China has issued a white paper detailing the demographic development in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
The white paper titled "Xinjiang Population Dynamics and Data", was issued on Sunday by the State Council Information Office and details Xinjiang's rapid and steady population growth, improving all-around quality of its residents, higher life expectancy and faster urbanization and modernization over the past 70 years, reported China Daily.
Xinjiang's population growth from 2000 to 2020 was 1.15 percentage points higher than the national average in the compound annual growth rate, the white paper said.
According to the sixth national census, conducted in 2010, the population of Xinjiang was 21.82 million, an increase of 3.36 million with a compound annual growth rate of 1.68 per cent over 2000.
Preliminary data from the seventh national census, conducted in 2020, showed that the number increased by 4.04 million to reach 25.85 million with a compound annual growth rate of 1.71 per cent, the document said.
The Uygur population in Xinjiang has maintained a relatively high growth rate, having a compound annual growth rate of 1.67 per cent from over 8.34 million in 2000 to over 11.62 million in 2020. The growth rate was much higher than that of China's ethnic minority population, which stood at 0.83 per cent, the document said, reported China Daily.
Meanwhile, Beijing has imposed a "population optimization strategy" in order to shrink the population of the Uyghur community in the country's southern Xinjiang, said the report based on official Chinese documents and academic debate.
As a part of this strategy, China is immigrating the people of the Han Chinese community in Uyghur populated regions while imposing strict birth controls on the Uyghurs, Radio Free Asia reported citing a new report by German researcher Adrian Zenz, which is the latest of a series of studies of Chinese measures to control and assimilate the 12 million Uyghurs of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) that have formed the basis of genocide accusations against Beijing.
Also, China has been rebuked globally for cracking down on Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang by sending them to mass detention camps, interfering in their religious activities and subjecting them to abuse including forced labour.
Under Beijing's rule, the authorities tried to assimilate the ethnic group by restricting religious practices and ban on the use of the Uyghur language.
Beijing, on the other hand, has vehemently denied that it is engaged in human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang while reports from journalists, NGOs and former detainees have surfaced, highlighting the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) brutal crackdown on the ethnic community.
The white paper released also says that anti-China forces have fabricated stories of "genocide" in Xinjiang to deceive the international community, mislead international public opinion, and impede China's development and progress.
"These malicious efforts will not succeed and the truth will prevail over falsehoods," the white paper said.
( With inputs from ANI )
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