Spot Beard, Get Paid: China Offers Money for Informants in Xinjiang
The Wall Street Journal, 25 April 2014
Authorities in northwest China are offering rewards for anyone who informs on their neighbors for having too much facial hair. Officials in Shaya county, Xinjiang, have listed beards among the “potential hazards to society” residents should look out for and report to the government as part of a new campaign.
According to the state-run Global Times, the campaign is offering rewards ranging from 50 yuan to up to 50,000 yuan for “a wide range of intelligence from those wearing beards to spreading information to topple the authorities.” Rewards will also be on offer for tipoffs on news of foreigners traveling through the county, as well as people conducting “illegal religious activities.”
Official disapproval of facial hair is nothing new in Xinjiang, a western region that abuts Central Asia, contains significant oil reserves and is home to large numbers of Uighurs, a traditionally Muslim ethnic group.
A 2012 report from the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, for example, found that campaigns to try and prevent Muslims in the region from wearing overly bushy beards or—in the case of women—covering their hair with scarves are increasing. Many Muslims wear beards as an indication of their faith. In some cases, the commission said, recipients of welfare benefits in the province had to agree not to wear veils or large beards in order to receive welfare benefits.
Tensions between Uighurs and the Han Chinese majority have often run high in Xinjiang, and boiled over into ethnic violence in 2009 when nearly 200 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured in the regional capital of Urumqi. Xinjiang separatists were also said to be behind a brutal March train station attack in the southwestern city of Kunming that left 33 dead.
Though Xinjiang has a significant population of Uighurs, increasing numbers of Han Chinese have also been drawn to the region in recent years to take part in the region’s booming economy.
China’s government typically blames ethnic violence on separatist groups with links to al Qaeda. Uighur activists overseas, however, cite concern over restrictions on religious practices, as well as frustration with the large waves of Han Chinese that have moved to a region Uighurs consider their homeland.
This week’s anti-beard campaign aside, for its part, the government maintains that the ethnic minority’s rights are protected, including expressions of faith. “There is no such thing as a ban on public displays of Islamic practice in Xinjiang or anywhere else in the country,” the government’s English-language mouthpiece China Daily said in a commentary last year. “Freedom of religious beliefs and practices are respected and protected throughout the country.”
– Te-Ping Chen. Follow her on Twitter at @tepingchen