logo
Princeton University Press Stumbles Into a Xinjiang Tour Debacle

Princeton University Press Stumbles Into a Xinjiang Tour Debacle

The Diplomat4 days ago
The Soviet-style 'Potemkin tour' is alive and well in today's China – as PUP found out when several of its staff took a controversial trip to Xinjiang.
There is a long record of Western intellectuals joining 'Potemkin tours' of authoritarian states during the 20th century. Not all of them were illiberal ideologues. In fact, from the point of view of authoritarian hosts, there were useful legitimacy dividends to be had from cultivating liberal foreign intellectuals, whose idealism could be manipulated through lavish hospitality and curated displays of social progress. During the 1920s and '30s the Soviet Union actively wooed them, just as it was courting Western expertise and investment for its industrialization.
One such intellectual, the American philosopher John Dewey, was invited on a tour of Russia with a delegation of educators and college presidents in 1928. Afterwards he praised the new reforming zeal in Russian social and educational life: 'Russia is a revolution, involving a release of human powers…of incalculable significance' for both Russia and the world, he mused.
Josef Stalin's homicidal purges later disabused Dewey of his hopes.
The Potemkin tour is by no means a thing of the past, but the geopolitical conditions in which such tours take place are rather different from those of the 1930s. As Alexander Cooley and Alexander Dukalskis wrote in their new book 'Dictating the Agenda,' authoritarian states like China have now gone beyond defensively 'parrying threatening ideas' from liberal democracies, and are actively working both to shape opinion and undermine opposition abroad.
The 2001 accession of China to the World Trade Organization, the liberalization of its economy, and the expansion of global internet connectivity once led foreign liberal intellectuals to believe that reforming forces would soon consign Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule to history – a fate that Dewey had believed Bolshevism faced in Russia in 1928. Like Dewey, they set their hopes on the removal of barriers 'that prevent intercourse, knowledge, and understanding.'
Things are not turning out as they hoped. Liberal democracy's global standing is now weakened by the re-election of an illiberal populist presidency in the United States. The CCP has meanwhile leveraged China's increasing prosperity, and its own command of sophisticated surveillance, censorship, and propaganda technologies, to reconsolidate its power and suppress dissent at a fraction of the death tolls exacted by Stalin and Mao.
Meanwhile Cooley and Dukalkis also observed that states like China have 'sought to reclaim transnational networks of influence to advance their own political ideas, to dictate the agenda' in other countries, exploiting economic interdependencies and the openness of liberal societies to transmit illiberal influence. Wealthy internationalized universities and academic publishers are heavily involved, and financially invested in those networks.
Thus, the hybrid social and market liberal imperatives driving today's transnational faith within Western higher education – harmonizing free cultural and intellectual exchange with expanding market access – are ripe for manipulation. A recent Potemkin tour in Xinjiang involving Christie Henry, director of Princeton University Press (PUP), presents a vivid illustration of such manipulation, and opportunities to consider how that manipulation can be resisted.
According to a June article in China's Peoples Daily, the official mouthpiece of the CCP, 'China in the Eyes of Sinologists: A Cultural Tour in Xinjiang' was held in late June to promote cultural exchange and encourage deeper global understanding of Xinjiang, using the perspectives of invited foreign scholars and educators 'working in publishing and translation.' Many tour participants, including Henry, were previous winners of the Special Book Prize of China award. Its 2025 award ceremony had been held in mid-June, just prior to the Beijing International Book Fair, which Henry and two of her staff had also attended.
In a press release published on June 28, PUP, a nonprofit organization that is institutionally independent from Princeton University, explained why Christie and her staff joined the tour: 'Our goal with PUP's China initiative is to ensure greater scholarly exchange, and to bring to English-language readers more knowledge and analyses' of China. By accepting the tour invitation, PUP hoped to 'support that exchange by meeting with scholars, sinologists and translators, and visiting regions our U.S.-based staff had not yet been to.'
