I picked some books to help understand the situation in Xinjiang for Shepherd.

I wrote a piece on Xinjiang for Index on Censorship. Here’s the conclusion:

I wrote a piece on Disney’s terrible new film for the LRB Blog.

https://lrb.co.uk/blog/2020/september/boycottmulan

You can hear me talking to Rebecca Morofsky about Xinjiang (and China in general) on the Bloomsbury podcast (also on Spotify).

Thanks to Dan Eady for a long review (and a fair summary) of the new edition of China’s Forgotten People.

The first edition had a very different reception in SCMP – that reviewer lamented that ‘the book does little to bring to life the exotic and enchanting characteristics of Xinjiang’. Though that was by a different reviewer, the difference in tone seems indicative of a shift in the global perception of Xinjiang, and perhaps also of the very different situation in Hong Kong now compared to that in 2015.

I wrote a piece for Apollo magazine about the recent destruction of shrines and mosques in Xinjiang.

I wrote about the arrest of the Kazakh activist Serikzhan Bilash and the links between the  Uyghur and Kazakh communities in the region for the LRB Blog.

Glad to see Xinjiang getting coverage for Francophone audiences on National Radio in Canada- and I’m grateful to them for featuring my book China’s Forgotten People (segment starts around 13h 9m) https://ici.radio-canada.ca/premiere/emissions/plus-on-est-de-fous-plus-on-lit/episodes/427176/audio-fil-du-lundi-18-fevrier-2019 …

I spoke about the legalisation (and thus official acknowledgement of) the re-education camps in Xinjiang on the BBC last night. Segment begins at 24.49.

I spoke about Xinjiang and Theresa May’s visit to China on The World Tonight on Radio 4 last night. That segment starts at 12:52.

Two very good pieces from Xinjiang this week – one, a look at the securitisation of Xinjiang by Tom Philips in The Guardian (in which I am quoted), the other a nice piece of reporting from Bortala in Xinjiang by Edward Wong from the New York Times.

I wrote a piece on David Brophy’s remarkable book for the Times Literary Supplement.

There’s a Q and A about China’s Forgotten People in the new issue of Time Out Shanghai.

Some thoughtful reviews from Kerry Brown at Open Democracy, Tom Miller at The Spectator, and Jonathan Mirsky at Literary Review (click here for pdfs LR CFP 1 LR CFP 2). Thanks to these experienced China commentators for taking the time to write such considered pieces.

There’s also a good overview of some of the book’s issues by Joshua Bird at Asian Review of Books and by Paul French at China Rhyming.

Thanks also to Ian Johnson of the New York Times for his incisive Q and A on the book.

I’ll be talking at Westminster University, London, on March 19th about how Western and Chinese media tends to represent the  Xinjiang issue in different yet equally distorting ways  – details here.

I attempt to make sense of the horrible killings in Kunming on the LRB Blog

Ilham Tohti, the respected Uyghur economist, has been charged with separatism and faces ten years to life in prison in China. It’s the kind of thing that’s a reminder of how China’s judicial and political system hasn’t made the same kind of progress as its economy. I wrote about the case on the LRB Blog.

My piece on Lisa Ross’ exhibition in London of photos from Xinjiang is up on the London Review of Books Blog.

My interview with her earlier this year is at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

There was an explosion in Tiananmen Square last week. On the LRB Blog I write about why it wasn’t terrorism.

Verbally, that is. My Q and A with the director of this wonderful documentary about Uyghur music is now up at China File

Trailer: