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African Ambassadors Tour Xinjiang to See “Happy Life of Local Residents”

by Cobus van Staden
Zhou Li is a Beijing-based Counsellor in the Information Department at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

China’s use of diplomatic junkets to justify its anti-Uyghur measures in Xinjiang to the Global South are ratcheting up again. Ambassadors and other senior diplomats from Senegal, Benin, Mali, Rwanda, Madagascar, Malawi, Uganda, Lesotho and Chad visited the region on Thursday.

Judging by Global Times (admittedly a weak measure), China’s framing of the large-scale Uyghur internment as counter-terrorism is finding an audience among these diplomats. It’s a revealing deviation from these countries’ oft-stated unwillingness to ‘choose sides’ in the U.S.-China standoff.

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