The tour itinerary explained in the June People's Daily article seemed to accommodate that intention. It stated that in addition to cultural excursions in Ürümqi and Kashgar cities, tour participants joined multiple 'in-depth exchange(s) over translated works by Xinjiang authors.' They also met a few Uyghur authors, as well as translators and representatives of local publishing presses.
The tour apparently engaged the social and market liberal dimensions to PUP's China initiative. In August 2017, one month before Henry was appointed as its director, PUP became the first American university press to open a Beijing office, recognizing China's 'increasing centrality in the world of ideas and its growing investment in higher education and scholarly research.' PUP aimed to translate and publish 'exemplary Chinese scholarship' to the world. In April 2022, PUP partnered with University of Chicago Press to provide it with 'exclusive sales and marketing representation in China.' In March 2025, it inked an 'exclusive representation partnership' in China with the prestigious American publishing company W.W. Norton.
Still, there are some ambiguities in the PUP press release. According to a Twitter thread by sinologist James Millward, Christie Henry and her colleagues were invited on a tour, but were not told until 'quite late' that the destination would be Xinjiang. In an email exchange Henry did not respond to my request for confirmation of this claim. If Millward's account is true, it suggests that there was no planned rationale for the PUP staff to visit Xinjiang specifically. Moreover, the press release mentions only one tour sponsor, the China National Publications Import and Export Group, with which PUP is collaborating on its China Initiative. The June Peoples Daily article mentions another sponsor: the Publicity Department of the Autonomous Region Party Committee, a propaganda organ of CCP regional government in Xinjiang.
The tour was clearly an exercise in United Front influence work. While there is a CCP United Front Department deploying multiple influence strategies domestically and abroad to 'make more people support us [the CCP] and fewer oppose us,' Anne-Marie Brady, the leading global expert on United Front work, told me that it is mistaken to assume that this department does all of that work. 'United front work is the task of all CCP members and all State and Party agencies,' Brady said.
The PUP press release in June tacitly acknowledged the Potemkin characteristics of the tour. It had been 'curated,' not 'comprehensive,' and tour footage taken by accompanying Chinese journalists had 'regrettably been repurposed and mis-contextualized… undermining PUP's every intention for inclusive cross-cultural interactions.' This footage, published by state media including the Xinjiang news website Tianshannet, sparked a social media backlash against PUP.
While People's Daily and Chinese language Tianshannet news coverage focused on the intellectual engagement side of the tour, state media videos captured tour participants' interactions with Disneyfied Uyghur folk culture displays, which are now a mainstay in Xinjiang tourism. One video of Henry in Kashgar particularly infuriated Uyghur diaspora activists, sinologists, human rights journalists, and many others familiar with the Chinese government's repressive policies of mass incarceration, mass sterilization, forced labor, and forced assimilation against Xinjiang's Uyghur people.
Against a backdrop of tour participants dancing with Uyghurs in folk costume, Henry was filmed saying: 'So many cultures exist and meet here, and it's a way for the world to see how cultures can peacefully co-exist and exist in harmony.' She added that she hoped to 'tell this story to the rest of the world.' Her social liberalism had been co-opted to promote CCP messaging on ethnic harmony, to 'tell the Xinjiang story to the world.'
Two concerns arise over this public relations debacle. First, despite their awareness of 'the region's ongoing human rights atrocities,' PUP staffers were persuaded to join a government-sponsored tour of Xinjiang, and Henry was somehow inveigled into repeating its ethnic harmony propaganda. If they cannot resist such inducements, can they resist government censorial pressure that compromises the independence of their book acquisitions processes? The tour footage thus feeds suspicions that PUP's investment in the Chinese publishing market is weakening its commitment to free cultural and intellectual exchange.
