Attention deficit: China’s campaign against Uighurs

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. You'd think that a field dedicated to studying human behavior and its consequences would have a handle on racism. But economics is not only unrepresentative in its racial makeup, it's fallen short in explaining how racism arises in the first place. And before the pandemic, if you asked a Swede what Danes are like, you'd probably have heard fun but feckless. A Dane would have told you Swedes are uptight. But the effects of Sweden's Hands Off COVID 19 response has upended those stereotypes. First up, though, Over the past three years in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, authorities have thrown an estimated 1 million people into a new Gulag. Most of them are Uyghurs, an ethnic minority that is predominantly Muslim. Their internment, their so called re education, constitutes the largest arbitrary roundup seen since the Second World War. Reports of abuses abound in the province, which is home to 10 million Uyghurs. Forced labor, a thoroughly Orwellian surveillance state. And last week, a new study claiming that Chinese authorities are forcibly sterilizing women in an apparent bid to limit the Uyghur population. Beijing called the new allegations baseless. The Trump administration had already blacklisted several dozen companies deemed complicit in the atrocities in Xinjiang and last month signed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went further after authorities seized 13 tons of products suspected to have been made with human hair that originated in Xinjiang.

Today, the United States Department of State, along with Treasury, Commerce, and dhs, are issuing a business advisory to companies with supply chain links to entities complicit in forced labor and other human rights abuses. In Xinjiang and throughout China, a global.

Response to the plight of the Uyghurs is growing, but much of it amounts to strong words and not a lot of concrete action.

The world has not stood up to China over the atrocities in Xinjiang.

Gadi Epstein is our China affairs editor.

A number of governments have issued strong statements castigating the Chinese government over its treatment of Uyghurs. But beyond a few policy actions, mostly in the United States, they haven't really done much about it at all.

Well, what about those policy actions from. From the United States?

Well, the US has just taken some action. Congress passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy act, which aims to punish Chinese officials for the abuses in Xinjiang, and Donald Trump signed that on June 17th. However, on that same day, an excerpt of Trump's former National Security Advisor John Bolton's new book came out in which he revealed that Mr. Trump had, at the G20 summit in June of last year, told Xi Jinping that building the prison camps was exactly the right thing to do.

And why do you suppose it is that he would have said that?

Well, we don't know exactly because we only have this sort of hearsay account. Bolton is relaying what the interpreter told him Trump had said. But we can surmise a couple things. One, that Xi Jinping probably explained the Chinese line on why they build these detention centers, which is that they're necessary for curbing terrorism, and that the people they're putting in them have shown, you know, dangerous tendencies. Trump is not someone, as we've heard again and again, who studies the briefing materials, and he may have just swallowed the line. You know, he has also shown a sympathetic tendency to authoritarian regimes and to them being, quote, unquote, tough. But we also don't really know. He just may have been trying to butter up Xi Jinping in a particular moment.

But it's also Mr. Trump's signature that's on the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act. I mean, will that do anything substantial?

The act doesn't have a ton of teeth. It does specifically call for sanctions on two Chinese officials, the party chief of Xinjiang and his former deputy chief, for their role in violating the human rights of Uyghurs. However, the US Government already had that authority to impose sanctions on individuals that it believes are responsible for human rights atrocities. Donald Trump has just decided not to impose them. And he actually said in an interview with Axio shortly after signing the Uyghur Human Rights Policy act that he hadn't done that because he didn't want to jeopardize a larger trade deal with China.

And what about the policies and concrete actions of other foreign governments?

There hasn't been much. Many European countries have signed on to a statement that the US signed on to last October and before that in July at the UN condemning the atrocities in Xinjiang. There are a number of countries that accept Uyghurs as refugees. There have been other symbolic actions that are actually quite meaningful, I think, because they draw attention to the cause. And one of those would be the European Parliament last year awarding the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Ilam Tothi, a Uyghur academic who was sentenced to prison for life in 2014 on a charge of separatism. I interviewed his daughter, Jur Alam, and she told me that there was a lot of intense debate over the award. She actually watched it unfold, and she saw a member of European Parliament explain why they shouldn't give her father this award.

