Real intention

The cotton industry matters to people's livelihoods, employment and trade in Xinjiang, so it plays an irreplaceable role in safeguarding the region's stability and even national unity. So China needs to be vigilant in regard to the real intention of such a "precision strike" against Xinjiang cotton, said Mei Xinyu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.

"Large exports of Xinjiang cotton, and many foreign enterprises' participation in the downstream portions of production lines such as clothing manufacturing and retail sales, provide opportunities for anti-China forces to apply downstream pressure," Mei said in a post on Sina Weibo on Friday.

China must take action to prevent a possible chain reaction triggered by the cotton issue, which is created by anti-China forces in Western countries, particularly the US, to ensure that the country's overall economic development won't be affected, he added.

Over the weekend, a video of Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff of former US secretary of state Colin Powell, went viral on Chinese social media platforms. In the video, shot in August 2018, Wilkerson publicly suggested that the US Central Intelligence Agency exploit the Uygurs to cause unrest in China.

If the CIA should want to destabilize China, the best way to do it is to create unrest and join with those Uygurs in pushing the Han Chinese in Beijing, Wilkerson said in a public speech.

Shenzhen Ningnanshan, a popular blogger on China's economic issues, released a post over the weekend on various Chinese social media platforms, saying that what the US and other Western countries are doing is to bar the Uygurs from modern industrial civilization so Xinjiang will be less developed. As a result, unrest could resurface in the region, he said.

The region has been China's main battlefield against terrorism. For a time, it was hit by frequent terrorist attacks, particularly after the penetration of religious extremism from abroad. Many experts think that poor education and the low employment rate in rural Xinjiang contributed to the quick spread of religious extremism. Thanks to joint efforts, no terrorist incident has happened in Xinjiang for more than four years.

"The US and other Western countries cannot stand seeing Xinjiang prosper because it means that they cannot attack China with the 'Xinjiang card' anymore. Obviously, targeting Xinjiang cotton can create bigger damage to China than targeting certain high-tech companies," said the blogger, who has more than 667,800 followers on Sina Weibo.