In its June press release, PUP referenced its publication of 'China-critical' books such as Sean Roberts' 'The War on the Uyghurs,' as if to exonerate itself of those suspicions. Roberts responded angrily on X, accusing PUP of using his book to 'whitewash' Christie's actions, and suspecting it was likely 'all about $.'
The American sinologist Perry Link told me that his co-authored biography of the Nobel prize-winning poet and political prisoner Liu Xiaobo, 'I Have No Enemies,' had originally been contracted to PUP, with a generous advance payment. After initial enthusiasm, PUP contacted the authors in March 2021 to request extensive revisions to the book manuscript. Link and his co-author's subsequent revisions did not satisfy PUP editors, who canceled the contract, while allowing the authors to keep their cash advance. Columbia University Press then quickly accepted the book, requested no major revisions, and in 2023 it was published to acclaim.
Link told me he had 'no smoking gun connecting this event to PUP's setting up its office in Beijing.' However, his suspicions of political bias or censorship had been revived by the Xinjiang tour news.
When asked for comment, Christie Henry rejected these suspicions, stating that 'we deny any political influence on PUP publishing decisions, including the rights reversion for this manuscript.'
The second concern is that PUP's director joined a tour in a region where the Chinese government has been credibly accused of committing crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide. The intellectual engagement side of the tour was compromised by the fact that leading Uyghur scholars whose works are candidates for PUP's translation projects, like Ilham Tohti and Rahile Dawut, are currently serving lengthy prison sentences. Moreover, Henry's statements about ethnic harmony, even if 'mis-contextualized,' invite accusations not only of moral but also of intellectual irresponsibility. She allowed herself, as the head of a prestigious academic press, to become a mouthpiece for disinformation whitewashing grave human rights violations.
At this point, I should declare my own interests. I am also a socially liberal academic, still holding out for free scholarly and cultural exchange despite authoritarian headwinds. I have published translated work by Chinese (and Taiwanese) scholars for Anglosphere readers and I hope that my books are reaching readers in China, even if they encroach on taboo topics for censors. My latest edited book was published by Routledge's Beijing office, and I have no complaints about the professionalism of its staff.
Nor do I think Christie Henry should be 'cancelled.' However, incidents like PUP's Xinjiang tour demonstrate that international academic presses operating in China must be vigilant against United Front entanglements, to safeguard their reputation and integrity. They must also work out exit strategies with clear red line triggers. At minimum, those red lines should include censorial pressure on their acquisitions processes, demands to join compromising engagements like Potemkin tours in return for market access, and state-directed intimidation, or persecutions, of authors and employees.
There is, finally, one message I want to convey to Henry, to the 13 international scholars and translators who also took part in the Xinjiang tour, and to other scholars tempted into joining such Potemkin tours. It comes from the Uyghur historian Tohti Tuniyaz. In 2014, shortly before his death, the Chinese newspaper Southern Metropolis Weekly interviewed him on his new book, 'Medieval Uyghur Society.' There was much that Tuniyaz could not mention, including his 11 years of imprisonment in Xinjiang on false charges of 'stealing state secrets' and 'inciting national disunity,' over authorized archival research he had conducted in Urumqi.
But at the interview's conclusion, he did address the following to researchers visiting Xinjiang: 'Regarding scholars…I hope they treat ethnic history and culture with seriousness and integrity.' He then warned against 'tourism dressed up in academic clothing,' and 'so-called researchers [who] insult ethnic communities by writing with a sense of voyeurism, deepening ethnic misunderstandings.'
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Thailand and Cambodia exchange heavy fire as fighting rages for second day
Thailand and Cambodia exchange heavy fire as fighting rages for second day

