Thread by @ReasonablyRagin

The last time I visited #China, I knew it would be the last time. 5 minutes after sitting down with a #Uyghur friend, she was called by her cadre 'minder' questioning her why she was talking to a foreigner. Like so many, we've never heard from her again.

I made the choice not to return as a researcher because it endangers people. Or you can go back but you must construct your research in a way that the Chinese government approves and ignore people like my friend who has disappeared. And write about #China like it never happened.

That research access is based on approving or refusing to challenge the deadly lies which the government tells. When I worked in #China, it was clear many people maintain that access despite being racist towards Chinese people. This has nothing to do with respect for China.

The night I decided to leave I shared a table with a lonely migrant construction worker who missed his family. He spends his life traveling from city to city far from home living in a portakabin and working crazy hours to build stuff that nobody really needs.

Some colleagues thought I was a bit strange for talking to Chinese people from different walks of life. So they didn't want to join and went to a "western restaurant" for the 100th day in a row. One even said "I don't like the Chinese" and he's still there doing research.

My conscience is clear when I criticise the party-state's genocide in #EastTurkistan. I do that from love not hate. It is also not anti-Chinese and people know this very well. Also, Chinese people don't want British democracy but many hate their government for good reason.

Now external observers with the resources and privilege to act freely celebrate their return to #China to write projects that ignore genocide, crimes against humanity, racism, forced labour, torture for beliefs, etc. These things matter to Chinese citizens who are not privileged.

In a situation of brutal oppression by a government that believes thought is an act of terrorism, archaic academic contributions do not help anything but the pension status of the author. The fear which the party state governs produces the silence of #chinastudies.

So if you are returning to #China as a researcher, will the knowledge you produce improve people's lives? Will it shed light on lesser known urgent social issues that we can tackle together? Will it provide crucial new knowledge that shapes our understanding of the world?

I'm going to flip the table and say that researchers returning to #China may be anti-Chinese. You can only conduct research if you refuse to listen, support, or intellectually analyse those Chinese citizens who challenge the arbitrary state violence that opresses them.

Writing about #China without addressing state violence & targeted voices produces knowledge that silences Chinese citizens. It causes harm to them by producing knowledge that invisibilises those people & their lives. It reproduces an image of China constructed by the party-state.

#Chinastudies does not want to talk about this but must. Its silence on arbitrary state violence emanates from the party-state's governance inside #china. But people outside have every right, power, and resource to do whatever they choose about it.