The old woman was a spy, sent by the Chinese government to infiltrate his family.
There are many like her. According to the ruling Communist Party’s official newspaper, as of the end of September, 1.1 million local government workers have been deployed to ethnic minorities’ living rooms, dining areas and Muslim prayer spaces, not to mention at weddings, funerals and other occasions once considered intimate and private.
All this is taking place in China’s far west region of Xinjiang, home to the predominantly Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uighurs, who have long reported discrimination at the hands of the country’s majority Han Chinese.
While government notices about the “Pair Up and Become Family” program portray it as an affectionate cultural exchange, Uighurs living in exile in Turkey said their loved ones saw the campaign as a chilling intrusion into the only place that they once felt safe.
They believe the program is aimed at coercing Uighurs into living secular lives like the Han majority. Anything diverging from the party’s prescribed lifestyle can be viewed by authorities as a sign of potential extremism — from suddenly giving up smoking or alcohol, to having an “abnormal” beard or an overly religious name.
Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Uighur homeland has been blanketed with stifling surveillance, from armed checkpoints on street corners to facial-recognition-equipped CCTV cameras steadily surveying passers-by. Now, Uighurs say, they must live under the watchful eye of the ruling Communist Party even inside their own homes. ...
The Xinjiang United Front Work Department said in February that government workers should live with their assigned families every two months, for five days at a time.
The United Front, a Communist Party agency, indicates in the notice that the program is mandatory for cadres. ...
A February piece on the Communist Party’s official news site said: “The vast majority of party cadres are not only living inside villagers’ homes, but also living inside the hearts of the masses.”
Overseas Uighurs said the “visits” to their relatives’ homes often lasted longer than five days, and they were closely monitored the whole time. The cadres would ask their family members where they were going and who they were meeting whenever they wanted to leave the house. ...
All government employees in the region are required to conduct such visits in order to better understand villagers’ needs, according to Gu: “Because we’re always sitting in our offices, we don’t know what they really need. Only through penetrating the masses can we truly serve them.”