Japan Times

time16 minutes ago

  • Japan Times

Thailand and Cambodia exchange heavy fire as fighting rages for second day

Thailand and Cambodia exchanged heavy artillery fire on Friday as their worst fighting in more than a decade stretched for a second day, despite calls from the region and beyond for an immediate ceasefire in an escalating border conflict that has killed at least 16 people. Thailand's military reported clashes from before dawn in the Ubon Ratchathani and Surin provinces and said Cambodia had used artillery and Russian-made BM-21 rocket systems. Authorities said 100,000 people had been evacuated from conflict areas on the Thai side. "Cambodian forces have conducted sustained bombardment utilizing heavy weapons, field artillery and BM-21 rocket systems," the Thai military said in a statement. "Thai forces have responded with appropriate supporting fire in accordance with the tactical situation." Both sides blamed each other for starting the conflict on Thursday at a disputed border area, which quickly escalated from small arms fire to heavy shelling in at least six locations 209 kilometers apart along a frontier where sovereignty has been disputed for more than a century. Journalists in Surin province reported hearing intermittent bursts of explosions on Friday, amid a heavy presence of armed Thai soldiers along roads and gas stations in the largely agrarian area. People flee their homes near the Cambodia-Thailand border in Cambodia's Oddar Meanchey province on Thursday. | AFP-JIJI A Thai military convoy, including around a dozen trucks, armored vehicles and tanks, cut across provincial roads ringed by paddy fields and moved toward the border. The fighting erupted on Thursday just hours after Thailand recalled its ambassador to Phnom Penh the previous night and expelled Cambodia's envoy, in response to a second Thai soldier losing a limb to a landmine that Bangkok alleged had been laid recently by rival troops. Cambodia has dismissed that as baseless. The Thai death toll rose to 15 as of early Friday, 14 of them civilians, according to the health ministry. It said 46 people were wounded, including 15 soldiers. Cambodia's national government has not provided details of any casualties or evacuations of civilians. A government spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest clashes. Meth Meas Pheakdey, spokesperson for the provincial administration of Cambodia's Oddar Meanchey province, said one civilian had been killed and five were wounded, with 1,500 families evacuated. Thailand had positioned six F-16 fighter jets on Thursday in a rare combat deployment, one of which was mobilized to strike a Cambodian military target, among measures Cambodia called "reckless and brutal military aggression." Thailand's use of an F-16 underlines its military advantage over Cambodia, which has no fighter aircraft and significantly less defense hardware and personnel, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies People wait in line to get food at a shelter in Thailand's Buriram province on Thursday. | REUTERS The United States, a long-time treaty ally of Thailand, called for an "immediate cessation of hostilities, protection of civilians and a peaceful resolution." Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Thailand and Cambodia are members, said he had spoken to leaders of both countries and urged them to find a peaceful way out. "I welcome the positive signals and willingness shown by both Bangkok and Phnom Penh to consider this path forward. Malaysia stands ready to assist and facilitate this process in the spirit of ASEAN unity and shared responsibility," he said in a social media post late on Thursday.

Bessent says US to prod China to pause Russia, Iran oil purchases
Bessent says US to prod China to pause Russia, Iran oil purchases

The Mainichi

time2 hours ago

  • The Mainichi

Bessent says US to prod China to pause Russia, Iran oil purchases

WASHINGTON (Kyodo) -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday that his delegation will stress the importance of China pausing its purchases of Russian and Iranian oil in a meeting with Chinese officials next week in Sweden. Bessent said in a Fox Business interview that he believes the United States can move on to such issues concerning China, given that trade is now "in a good place." He made the remarks as senior U.S. and Chinese officials are set to meet Monday and Tuesday in Stockholm for a third round of trade talks, following President Donald Trump's launch of a trade war against Beijing since his return to the White House in January. "I think that the Russian war machine would grind to a halt. Iran negotiations would be much easier" if China paused its buying of oil from the two countries for "three or six months," Bessent said. Trump said last week he is ready to hit Russia with "severe" tariffs that could be set at 100 percent if there is no deal to end its war in Ukraine within 50 days. He also said secondary tariffs would apply to countries buying Russian goods. China is Russia's leading trade partner. While Western countries have imposed a series of sanctions on Moscow, China has continued to purchase Russian oil. In addition to making little progress in persuading Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war, the Trump administration is also finding it difficult to deal with Iran, which has shown no signs of abandoning its nuclear program despite damage caused to its facilities by U.S. airstrikes about a month ago. Bessent also said in the interview that his team wants to address the issue of "China needing to rebalance." China is "the most imbalanced, unbalanced economy in the history of the world," Bessent said, noting that the country now accounts for 30 percent of global manufacturing. "That's unsustainable. They have a real estate downturn. Many would call it a crisis. Manufacturing has slumped and they can't export their economic problems to the rest of the world," he said. "They need to solve them. One of the ways to solve them is to create a consumer economy." Earlier this week, he suggested that a 90-day tariff truce with China, set to expire on Aug. 12, could be extended as negotiations have reached a "new level." In May, the United States and China backed away from their respective triple-digit tariff rates imposed during the trade war. Since then, a 90-day truce in the tit-for-tat tariffs, which both sides agreed in Geneva during high-level talks, has been in place. Following the deal, Bessent and other senior U.S. officials held a second round of talks with their Chinese counterparts in London.

