From Xinjiang With Love: China Show Tries to Give Region a Rosier Image
The TV drama ‘To the Wonder’ extols the beauty of an area that is at the center of alleged human-rights abuses
In the U.S., China’s far western Xinjiang region is often associated with detention camps and a vast network of security checkpoints to control Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities.
In China, another image of Xinjiang has dominated lately: one of a young woman running across mountainous fields like Heidi of the Alps and falling in love with a local herdsman.
For years, Beijing has denied Western allegations of human-rights violations in Xinjiang, with China portraying the region as infected by a violent strain of religious extremism that needs to be eradicated. Now, at least for a domestic audience, China’s propaganda system is promoting a far more idyllic view of the region.
And, so far, it appears to be working.
In recent weeks, a television drama, “To the Wonder,” about the love between a Han Chinese writer and a Kazakh man, has grabbed China’s attention, dominating social media and sparking a Xinjiang tourism boom.
The show is part of a ramped-up effort to showcase Xinjiang as a land of beauty and wide-open steppes rather than a dangerous backwater inhabited by potential terrorists. The strategy has proven successful, especially among young, urban Chinese looking for escape from their hectic lives.
“To the Wonder” is one of the most popular drama series this year on the Chinese internet and the state broadcaster, attracting more than 100 million viewers online within a week of its release in early May. The head of tourism in the small Xinjiang town of Altay, where the show is set, said bookings there have increased 370% since the show began.
The show, made with state funding and heavily promoted by official media, is based on a popular memoir published in 2010 by Li Juan, about her family’s hardships among Kazakh nomads in northern Xinjiang. The director, Teng Congcong, is known for work with a focus on women and told local media she saw potential in Li’s book for another female portrait.
Li was born in a Xinjiang paramilitary compound in 1979, when Beijing sent young Han Chinese to help develop the remote area. She spent most of her childhood in Altay.
In 2023, the National Radio and Television Administration selected the show for state funding. One of the criteria was that projects must “tell the China story well.”
The show, co-produced by the state broadcaster and video platform iQiyi, also highlights a new business model for Chinese authorities, with local officials tapping into the popularity of dramas filmed in their regions to promote tourism.
The radio and television administration has encouraged platforms to use algorithms to promote the shows. “Positive energy should generate massive traffic,” it has said.
Although the promotion has mostly targeted young Chinese, the show was included in Canneseries, an international television festival held annually in Cannes, France, and is airing in Kazakhstan this month. On social-media platform X, which is blocked in China, the Xinjiang official account has promoted the show in English-language tweets, saying it represents the “freedom, grandeur and beauty of northern Xinjiang.”
Forced assimilation
Human-rights concerns in Xinjiang, which covers one-sixth of China’s land territory, have been one of the focal points of U.S.-China tensions. The Chinese government has targeted Uyghurs and other minorities with mass detention and omnipresent surveillance as part of a campaign of forcible assimilation, which has also encouraged marriages between Han Chinese and minority members.
Some governments, rights groups and researchers allege Chinese authorities are employing forced labor in Xinjiang as part of the campaign. U.S. law bans imports linked to the region and U.S. lawmakers label Beijing’s treatment of Uyghurs as a form of genocide.
China’s government has portrayed the assimilation campaign as an effort to fight religious extremism and terrorism. Officials have said efforts to relocate rural residents to factories help improve their income and living standards.
Authorities are trying to sell a more “docile and lovable” image of China’s frontier regions, said Daria Impiombato, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a Canberra-backed think tank, who co-wrote a report on how Chinese authorities have begun to enlist women as “frontier influencers” in propaganda efforts around troubled regions such as Xinjiang and Tibet.
Xinjiang’s propaganda department plans to spend 308 million yuan, or roughly $43 million, on culture tourism and communications and media this year, more than 60% of its total budgeted spending and 27% more than it spent on such items in 2020.
Boosting tourism helps the Chinese government bring Xinjiang into the mainstream, making it just like any other place in China, said Impiombato.
Li’s books had long been popular. Despite being a niche writer, Li has won almost all major awards for nonfiction and essays in China. “To the Wonder” has brought her popularity to a new level.
“She was already famous and now she is blowing up,” said Jack Hargreaves, who translated Li’s 2012 book “Winter Pasture,” which was released in English in 2021.
Li said on her social-media account after “To the Wonder” became a hit that she hadn’t been part of the television production. She hasn’t made further public comments about the show and didn’t reply to a request for comments sent to the Xinjiang Writers Association, where she is a deputy chairwoman.
Image overhaul
Traditionally, minorities have been depicted in official Chinese media as either living in backward conditions or happily extolling how much better their lives have become under the Communist Party leadership.
“To the Wonder” is a more nuanced portrayal. It details the everyday struggles of the herders and their love of nature and their livestock. In one scene, with little cash on hand, a Kazakh family insists on paying a debt with a camel.
A few fleeting scenes remind the audience of the reality of life in Xinjiang, such as when two Kazakh men have to hand over their pocket knives to use public transportation.
The propaganda push comes as the situation for Uyghurs and other minorities in the region is also shifting.
Human Rights Watch in a report released in February said it found that Chinese authorities are coercing Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims away from their homes and into jobs in factories and warehouses around China.
Forced laborers are being transferred from Xinjiang to elsewhere in China in growing numbers, said Thea Lee, the deputy undersecretary for international affairs at the U.S. Labor Department, in May. The relocations are helping to circumvent U.S. efforts focused on supply chains in Xinjiang, she said.
Jewher Ilham, a Uyghur human-rights advocate based in Washington, described the relocations of Uyghur workers out of Xinjiang at the same time as propaganda efforts strive to draw tourists there as a new strategy by Beijing to dilute the Uyghur population and culture.
“A tourism surge is part of the attempts by the government to bring more Han Chinese migration into the Uyghur region,” she said.