He said, china is a very powerful country, and it's not a very wise idea to go opposite of them. So I. Yeah, I understand, but what.

About the business end of this? What about the firms that do business in China?

Up till now, businesses have not said much. They're very wary of upsetting China. But there have been some developments in recent months. There have been a few reports about the problem of Uyghurs being pressed into forced labor in factories in China, which supply to a bunch of companies in America and Europe. One report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute named 83 companies as possibly being complicit, and this included all the biggest brand names you've heard of companies like Adidas, Nike, Tech Space, Apple. Now, some of them have disputed that their factories are actually involved in this program or that their factories are forcing Uyghurs to work under miserable conditions. But quietly, a lot of these companies are trying to actually figure out what's going on in their supply chains. They are not saying much publicly, though they don't feel they have much leverage with China. China really holds all the cards. At least that's their view. And they say, you know, the industry groups representing these companies say that they need governments to stand up to China.

So governments could do a lot, but aren't businesses maybe would like to do more, but the commercial imperatives preclude it. What about people and citizens and consumers voting with their wallets?

That would be where you'd get some real traction if you had a real grassroots global movement by citizens saying, not going to stand for this. We're not going to buy your products. And that way, it would be sort of like boycotting South Africa over apartheid in the 1980s. You know, activists have talked about this a little bit. It's going to be very hard to rally the public's attention for that kind of global campaign. But there's also the question of whether it would really have any impact on China's behavior. You know, China is the world's second largest economy. South Africa's was ranked 26th in 1985. And from the consumer standpoint, it seems like today it would be impossible to avoid products made in China.

So what hope is there for change then if everyone's hands are tied in these various ways?

I think for there to be any hope of change, what is needed most is more attention on these abuses in Xinjiang. You had this recent story by the Associated Press about forced sterilizations in Xinjiang and about what appears to be a concerted effort by the Chinese government to actually just reduce the population of Uyghurs, which is just horrifying. And the more that stories like that come out, the more that it'll be hard to ignore what's going on in Xinjiang. I talked with Jury Alam about the importance of this, and, you know, and she said they just have to keep pushing.

It's like there's a door, it's half locked. If you knock one time, knock twice, it might not open. But if you kick one time, kick 10 times, kick 100 times, it might be open one day. We might break the lock one day. And this is what we are trying to. Trying to do.

Gadi, thank you very much for your time.

It was great to be with you, Jason.

For a lot more analysis like this, subscribe to the Economist. To find the best introductory offer wherever you are, just go to economist.com intelligenceoffer. Last month, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, the American Economics association, the field's professional body, put out a statement. Like so many statements at the time, the organization said it stood by protesters who were demanding action. And like so many statements, the AEA then looked inward Acknowledging it had only begun to understand racism and its impact on the economics profession, on the study of economics itself. But it wasn't the first time this year that economists had grappled with the fields race problem. In January, at the association's annual gathering, a a panel was convened.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome. Let me emphasize that our focus is not on whether there is a race problem in economics. That's been abundantly documented.

Many prominent black economists shared the racism they'd experienced coming up in the field, including Trevon Logan of Ohio State University.

Someone who has later been an editor of articles I have published, has likely reviewed. Several that I have written, called me a boy.

But the discipline's racial disparities and complaints about them aren't new.

Fifty years ago, a group of black economists essentially sent a letter to the American Economic association expressing their discontent.

Sumaya Keynes is trade and globalization editor at the Economist.

And the complaints were broadly split into two categories. One, they felt that, that, you know, the profession itself was a hostile environment, that there were problems with black economists being included. But then also they had concerns with the very economic framework that was being applied. It was the way that economists were dealing with race. They felt that it was inadequate and they wanted it to be fixed.

And now 50 years on, how much is it fixed?