Zelenskyy Moves to Restore Independence of Ukraine Anti-Graft Agencies after Protests, EU Criticism
Zelenskyy Moves to Restore Independence of Ukraine Anti-Graft Agencies after Protests, EU Criticism

Yomiuri Shimbun

time4 hours ago

  • Yomiuri Shimbun

Zelenskyy Moves to Restore Independence of Ukraine Anti-Graft Agencies after Protests, EU Criticism

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday submitted a new bill that would restore the independence of Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies in an effort to defuse tensions following his approval earlier this week of a controversial law that weakened their autonomy. The previous bill was seen as undermining the agencies' independence and sparked a public outcry and protests, the first major demonstrations since the war began, as well as sharp criticism from the European Union. Zelenskyy said parliament would review the new bill, which 'guarantees real strengthening of Ukraine's law enforcement system, the independence of anti-corruption bodies, and reliable protection of the legal system from any Russian interference.' First reactions Ukraine's two main anti-graft agencies — the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office — quickly welcomed Zelenskyy's new proposal, saying it restores all their procedural powers and guarantees their independence. The agencies said they helped draft the new bill, and urged lawmakers to adopt it 'as soon as possible' to prevent threats to ongoing criminal cases. The bill would replace the contentious law passed by lawmakers and approved by Zelenskyy earlier this week. Critics said it stripped Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies of their independence by granting the government more oversight of their work. A controversial law Zelenskyy initially argued the law was needed to speed up investigations, ensure more convictions and remove Russian meddling. After Thursday's U-turn, Zelenskyy said the new bill reverses the earlier changes and also introduced additional measures aimed at 'combating Russian influence,' including mandatory polygraph tests for law enforcement officers. 'The text is balanced,' Zelenskyy said. 'The most important thing is real tools, no Russian ties and the independence' of the anti-graft agencies. The new draft underlines that the prosecutor general and his deputies cannot give orders to anti-graft agencies or interfere in their work. Bowing to pressure and protests The controversy surrounding the initial bill has threatened to undermine public trust in Ukraine's leadership after more than three years of fighting Russia's full-scale invasion. The protests haven't called for Zelenskyy's ouster, but they are the first major anti-government demonstrations since the war started in February 2022. 'It is important that we maintain unity,' Zelenskyy said in his post. It was not immediately clear when the new bill will be voted on in the parliament, and the protests are likely to continue until the law is passed. At the protests on Thursday evening, the crowd was smaller than on previous days. The unrest has come at a difficult time in the all-out war. Russia's bigger army is accelerating its efforts to pierce Ukraine's front-line defenses and is escalating its bombardment of Ukrainian cities. The bigger picture Ukraine is also facing a question mark over whether the United States will provide more military aid and whether European commitments can take up the slack, with no end in sight to the war. Delegations from Russia and Ukraine met in Istanbul for a third round of talks in as many months Wednesday. But once again, the talks were brief and delivered no major breakthrough. Fighting entrenched corruption is crucial for Ukraine's aspirations to join the EU and maintain access to billions of dollars in Western aid in the war. It is also an effort that enjoys broad public support. EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos expressed concern Wednesday over the law approved earlier this week, calling it 'a serious step back.' The Ukrainian branch of Transparency International criticized parliament's decision, saying it undermines one of the most significant reforms since what Ukraine calls its Revolution of Dignity in 2014 and damages trust with international partners. Deadly fighting grinds on On Thursday, two women, aged 48 and 59, were killed and 14 other people were injured when Russian forces dropped four powerful glide bombs on Kostiantynivka, an industrial city in eastern Ukraine, and shelled it with artillery, Donetsk regional Gov. Vadym Filashkin said. Russian planes also dropped two glide bombs on the center of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, on Thursday morning, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said. At least 42 people were wounded, including two babies, a 10-year-old girl and two 17 year olds, authorities said. The southern city of Odesa, and Cherkasy in central Ukraine, were also hit overnight, authorities said. The drone and missile strikes on the cities wounded 11 people, including a 9-year-old, and damaged historic landmarks and residential buildings, officials said. Ukraine has sought to step up its own long-range drone attacks on Russia, using domestic technology and manufacturing. An overnight Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi killed two women and wounded 11 other people, local authorities said Thursday. An oil depot was hit, officials said, without offering details.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store