Introduction: Religion muddies everything
Among western media, academia and social media, the ‘go to’ source for anti-China ‘information’ is Adrian Zenz. He is easily the most quoted and his work most referenced. This status, as some kind of guru, is surprising, considering Zenz’s formal qualifications are in theology, not Chinese history, economics, social policy or political science.
But anyone who has grown up within the religious circles that have surrounded Zenz since his youth will understand immediately how Zenz’s beliefs impact on his view of the world and how being ‘marinated’ in the toxic culture of the cult that is so earnestly anti-China creates a mode of thinking in which the only conclusion, even from the most benign of data or testimony, becomes ‘evidence’ of ‘evil’.
The taxonomy of evil that drives Zenz’s perspective
The world view to which members of this cult subscribe, in one version or another, with insignificant variation, places nearly everybody in the world, with the exception of a lucky few ‘saints’, on a collision course with God. At the top of the ‘taxonomy of evil’ are atheists and ‘atheist nations’. Further down are secularists. Other religions, especially those outside Abrahamic religions, are deception, failing to acknowledge the true God.
Finally, Judaism, Islam and Christianity have a place amongst the enemies of God – Jews for rejecting Christ, Islam for rejecting the Trinity and other Christians for adulterating the message of Jesus and allowing themselves to be tainted by feminism, homosexuality and socialism.
Fortunately for ‘the saints’ God is a jealous God and intends the mass destruction of all his enemies and, depending on the version of the cult’s ‘end times’ thesis, this ushers in 1000 years of glorious reign by Jesus. Saints are spared the holocaust that is predicted by being ushered into heaven during the Rapture.
It may come as a surprise to some that this fanciful set of beliefs could be taken seriously. But Zenz and his ilk are earnest in their beliefs and will pursue the ‘work of God’ with a zeal unmatched by even the world’s greatest revolutionaries. I know that, because I once lived in that world.
In my youth, nothing could evoke a greater sense of dread and fear as the mention of the the two great ‘evil empires’ – USSR and China. Every event was seen through the Cold War lens, but for my family, the geopolitical explanations of the actions of communists was not just about politics or economics – it was about a spiritual realm in which evil was dominating.
Within this cultish moral frame, any objective analysis of the actions of any agent, global or personal, was impossible. Communist and homosexuals had an inherent, sinister and common aim – to destroy the world. This plays out in the ‘work’ of Zenz, where even the most benign and unremarkable of actions, events or data are interpreted as evidence of evil.
A particular mode of dealing with evidence
But, a further characteristic of this cultish environment is the mode of research. I can remember interminable arguments over single words and passages of the Biblical text. ‘Verses’ were liberally cherry-picked to support a thesis and rejecting literal interpretations of texts was considered corrupt. The divine motives of God were unimpeachable – the logic was that the thesis was bequeathed by God to the saintly and any evidence, either external or textual, was massaged to fit that thesis.
This mode is clear in all of Zenz’s anti-China projects. Alternative explanations are not countenanced. The only explanation is that there is a evil nation driven by an evil government under the spell of an evil doctrine. This drives every interpretation of the sources to which Zenz refers.
Cherry picking evidence is considered entirely legitimate. The essential meaning of texts or testimony or any inconsistencies are simply ignored. Once again, this is Zenz’s mode in his anti-China papers – identified over and over again by those of us who care about academic integrity and who challenge the anti-China narrative.
Viewing the same evidence without the prejudice
I have decided to review one of Zenz’s ‘academic’ papers published in the Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 12, December 2019 titled “Beyond the Camps: Beijing’s Long-Term Scheme of Coercive Labor, Poverty Alleviation and Social Control in Xinjiang” and to include all of Adrian Zenz’s sources as my sources – but without his ‘blinkered’ perspective.
This is Part 1 of a 6 part series.