Not enough, I think, is the consensus. And you can see that if you look at the numbers in 2017, 18, that academic academic year, there were only around 2% of assistant professors in the most prestigious universities who were black. Some departments had never had a black professor on the tenure track. There's a survey of economists from last year that found that 62% of black women and 43% of black men had experienced racial or gender discrimination. That compares with 6% of white men. So clearly there's a problem there in the professional climate of economics.

I mean, that's the makeup of the economics field. What about its content, its output?

I think there are many prominent voices now saying that there are problems with the way that economics has tried to deal with race. There are papers on the topic. I did a search and around 3% of the working papers published by the National Bureau of economic research since 1980 mentioned race, racism, racial, black, or I think it was African American in their title or abstract. So it's not something that economists have completely ignored. But the accusation is that the way that they have treated it just as a kind of variable to be put into the statistical analyses has been deficient. Right. There hasn't been enough questioning of the sources of racial discrimination. Enough examination of the history, the context, and serious questioning of what's driving racial.

Differences in the field itself. But the field is dedicated to explaining the behavior, the economics of the world at large. I mean, surely that plays into the way it deals with, with race more widely.

Yeah, I mean, you really would expect a discipline that was dedicated to the topic of, you know, the allocation of scarce resources to have a lot to say about, about racial inequality. You know, of the criticisms, one is that economists rely very heavily on models. And so you make predictions based on what you expect individuals to be doing, depending on some kind of, you know, rational way. And in the process, you end up throwing out a lot of information about norms or sociological context or history or incentives. Right. Another example is the way that economists think about discrimination. So typically economists think about two kinds of discrimination. One is taste based. So people just don't like other people of different races and that drives their behavior. Or it's statistical. Right. So they don't have information about an individual, so they behave based on a generalization, a stereotype about that group. And that could drive them to treat them differently. That is a very natural, narrow conception of discrimination. Right. The risk is that you leave out the incentives for what looks like taste based discrimination. If it is statistical discrimination, you could stop there and not ask the question, well, why have they formed the stereotype? The risk is that you could even not ask whether their beliefs are correct.

So to your mind then, is this kind of a call to action for economists to start thinking entirely differently about racism, about racial biases?

So I guess I've been talking in fairly general terms. Economists have failed to do X, Y or Z, and that's too broad. Right. There are economists who have been thinking about these things, and many would argue that they have been marginalized. And so one thing that economists could do is to look at that existing scholarship and to consider what lessons it might have.

But it's not just a matter of getting people to read the existing scholarship. It's about getting more of the scholarship out there done by black economists.

There are a lot of calls right now to, you know, work harder on it and improving diversity within the profession. There are people like Lisa Cook, Rhonda Sharp, who've been working in this area for decades.

I did not meet a black woman economist until I was 23 years old. I'm currently 26. And that economist was Dr. Lisa D.

Cook, who'd been doing kind of great work supporting mentoring young black students.

It was in meeting her that I considered, okay, becoming an economist. Is a viable career path for me.

There's a group called the Sadie Collective.

My name is Ponta Traure and I am co founder and COO of the Sadi Collective, a group of lots of.

Students who are trying to promote the status of black women among economists.

So what we're talking about is systemic racism and how pervasive that is within different economic institutions. So for instance, at the Federal Reserve, where I currently work, one out of 409 economists within the system is a black woman.

And you know, they have this list of demands that's gathered around 2,000 signatures, including things like more cash for diversity initiatives.

We have very clear recommendations of what can take place in order for the field to really start to see see a meaningful shift. Once those kinds of recommendations are implemented, then I believe that this reckoning would actually be sustainable and lead to long term change.

So there's certainly a lot of energy in this area.

And that energy, does that mean that we might actually see some movement in this after 50 years of talking about it?

You know, this is something that has been worked on for years and years and years. And you know, I think one of the worries is that everyone's waiting for some policy, right? We're all economists, we're all waiting for the economic policy, the departmental policy that's going to fix this problem. And that misses that. Actually. Lots of the responsibility or the power lies with individuals and they need to mentor and do the work. And only then will that pipeline of young black economists be expanded.

Sumaya, thanks very much for your time.

Thank you.

