英文采訪原稿：

Guancha：Your Xinjiang video “The Xinjiang Genocide-an excerpt from the 'Genocide' panel is” has been widely reported by mainland media. Could you share your feelings about that online video conference?

Dumbrill：The panel I took part in was a great opportunity to collaborate and discuss our concerns with the Xinjiang Genocide narrative. I had no idea it would be shared so widely and am really pleased that so many people saw it. There isn’t enough pushback against this highly problematic narrative which is geopolitically driven by people who I don’t believe really actually care for the Uyghur people. They have done a good job to weaponize the compassion of ordinary people who really do think they’re doing the right thing by believing this narrative and making noise about it.

Guancha：What feedback have you received since the video aired？Any new discoveries and feelings since then？

Dumbrill：Critics who are only going to believe negative stories and perspectives on China will never change their mind. Instead of listening to what I said, they looked into my background and found that I own a business. They then used that to say “why am I going to listen to a guy who owns a bar”.

It wouldn’t have mattered what they found and if I did something else, they’d simply replace “bar” with whatever else it is they found in order to use a superficial excuse to sink back into their content state of deep cognitive dissonance. Ironically, they’re willing to listen to people who work for think tanks that are funded by the military industrial complex who profit from selling China threat stories and weapons thereafter. These same people who don’t want to listen to someone just because they own a business have no problem listening to people whose line of work have an actual directly connected conflict of interest. It’s a remarkable phenomenon to witness.

From other people who were on the fence, I got some feedback from them, saying I put them into a position to be a more wary of the narrative, where now they’ll at least examine the claims with a bit more scrutiny rather than prematurely forming a conclusion, especially considering the possible global consequences of supporting this increased aggression, which I outlined in my video.

Guancha：I believe you and I both have encountered some people around us who would "intuitively" believe western propaganda and "intuitively" question the Chinese government. What do you think is the cause of that？

Dumbrill：A lot of it just comes down to the quality of propaganda from the West. They can literally recycle an old propaganda story that they’ve used and been exposed on over and over again and not many people seem to be any wiser. Coordinated propaganda campaigns like this are highly sophisticated and is deployed in such great volumes, the ordinary person doesn’t have enough time to think about it in any meaningful way. As people like to say “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”.  I’ve found a lot of people have been so bombarded with this story, that they’ve come to a lazy compromise and say things like “well, even if only 10% of it is true, we still have a big problem here”.

Guancha：We believe that the West will not give up the "Xinjiang issue". What do you think Chinese people should do to prepare for that？

Dumbrill：It doesn’t matter what China does, even if the Xinjiang story was totally debunked tomorrow, America would find something else. The critical issue here is that America can not accept a peer competitor.  Even if China changed to America’s type of liberal democracy, something they keep saying China’s people need, as long as China didn’t submit to a set of rules that would allow America to stay on top, they’d just do what they always do, they’d interfere with China’s elections and/or overthrow the government just like they do all over the world, this is the REAL reason America wants China to open up.

China needs to remain on high alert, but it also needs to better explain to its own people why they need to do this. Many Chinese people lack the context of what America has done around the world. Unlike in America where people are surrounded in an environment that produces a troubling amount of xenophobia in their society, Chinese people learnt about how great America is, with the exception of the Eight-Nation Alliance incident of course, but they don’t learn about the brutal truths of America’s global empire of exploitation. Learning about this would give more context to understand not only what America is trying to do to China now, but to also understand the sometimes annoying over-reactions and controls that are in place in China.

Had China been a society like America’s, I’d be more reluctant to make this recommendation, because it would be the source of terrible xenophobia, just like with what we’re seeing with the violence against Asian Americans now, which is corresponding with their anti-China propaganda.

Here in China, people have grown up watching non-stop TV shows about fighting the imperial Japanese soldiers, but Japanese people are treated with respect on the streets here. When I’m traveling around China and people ask where I’m from, they don’t mention the political tensions or the Meng Wanzhou case when I tell them I’m from Canada, they go back to OVER half a century ago to find something positive to say, and instead will bring up Norman Bethune’s name. It’s unfortunate that America has put China in a position where it needs to teach it’s people more about America’s dirty little secrets, but it’s going to be important to understand what’s going on and to be better equipped to respond and protect yourself against it. I trust that China wouldn’t allow this to turn into a problematic xenophobia problem like with what we’re seeing in America.

The other thing China should do, is to simply continue cooperating with the world in a way that brings dignity to others. Third world resource rich countries have been terribly exploited by the west for so long, they weren’t able to break themselves free from foreign influence like China did after the century of humiliation. China has now come to the table with more humanistic partnership options for these countries. Of course, China is looking for some benefit, but from what we’ve seen so far, there’s far more mutual benefit with China’s programs. China isn’t putting the same crippling terms and conditions on these countries that the IMF has, they’ve shown they’re willing to be flexible on debt, and thus far, it looks like they’re building meaningful infrastructure that goes beyond just enough stuff to get minerals from the mines to the ports. China isn’t overthrowing governments or funding rebels to accomplish their geopolitical interests either. Remain this way, don’t ever abandon these values.

Western media will do an incredible job to paint whatever China does in a negative light, but you can only hide the truth for so long. As they say “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” In the short term though, it seems that story telling abilities are just as important as actual action, and in that regard, China has very poor story telling abilities. This is something it should find a way to improve.

Guancha：What are your thoughts about what’s really going on in Xinjiang？

Dumbrill: As you of course already know, I don’t believe the West’s story on Xinjiang. I’ll be honest with you here, I don’t believe China’s story either, at least in terms of the media’s English content making it look like it’s a perfect paradise where people dance, laugh and play in harmony all day long. I do believe that the truth about what’s going on is far closer to China’s version of the story, but I do not believe there is a perfect way to fight terrorism where people’s lives aren’t going to be affected.