China Reform Monitor: No. 1139

December 23:

China and Thailand have agreed to cooperate against “illegal immigration and terror,” according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry announcement. The two will enhance cooperation in the “prevention and the eradication of illegal immigration, drug trafficking, terrorism and transnational crimes.”. Thailand hopes China will “contribute to the development of the countries in the region through its contributions to health, anti-drug trafficking and human trafficking.” China “expressed support for [Thailand’s] efforts to promote economic growth,” the communiqué said. Last week, Premier Li Keqiang visited Thailand and offered Bangkok and its neighbors more than $3 billion in loans and aid “to improve infrastructure and production.” Following a recent visit to Beijing by the Thai Prime Minister, both countries’ defense ministries agreed to hold a security dialogue, India’s Economic Times reports.

[Editor’s Note: Nearly 300 Uighurs have been held in immigration detention camps in Thailand since they were discovered during a raid on a suspected people-smuggling camp in the south of the country ten months ago.]

December 24:

Police in Guangxi have shot dead one person and detained 21 others who were part of a group of Uighur “religious extremists” seeking to cross into neighboring Vietnam, the official Xinhua reports. Police received a tip the group was attempting to cross into Vietnam through Pingxiang, Guangxi and sent a team to intercept them. As they were detained one Uighur reportedly stabbed a police officer and was shot dead. The wounded policeman is recovering and police detained the 21 others, Radio Free Asia reports. The number of Uighurs fleeing China into Southeast Asia has been steadily increasingly.

December 25:

The authorities in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, the home of a large Christian population, have banned schools from holding “Christmas-related” events, and are pressuring them to “pay more attention to Chinese traditional festivals instead of Western traditions.” They have also launched a demolition campaign aimed at local churches, with more than 400 forced to remove visible crosses and some demolished, The Straits Times reports. Meanwhile, in Northwest University in Xi’an, Shaanxi students were forced to watch a documentary about Confucius instead of celebrating Christmas. “Be good sons and daughters of your country, stand against kitsch Western holidays,” read a banner on the campus. “Resist the expansion of Western culture,” read another. The school urged students to support Chinese traditional culture, and not to “idolize foreign festivals.” The People’s Daily showed pictures of university students in Hunan holding an anti-Christmas street protest wearing traditional Chinese outfits and holding banners that read “Resist Christmas” and “Chinese people should not celebrate foreign festivals.”

December 27:

“Thanks to diplomatic actions taken by Turkey and the United Nations, some 300 Uighur refugees in Thailand will not be sent to China, from where they escaped and face death if they return,” the Daily Sabah reports. Seyit Tümtürk, the vice president of the World Uyghur Congress, visited the captured refugees in Thailand and said steps were being taken to relocate the nearly 300 Uighurs to Turkey. Istanbul is working to have the Uighurs, which were discovered in a Thai border camp in March, moved temporarily to Ankara. Turkish Foreign Minister Çavuşoğlu said: “I brought the issue to the Thai foreign minister and the Chinese foreign minister and told them that Turkey wants to shelter those Uighurs.” Authorities in Xinjiang are pressuring the families of those captured in Thailand to sign documents calling for their relatives to return.

December 29:

President Xi Jinping has called for greater “ideological guidance” in China’s universities and urged the study of Marxism. Xi said universities had to “shoulder the burden of learning and researching the dissemination of Marxism.” Xi called on the party to step up its “leadership and guidance” in universities and “strengthen and improve ideological and political work.” The campuses should “cultivate and practice the core values of socialism in their teaching,” Xi said. In September, Peking University urged students and teachers to “fight” criticism of the party. Last year, a liberal Chinese economist and outspoken party critic was expelled from Peking University after he called for democratic reforms. Xi has overseen a crackdown on dissidents and on freedom of expression. Reuters reports that his comments are “the latest sign of his politically conservative agenda” and that suggest that the CPC “will not embark on political reform.