widely circulated video on the Chinese version of TikTok shows the demolition of Uyghur-style architectural elements at a major transportation hub in Urumqi, known as Uchtash Qatnash Bikiti (also referred to as Sandongbi Transportation Station).
In the footage, a Uyghur man standing in front of the site expresses deep sorrow:
“Today we are witnessing the destruction of one of the most iconic cultural landmarks in Urumqi. It held our memories. For many of us, our journeys began here and ended here. Now, it is gone.”
[...]
Other videos show workers dismantling Uyghur-language signage across urban areas. One sign reads “ئۆي مۈلۈكچىلىك، ئىلىم سېتىم,” meaning “Real estate Sales & Transactions.” Another removed sign identifies a construction materials supplier. In the clip, a bystander can be heard lamenting:
“It is not over. One day, it will come back.”
Observers say the campaign reflects a broader effort to eliminate visible markers of Uyghur cultural and linguistic identity under the framework of the new law.
When the law was passed, experts warned that it would legitimize cultural destruction and forced assimilation. Uyghur activists also condemned the law.
[...]
Bilingual education is a far cry from what the West does. You're making entirely false equivalencies. Yes. The law can be subverted. When the Voting Rights Act was passed, it was NOT passed as a lie but an aspiration, and then the racists in power worked to get around it and built up rhetoric for decades to get to the point where they would have the momentum to repeal it. There is no equivalent movement in China. This is a new law, built on the recognition that disunity and ethnic strife is BAD for the country. You have to identify a Chinese right wing reaction to this law before you can claim equivalency. You have to look for the political movement in China that is upset about the idea of ethnic diversity and co-existent and find their rhetoric saying "Thos dirty islamists believe in the devil and want to destroy our civilization and install Sharia Law!"
You will not find that in China.
The problem is that you imagine China has the same drive to dominate that the West does, but you can't actually find evidence for it, so you deliberately latch on to any narrative that can make it seem like there's an equivalence.
Where are the religious leaders demanding China return to the one true religion? Where are the politicians saying that non-Han people are savage, backwards, and have to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and deal with their own "cultural underdevelopment" that keeps them trapped in poverty and violence? Where are the think tanks publishing research papers about Uyghur-on-Uyghur violence? Where are the politicians stoking ethnic division by claiming "those people" want to start a "new caliphate" and "bring us back to the middle ages"?
Paul Fucking Krugman said this shit about the leaders of Iran! The West is foundationally xenophobic, and all of their growth and strength is tightly integrated with their bigotry.
Meanwhile in China the last 40 years have been built on the recognition that, hey, China fucked up under Mao, specifically with regard to Han Chauvinism. They went through a whole political and social process of acknowledging that they had a bad approach to building a society, believing they knew best for everyone and forcing it on people, and they made structural changes to their government, their cultural narrative, their education, and their legal system to address it.
There is no equivalent in the West to this. The West still thinks they're carrying out King Richard's Crusades ffs.
I'm not missing the point. I assure you. I understand laws and enforcement are different. I understand that laws can be written and then undermined. I am painfully aware of it.
But you don't see Chinese newspapers in 1964/65 writing articles that say "The Civil Rights Act / Voting Rights Act is a law designed to assimilate ethnic minorities into white supremacy and eradicate them entirely", like we see here. You don't see a right wing movement in China screaming about the poor and the browns and the islamists. You don't see politicians running local or national narratives on the basis of fear of the other.
Just because you want to believe that any government would act the way your government has in the past (or the present, depending) doesn't make it true.