| Hi there Inkstoners! It’s Juliana here. Last week, we saw a sea change in the way China is dealing with its Xinjiang problem. Instead of following the same old playbook by denying the existence of the internment camps, which the United Nations estimates hold one million Uyghurs, the Chinese government simply decided to legalize them. And this morning, we got this surprise gem courtesy of the official Xinhua news agency: an exclusive interview with Shohrat Zakir, the governor of Xinjiang, an autonomous region in China’s far west. His official title is chairman. And oh, he is not the most powerful person in the region, btw. That distinction belongs to Chen Quanguo, the ethnic Chinese Communist Party Secretary, who arrived in Xinjiang in 2016 after running Tibet for five years, also as party chief. Anyone interested in the full text of the Xinhua interview, handily translated into English, click on this link. Many of us in the newsroom noted how the governor went to great lengths to explain how apparently luxurious the accommodations are: free nutritious food, air-conditioned dorms, film-screening rooms. But then again, with journalistic access to the camps so difficult, we can’t exactly check it out for ourselves, can we? | China has in the past denied the existence of internment camps in Xinjiang. But it has recently shifted to ardently defending the program. On Tuesday, Beijing offered its first detailed account of mass detentions in the region by publishing an interview with the governor of Xinjiang. The official gave a rosy description of the camps, which he said came with free food and dance contests, but failed to address key concerns raised by the international community. Read our story to find out what he said, and did not say. | | Ever since The Intercept first revealed the existence of Project Dragonfly, a censored search engine meant for China, in August, Google has been under pressure. That pressure grew just two weeks ago when VP Mike Pence told the tech giant it should suspend the project immediately. But if you listen to CEO Sundar Pichai’s remarks at Wired magazine’s 25th anniversary event in San Francisco, he seems determined to find a way to properly re-enter China. The reason? The sheer scale, size and innovation of China’s internet ecosystem. | | Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a lot of catching up to do. After spending the better part of the year thrashing out a revised Nafta deal - now called US-Mexico-Canada-Agreement - Trudeau says he is ready to devote his time and effort to seek trade opportunities with China. Why is this comment important? Well, there is a clause in the USMCA agreement, which the US introduced, to thwart any deal with China that Washington thinks hurts its long-term trade interests as Srinivasan Iyer reports. | | This is a phrase I use all the time, in both Chinese and English. If my girlfriend is recovering from a bad date, I tell her to add oil. When my kids are trying to learn something tricky, I tell them the same. Basically, add oil is a term of encourage. It originated from Hong Kong Cantonese and is now ubiquitous in Mandarin. Just recently, according to a linguist in Taiwan, it’s been added to the English-language holy grail: The Oxford English Dictionary, as Alan Wong writes. | | It is said education is the best gift that you can give your child. And Americans are doing just that, following a trend set by Ivanka Trump.
A growing number of American parents are hiring Chinese nannies to equip their children with Mandarin language skills. They firmly believe that China is the next superpower and it makes a lot of sense preparing “our kids for the global future and the global economy.”
| | Hong Kong’s famed transit system was crippled by long delays on Tuesday morning. Some people were waiting for over an hour just to board a train. As the most profitable mass transit system in the world, Hongkongers expect the Mass Transit Railway, or MTR, to run smoothly, and it usually does 99.99 percent of the time (this is the real statistic), just not today. While many were ready to point the finger at the MTR and complain and about the havoc, many residents of other megacities around the world would envy to have such a rare delay. New Yorkers often deal with flooding and regular signal failures in their aging subway system, a pain few Hongkongers know. Read this story by Arman Dzidzovic. | | | | If you've got time | In Search of Historical Parallels for China’s Rise Academics Alexis Dudden and Jeffrey Wasserstrom look back in time for clues on where China’s heading. | Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination Chinese involvement in Kenya is bringing back racist attitudes that many haven’t encountered for a long time, writes the New York Times. | |  | A five-foot-long intruder made an unexpected entrance to a bank in southwestern China’s Guangxi region last week. Find out more |
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