(See below for a selection of images from David’s article, related to the discussion in this episode.)
In this final episode of our series on The Politics of Education on China’s Periphery (linked to the special issue of Comparative Education), Edward Vickers talks to David Tobin of Sheffield University. David has researched and published extensively on the politics of contemporary Xinjiang and the situation of the Uyghurs. In his article for the special issue, he focuses on the use of visual imagery by the Chinese state, Uyghur communities and other actors to project or disseminate particular messages concerning Uyghurs.
David begins by explaining how he came to be interested in the Uyghurs and Xinjiang. The conversation quickly turns to the ways in which Uyghurs have been largely overlooked or ignored in mainstream discussion of China. In his writing, he describes Chinese policy - including education policy - towards the Uyghurs as ‘racist’, ‘colonial’ and ‘genocidal’, and here he explains the use of these terms.
In his article, David is also harshly critical of tendencies in the field of Chinese Studies in the West, which he sees as to some extent complicit in the CCP’s racism towards the Uyghurs. Elaborating on this point, he argues that the essence of this complicity is ‘silence’. It is impossible properly to understand contemporary China without taking account of the treatment of domestic ‘others’ or ‘minorities’, including the Uyghurs. In so far as Western-based scholars talk (or teach) about China without taking full account of the significance of these ‘minorities’ and their relationship with the state, such scholars convey a distorted - and implicitly racist - picture. The reasons for this neglect are various - ranging from self-interest (jobs, money, access for fieldwork) to a misplaced sense amongst those who are less historically aware that China, as a past ‘victim’ of Western colonialism and imperialism, somehow cannot also be a perpetrator of colonial oppression.
Explaining his focus in the Comparative Education article on visual imagery, David reflects on the power of images, as compared with text or numbers, to affect public consciousness and shape debate. The CCP’s propaganda techniques bear witness to its awareness of the power of imagery. Propagandistic portrayals of the Uyghurs and other ‘minorities’ have long depicted them as backward, exoticised, and often eroticised recipients of benefits bestowed by the Chinese state, as it leads them towards the sunlit uplands of ‘modernisation’. But David notes how depictions of the Uyghurs in the early 21st century have taken a darker turn, as the party-state has sought to portray them as agents of violence and chaos, threatening public order and security.
Ed and David further discuss whether, when it comes to portrayals of Muslim Uyghurs as a ‘terrorist’ threat, we can detect the influence of Western rhetorical and visual tropes associated with the ‘War on Terror’. David acknowledges that there has been some borrowing in terms of language and slogans, but is sceptical as to how far this betokens any deeper influence on attitudes and policy towards the Uyghurs. He sees the CCP’s use of language and imagery borrowed from the West’s ‘War on Terror’ as related mainly to attempts to influence Western public opinion and to ‘normalise’ the Chinese state’s repression of the Uyghurs in Western eyes.
David concludes his article by discussing ways in which members of the Uyghur diaspora have sought to deploy visual imagery to push back against the narrative of the Chinese party-state and assert their own experiences and identities. He reflects on how effective such efforts been so far, and discusses several examples - including a discussion with Uyghur exiles over the most appropriate choice of cover image for the recent edited volume, The Xinjiang Emergency. David makes several suggestions regarding the role that China scholars should play in assisting members of the Uyghur diaspora to gain voice, respect and recognition.
David Tobin is a Lecturer in East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield and author of Securing China’s Northwest Frontier: Identity and Insecurity in Xinjiang (Cambridge University Press). David completed a PhD in Politics at the University of Manchester (2013) following intensive Mandarin language training at Peking University and Xinjiang University. He has lectured in Politics and East Asian Studies at the University of Manchester, University of Glasgow, and the University of Nottingham-Ningbo.
Suggested readings:
David Tobin. 2024. ‘Visualising insecurity in China’s counter-terror education’, Comparative Education. 60.1
David Tobin. 2020. Securing China’s Northwest Frontier. Cambridge University Press.
Michael Clarke (ed.). 2022. The Xinjiang Emergency: Exploring the Causes and Consequences of China’s Mass Detention of Uyghurs. Manchester University Press.
