China's Belt and Road Project: Three Critics

I've noticed many critics of China's Belt and Road Initiative, also known as the New Silk Road.  I'm one of them.
  

So far, I've seen three different themes critical of China's plans to link the entirety of the Eurasian continent from Beijing to Moscow, from Siberia to Egypt, then throughout Africa by railroads,  highways, and seaports.

The standard opposition showing up in mainstream commercial media is one of jealousy of a rising, non-Western, power that's not completely dominated by the United States or a European power. They point out legitimate concerns about bad underlying finance and corruption.  And they write, maybe a little, very little, about bad construction. (Perhaps there's some financial self  interest lurking in that muted criticism?)

These mainstream media writers point out the massive, long term, economic and political power grab by the Chinese Communist Party's Sun King, Xi Jinping.  He's spreading the soft power of China across the globe by generously funding vital infrastructure, like railroads, but also things like new or upgraded ports, in desperate developing countries.  China fosters growth and buys friends while America and the West sit back and do nothing.

My criticism is that the top leadership of China embodies malignant racism and wants to destroy any ethnic, religious, political, or cultural differences within China.  While technology has its own moral and ethical value, a greater value is added or subtracted by the political and economic system wielding that technology.  The leadership of China warps the ethical value of electronic technology and railroads. China's power elite weaponizes those tools to dominate and destroy the different minority cultures throughout China.

Uighurs, a predominantly Islamic, Turkic people in the Western province of Xinjiang, are being abusively policed, electronically surveilled, openly oppressed, forcibly assimilated, and aggressively colonized using deliberately recruited Han Chinese.

High Speed Rail makes no economic sense.  But it makes absolute political sense if it's being used to culturally and politically dominate an area and a people.

Remember Tibet.
  

Railroads were a major tool used by American leadership to conquer the West in the 19th Century.  By killing the American bison to starve Native Americans, bringing in US federal troops, hearding Indians onto reservations, railroads were then used to transporting in European settlers to provide railroad corporations both real estate profits and potential captive customers. And the American railroads made little economic sense but lots of political sense.

From the mid-19th Century to now railroad companies have been constantly going bankrupt and selling out to other railroad conglomerates or simply collapsing and being sold for scrap.

Great fortunes have been made in railroads by selling federally granted land, manipulating stocks and their sale and ownership rights, the sale of federally subsidized bonds, and especially federal contracts to build the roads themselves.  They didn't make fortunes by transporting people and goods safely and efficiently.

China's leadership seems to be taking a page out of American history books and using improved roads and rails to bring in Han Chinese settlers to the far west of China to assimilate or replace the Uighurs.

I don't think there's mass murder or genocide equivalent to the degree sanctioned by the 19th century American government and business interests.  But there's definitely cultural genocide going on.

The Chinese government is disappearing dissidents, jailing human rights advocates, and intellectuals.  Always, always, that government is detaining innocent people and those without political stance.  The Chinese government holds large numbers of people without arrest.  The leadership refuses to disclose the detainee's location, or to reveal the charges to friends and family.  They might be targeting the educated elite of the community. Chinese authorities have even detained those who have publicly professed support for the Chinese government.

I found the "Disneyfication" of Uighur culture truly hideous.  The Chinese leadership is tearing down ancient neighborhoods and replacing them with shiny, modern outside architect and designer versions of Uighur culture.  This new, lebensraum Disneyland version of Uighur neighborhoods populated by happy, pacified natives and open houses is perfect for showing off to Chinese and Western tourists. The people in Xinjiang no longer wear clothes. They wear costumes.
https://youtu.be/sJ3fG-tnzCk

In defense of the top leadership of China, I suspect that the forced option of assimilate or die has been imposed on many different people over many centuries by previous Chinese empires.
https://youtu.be/qe_P-e7vxpw

Again, remember Tibet.

The third and best criticism of the Belt and Road Initiative, below, isn't in opposition to it.

These people simply love and respect Chinese people and want better for them.  They hope that money like that being spent on this gigantic road, rail, and infrastructure project could also be spent on the poor, the working people of China.  Improve the health of the mentally ill and disabled. 

They respect the power and abilities of the Chinese leadership and especially the Chinese people.  How about applying those talents towards helping people in rural areas live longer, healthier lives? How about consistently enforcing food safety regulations?
https://youtu.be/6Y6MeAOGxt8