Adrian Zenz

Adrian Zenz is a German academic with recognised expertise in theology. His claims on China are both academically doubtful and outside his area of expertise. Unfortunately his 'research' has been widely quoted. His strong commitment to a religious cult with rabid anti-China ideology casts doubt on his motives as a 'researcher', as does his affiliation with “Victims of Communism”.

• Thread regarding Zenz and his religious beliefs
• Thread regarding expertise

Many of Zenz's conclusions derive from extrapolation of data from Chinese sources or ASPI. Typically, Zenz takes local or sparse data and extrapolates this to an entire region. Students of elementary Geography taught in high school recognise that natural, physical and demographic features are rarely evenly distributed. Even in densely populated areas within tight borders, such as Gaza, geographers can still observe variations along certain dimensions. A sample of, say, four locations in Gaza which are found to be without a clean water supply may allow an extrapolation to the whole area to conclude that the Gaza population has a low level of access to clean water.

However, conclusions based on a sample of 4 locations in terms of political affiliations may be less 'safe', since demographic features tend to be clustered in their distribution. An example of this is the Haredi community of London. Sampling in Stamford Hill would result in a high 'concentration' of ultra orthodox Jews. If this was construed as representative of Jewish demographics of London by extrapolation, conclusions would be wildly inaccurate. To overcome this natural tendency for demographic features to be clustered, geographers are obliged to access large data sets in order for their conclusions to be deemed safe. An example of such data sets is the Australia Talks data, surveying 54 000 people across a geographical area of 7.6 million square kilometres, using 500 questions.

Laughably, Zenz's conclusions regarding the number of people 'detained' are premised on, along one dimension, on a survey of eight people.¹⁾

In a area as large and physically diverse as Xinjiang with a relatively small population, data is highly likely to be clustered. Additionally, this data is problematic in these ways:

• Respondents are self-selected and self-censored. “All the interviewees spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation by Chinese authorities.”
• Parameters for discussion were vague and subjective. “townships are eerily empty”, “round-up”
• Estimates by respondents are from memory or based on perception, not on careful survey or records “I estimate about 200”
• Respondents may be over-estimating, under-estimating, lying, exaggerating for effect, hiding essential details “Entire villages in Southern Xinjiang have been emptied of young and middle-aged people—all rounded up into ‘re-education’ classes. Only the elderly and the very docile are left in the villages.”
• The area is limited “Their families reside in eight different villages in counties in the Kashgar Prefecture.”

To date, Zenz has made no acknowledgement of these fundamental issues with his methodology, demonstrating that he is:

• incompetent as a researcher or
• dishonest or
• ignorant of the subject he purports to express an opinion on or
• a combination of any of the three above.

This Twitter thread gives an example of cherry-picking and mistranslation. Anti-China propagandists take advantage of ambiguities to make claims, without noting either the ambiguities or the context.

Sterilizations IUDs and Mandatory Birth Control Review: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1335607694015643648.html https://randomtextneeded.medium.com/adrian-zenz-shows-theres-no-uyghur-genocide-d033f8a70c2b

Beyond the Camps - Beijing’s Long-Term Scheme of Coercive Labor, Poverty Alleviation and Social Control in Xinjiang
Beyond the Camps - Beijing’s Long-Term Scheme of Coercive Labor, Poverty Alleviation and Social Control in Xinjiang (Adrian Zenz, Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 12, December 2019)