In its opening scenes, the Scandi detective drama the Bridge shows a mysterious gloved driver crossing the Oresund bridge between Sweden and Denmark. Later, a body is found on the border between the two countries and police must collaborate to solve the crime. The show became an international sensation while also reinforcing some national stereotypes.

The characters of the two detectives in the Bridge are a sort of exaggeration of the stereotypical images that Danes and Swedes have of each other.

Matt Steinglass is the Economist's Europe correspondent.

The Danish cop is sort of jolly, full of life, but unreliable, half shaven, has a bit of an alcohol problem, and that conforms to Swedish views of Danes as being very jolly, but not necessarily meticulous and not really reliable. The Swedish detective seems to have Asperger's syndrome, but her characteristics of extreme literalness and meticulousness and her sort of emotionless sex life are in a funny way just an exaggerated version of Swedishness. According to the Danish stereotype of Swedes.

And where do these stereotypes come from? Sibling country rivalries?

Those stereotypes of each other go all the way back to the Middle Ages, when Sweden and Denmark fought a series of wars against each other. And the Swedish court began pumping out propaganda about how the Danes were treacherous, unreliable and cruel. And the thing is that in the COVID 19 pandemic, those stereotypes have sort of been scrambled. How do you mean? Denmark started out with a very meticulous lockdown very quickly in March, it shut its borders, it closed down schools, it closed down restaurants, and all of the other sort of restrictive measures that we've come to associate with COVID 19 lockdowns. And Sweden took this unique liberal approach to its lockdown. It basically didn't have a lockdown. It kept many schools open, restaurants and bars stayed open. And its infection and death rates went up very quickly and are much higher than those of its neighbors. They've had over 5,300 deaths, and their death rate per 100,000 people as of July 1 was 52 in Sweden, compared to just 5 in Norway and 10 in Denmark.

And what impact has that disparity had on relations?

Denmark shut down its border with Sweden in mid March. And very quickly Sweden started to complain that they were still letting the Danish in, but the Danish were not letting them in. And those tensions have persisted and become somewhat more exacerbated over the past few months. In mid June, Denmark, Norway and Finland reopened their borders to each other's tourists. But they kept the border with Sweden closed, saying that they had to do that because Sweden's COVID 19 rate was so much higher, and they needed to do that in order to protect public health. On June 27, finally, after a long period of pressure from businesses, Denmark began letting in Swedes from provinces where infection rates are low. But they're still not letting in Swedish tourists from regions where they are high, such as Stockholm. And the Swedish foreign minister pleaded with Denmark not to discriminate against her citizens. But Sweden's neighbors are saying they simply can't open those borders because Sweden's infection rates are so high.

And what about the Swedes themselves? How are they taking this?

This has been a bit of a blow to Sweden's self image. Swedes are used to thinking of themselves as unimpeachable on the moral and sanitary fronts. But last week, Stefan Leuven, Sweden's prime minister, was finally forced to appoint a to investigate their handling of the pandemic. And polls are changing. Swedes are increasingly worried about the policies that have led to their country having such a high infection rate. More importantly, the sense that Sweden has that other countries are treating them as carriers of disease is simply not something that they're used to.

And what do you think the knock on effects of that sort of regional that intra Nordic tension could have?

When Sweden's foreign minister warned that this might damage internordic cooperation, she was probably exaggerating somewhat. These countries are so closely knit that it seems unlikely to them in the long term they're really going to have more trouble cooperating simply because of a sense of hurt feelings over what's happened on COVID 19 policy. There has been economic damage, particularly in the area around Copenhagen and Malmo, those two cities that were depicted in the bridge. Those have, they have very tightly linked economies. But I think the longer term impact is really going to have more to do with the country's self images. Those longstanding stereotypes that they've had have always been changing. And one thing that's been changing for the last 20 plus years is that Denmark has started to think of itself in some ways as being more realistic and having more effective policies in some areas than the Swedes, which would be a reversal of stereotypes.

Matt, thanks very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts and see you back here tomorrow. It.