Impaired, "easy prey" saved by the Chinese state: Constructing“Xinjiang women” in the “People’s War on Terror”

This talk will investigate how the Chinese state rationalizes and justifies its treatment of Turkic Muslim women in Xinjiang through a gendered hierarchy of power ingrained in China's counterterrorism discourse. It will explore how Chinese state representations of ‘Xinjiang women’ reinforce stereotypes of female powerlessness and portray femaleTurkic Muslim activists as negligent mothers or as having moral defects, denying them agency in the process. It will also analyse the construction of the Chinese state as a ‘savior’ that offers ‘vocational education’ and ‘training’ to liberate women from their 'extremist' existence while presenting Xinjiang as a modern, metropolitan space for a new type of agentic Uyghur woman. Overall, the session will shed light on the intersection of gender, politics, and human rights in Xinjiang while reflecting on the implications of stripping Uyghur women of their voice and autonomy in the name of providing agency under the ‘People’s War on Terror’ apparatus.

The invited speaker is Pablo A. Rodriguez-Merino, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Defence and International Affairs at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (UK). 

Join the lecture via MS Teams: meeting ID: 383 888 272 514, password: yfnUyN.