In the Uyghur region, where free international media access is not allowed, videos of some of the "foreign social media stars" living in China traveling around are becoming more and more popular on social media.
Interestingly, such "travel videos" are widely circulated in China, which is banned in China on international social media, such as Twitter, and so-called "foreign tourists" visit Uyghurs working in cotton fields and factories in the Uyghur diaspora. In the middle
of the video, they explain that they are doing this on their own. For example:
"Friends, it is a lie that Uyghurs are being massacred!"
"Everything is normal here."
"Is it true that more than a million people are in concentration camps?"
Such statements are made in the so-called "Visit to Xinjiang" and "Real Xinjiang" videos by so-called "Western Swallow Vloggers".
The issue of "concentration camps" was slowly becoming internationally recognized in 2018 after the United Nations Commission on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination announced that more than 1 million Uighurs were being held in Chinese concentration camps. The U.S. Congressional Caucus on China has released the figure at 1.8 million in its 2020 report. The Biden government also backed down on January 19, 2021, after the previous U.S. government declared China’s oppression of the Uyghurs a “genocide” and a “crime against humanity”. Since then, Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Belgium, the Czech Republic and France have also acknowledged the "Uighur genocide."
Beijing is known to be actively promoting international social media to improve its deteriorating image in the international arena. Recently, it was revealed that the Chinese government had hired some "foreign" bloggers to launch a counter-propaganda campaign against the international media, which had reported serious human rights issues.
According to Chinese government documents and the websites of the agency companies, state-run media and local governments have reportedly organized and funded "tours" promoting China.
YouTube video publishers, YouTube bloggers, have also said in their videos that if they make travel videos about a particular location, the provincial and municipal governments will accommodate them at the hotel and raise other expenses. A YouTube user named Lee Barrett acknowledged the reality of a similar situation in one of his films. "They will arrange our tours and they will pay for our room and board," he said in the video.
Ahead of the start of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, the Chinese side has signed a $ 300,000 agreement with the US-based Vippi Media on social media such as TikTok, Instagram and Twitch to spread the word about the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and human rights in China. .
The video was released on December 31, 2021 by the Egyptian brothers Tarekk Habib and Anas Habib, the founders of the channel "Two Brothers". According to the video, the Chinese company has promised to pay them a thousand dollars if they produce a video that China has taken good measures to protect China from the coronavirus for the 2022 Winter Olympics and to ensure the safety of athletes. They rejected the request and released a video of China's oppression of Uyghur Muslims.
Indeed, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region government has been campaigning since last fall to mobilize foreign students in China to sing "Xinjiang policy." "People of all nationalities in Xinjiang live happily ever after" is the headline of a news published by Xinjiang Daily.
According to the report, Chinese Communist Party Secretary-General Xi Jinping wrote a letter to foreign students at Peking University in July last year urging them to have a deeper understanding of "real China", to introduce their ideas and experiences to more people, and to promote China to people around the world. He specifically stated that he would call. According to the report, in October 2021, the Xinjiang Autonomous Region government visited the Uyghur people of 16 countries, including Bengal, Afghanistan, Brundi, Uganda, Russia, Pakistan, Korea, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, the United States and the United Kingdom, in response to Shi Jiping's call.