Human Rights for Sale? A Study on the Uyghur Issue and Chinese Concessional Aid

Abstract

The Uyghur issue refers to the ongoing internment by the People’s Republic of China’s government on their native Uyghur ethnic group, who primarily reside in the Xinjiang Province. Such activities are internationally considered an attack on human rights; however, many countries have defended the PRC actions on this subject, some of which receive heavy amounts of aid from the Asian country. The current paper creates a model to determine the likelihood for countries to support China’s actions in Xinjiang. The paper finds that while there is a strong relationship between receipt of aid and predictability for defending or criticizing the PRC’s internment activities, it appears that regime type is a more adept, more evident predictor.