Over the past year or more, the check-in procedures at hotels have tightened considerably. Other than checking identification documents, every guest also has to be verified by a facial recognition system. Even if a Uyghur individual is carrying valid identification documents, he will still be instructed to head to a "designated accommodation". If the hotel staff accidentally checks in a Uyghur guest, the police will swiftly appear at the lobby and request the staff go to the police station to report on the Uyghur guest's daily movements.

What if a Uyghur decides to rent a room and stay for a longer duration? The landlord would suddenly inform the Uyghur renter that the residence will need to be used for other purposes; he is willing to pay a decent sum to compensate for the early termination, but the renter has to move out immediately. The landlord does not actually have any other use for the room, of course, they just receive requests from the relevant authorities to evict renters of particular ethnic minorities. In the future, in order to avoid being on the hook for such compensation, the landlord simply will not rent to ethnic minorities in the first place.

The above-mentioned scenarios are currently not corroborated by any official "red letterhead" directive, but my friends have encountered such situations.

This is why Uyghurs in their iconic white caps selling lamb skewers or sweet walnut cakes have been absent from China's cities for some time now.

China’s ethnic Han society is indifferent to their human rights

When I went to Beijing with a friend to watch the 2008 Olympics, I received a text message from the chain hotel I was staying at. The message emphasized that people from Xinjiang and Tibet were not welcome.

On this occasion, my friend criticized the hotel for being so politically incorrect, but China’s ethnic Han majority are largely indifferent to the restrictions on Uyghurs' freedom of movement, and some even support such measures.

Most cities in China are almost exclusively the realm of Han Chinese. When they see an Uyghur with their different appearance, clothing, and speech, they normally see the Uyghurs as talented singers and dancers, or as fierce and audacious. These are of course stereotypes, but such perceptions are not completely off the mark.

A classmate of mine once said that her female Uyghur college classmate was always reluctant to attend hometown gatherings at their school because she would get bullied by the Uyghur boys. After such gatherings, she would return to her room with her eyes red from crying.

For a very long time, many cities in China had Uyghur pickpocket gangs. Han Chinese said that these Uyghurs carried knives wherever they went, stealing what they could and robbing what they could not steal. Fearing for their safety, most people did not dare to intervene when a theft was being committed by a Xinjiang native.

I recall getting pick-pocketed by a Uyghur girl while shopping with my girlfriend. I caught the thief in the act, but she and her peers just laughed it off; my girlfriend threw a tantrum because she thought I looked weak.

Han Chinese often blamed police incompetence for the deterioration of public order and the deepening climate of fear in the cities. The most iconic example was the 2012 "cut cake scam" (cut cake, also known as maren candy, is a Uyghur delicacy).

Before that time, rumours circulated among ethnic Han Chinese about Uyghurs' dishonest business practices. For instance, it was said that an Uyghur cut cake seller would initially agree to a certain price for 50 grams of cake, but later insist that the price was actually for one gram only. If the customer refused to pay, a group of Uyghurs would supposedly resort to violent means to compel payment.

On December 3rd, 2012, the public security agency of Yueyang City, Hunan Province, announced on Weibo, "When a villager, Mr Ling, was buying Xinjiang walnut cake (i.e. cut cake) a misunderstanding occurred due to the language barrier, and an argument between the two parties escalated into a group brawl.”

Mr Ling eventually had to pay damages totaling 152,000 Chinese yuan. During that era, when people still believed in the power of crowdsourced citizen journalism, netizens saw the official announcement as proof that the "cut cake scam" really existed.

Whatever the reality was, you can no longer savour authentic Urumqi lamb skewers, or raise your suspicions about the Uyghurs selling cut cake — both have disappeared from the daily lives of Han Chinese.

Has "Bearded Wang" returned?

With no other place to go, and no permission to travel overseas, the Uyghurs scattered across China have but one choice left: return to Xinjiang.

With the benefit of hindsight, the Chinese government could have planned this more meticulously. They could have waited for all the Uyghurs to return before putting their "collective management" into action - or should we call it "complete elimination"?

The government’s top decision-making body, the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) Central Committee, is made up of 25 members, and features the party secretaries of the five most important territories — Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Guangdong. But beginning in 2002 at the 16th Party Congress, the party secretary of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region joined alongside them.

In August 2016, Xinjiang’s party secretary Zhang Chunxian (張春賢) stepped aside, making way for Chen Quanguo (陳全國), who previously administered Tibet.

Georgetown University professor James A. Millward had this to say about Chen:

“Chen Quanguo brought his network of inspection checkpoints, security posts, armoured vehicles and constant patrolling to Xinjiang. This system was perfected during his term in Tibet, and the CCP believes he would be able to pacify a stubborn populace dissatisfied with party rule. In his first year administering Xinjiang, Chen has already hired upwards of ten thousand new security personnel.”

I visited the province a few years ago, when Zhang Chunxian was still Xinjiang’s party secretary. When the bus entered Urumqi, everyone had to disembark for a security check and to verify their identities; the queue for inspection was very long. The attitude towards Han Chinese was markedly more relaxed, and they passed through much more quickly than the ethnic minorities.