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He repeatedly mentions Arabic as the local language instead of the various Turkic languages of the region, indicating that he most likely doesn't speak any of t
by yorwba 6y ago
He repeatedly mentions Arabic as the local language instead of the various Turkic languages of the region, indicating that he most likely doesn't speak any of them, so he probably didn't have much interaction with less-educated people, who'd be the major targets of forced Mandarin education etc. So when he talks about people feeling safer now, is that representative of everyone in Xinjiang or just the people he chose to associate with?
It's not unlike a European visiting the US when they were busy killing natives and enslaving blacks, but being thoroughly enamored by their egalitarian democracy.
- mike_h 6y agoHe says he’s talking about the written language on signs.
- yorwba 6y agoThe written language should be Standard Mandarin in combination with one or more of Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Xibe etc. depending on the composition of the local population. They're written in scripts related to the Arabic script, but the languages themselves are very different.