Chinese DNA Studies : Scientifically Nefarious

"Defining ethnicity is extremely, extremely messy. So actually, ethnicities is first a social and cultural concept. And now suddenly, we're talking about genes. However, it makes it possible to tomorrow decide that someone does belong or does not belong to a certain population."
"I'm extremely concerned about this because in history, actually, if you look back in the first half of the 20th century, German and then Belgian colonists in Rwanda and Burundi actually went there, and they were using pseudoscientific ideas about race and assigned people to a particular ethnicity. That actually was a significant factor in genocides. And the risk for this in the midterm is actually really worrying."
"[When Western journals publish such papers -- pseudo-scientific studies co-written by state-linked scientists, police, security agencies -- it amounts to selling a knife to a friend] knowing that your friend would use the knife to sill  his wife. If you produce a piece of knowledge and know someone is going to take that and harm someone with it, that’s a huge problem.”"
"The [scientific] community has to take a major step and say: 'This is not us'."
Yves Moreau, geneticist, professor, Catholic University, Leuven, Belgium

China's program in studying the DNA of the country's ethnic minorities has come under scrutiny for the very simple reason that it smacks of Nazi-era preoccupation in similar studies with the aim of categorizing ethnic groups such as Jews and Roma as sub-human distinguished by abhorrent traits that civilized and technologically modern cultures reject for their disruptive, threatening-to-society goals, an observation that led to the public, social dehumanization of such groups making it easier for the Third Reich to target them for obliteration lest they continue 'corrupting the social order'.

The global scientific community is reacting to China's DNA-inspection agenda, warning that Beijing could make use of its assemblage of data for the purpose of ongoing oppression as it spies on minority groups within its immense population base. Prestigious Western scientific journals have been placed on notice, leading them to the response that they would undertake a re-evaluation of the standards that permitted them to publish papers on Tibetans, Uighurs and other minority groups in China.

Kashgar, a city in Xinjiang, the region where China has locked up more than one million people from predominantly Muslim minority groups in the name of quelling terrorism.   Credit...Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

Those that are known to be persecuted, defamed and closely watched for activities the Chinese deem to be 'splittest' or lacking in 'harmony', bringing unrest to the public sphere, making Beijing nervous to the degree they will take steps to stifle any potential degree of protest are subjected to programs such as the mass round-up of Uighurs, said to be in the hundreds of thousands to a million, for re-education purposes, where the institutionally incarcerated are bombarded with psychological duress to impress upon them the existential requirement of submission to the state and renunciation of cultural or religious roots.

Measuring the skull of a Romani woman

Harnessing technology for the purpose of tracking minority groups particularly on the western frontier in China's Xinjiang province, Muslim minorities languish in internment camps because they have been recognized by authorities as terrorists-in-the-making. Facial recognition systems whose selling point is the claim they can differentiate when someone is a Uighur, as well as blood collection with the intention of designing new tracking tools aimed at minority groups, appalls Western scientists and with good reason. All the more so that some scientists in the west have unwittingly collaborated.

In early December, the journal Nature published an essay by Dr. Moreau who has called on all publications to retract papers submitted by scientists with Chinese security agency backing, focusing on the DNA of minority ethnic groups in China. He and other scientists are concerned over China's research meant to be used in contrived methodology in monitoring and subjugating ethnic minorities in China. Research into DNA is a violation of the scientific rules regarding consent. The focus being on whether Uighurs willingly submitted their blood samples.

Frontiers in Genetics journal rejected a paper in February, based on findings from the DNA of over 600 Uighurs, where some of the journal's editors cited the treatment of Uighurs. Chinese research into the genetics of China's ethnic minorities are not all given blanket censure; studies in fields such as medicine, with research geared toward medical treatment of people -- and forensics in matters of criminal justice are viewed as legitimate.

Between 2011 and 2018, of 529 studies in genetic forensics, Dr. Moreau discovered that roughly fifty percent were co-authored with the Chinese police, military, or judiciary. Tibetans were 40 times more frequently  studied than the majority ethnic Han. Similarly, the Uighur population was thirty times more intensely studied than was the Han Chinese majority. Three journals over the past eight years published 40 articles co-authored by members of the Chinese police, describing the DNA profiling of Tibetans and Muslim minorities.

China’s efforts to check the DNA of the nation’s ethnic minorities have incited a rising backlash from the worldwide scientific neighbourhood, as plenty of scientists warn that Beijing may use its rising information to spy on and oppress its individuals.