For thirteen years a “horseback anti-cult police squad” has visited herders who have never met a “cult.” Why?
by Zeng Liqin


Ulugqat County, Xinjiang, is one of the two westernmost countries in China. It is also one of the most impervious, with inhabitable mountains and deserts accounting for more than 99% of its surface. 88% of the scarce population (around 60,000) is made out of ethnic Kyrgyz, many of them herders living at altitudes of 3,000 or 4,000 meters who have never left their pastoral area in their lives.
It looks like an unlikely region to be targeted by the xie jiao, a Chinese word translated in English by the CCP itself as “cults” but in fact indicating since Imperial times organizations spreading “heterodox” teachings. It is thus with some surprise that “Bitter Winter” has learned that one Jiakupuwali Baikeyaoli, deputy director of the Bostanterak Police Station of the Wuqia County Public Security Bureau, is being promoted in Chinese media as one of the best anti-xie-jiao fighters in the country. The police officer reported that he and his “horseback anti-xie-jiao police squad” have visited remote villages bringing there anti-xie-jiao propaganda for thirteen years.


What makes the story as told by Chinese TV networks and media unique is that, admittedly, in all these years the Bostanterak police officers have found in their area no xie jiao at all. This is confirmed by the herders who appear in the propaganda videos and articles to thank Jiakupuwali for his good work. “Although I have never come into direct contact with a xie jiao, I have always heard of cases of harm caused by xie jiao,” one herder said. The herder lives in a grazing site at an altitude of 4,000 meters and at 200 kilometers from the nearest township. He has never visited a large city and has rarely met people from outside his pastoral area in his life, except the police officers and other government bureaucrats who periodically visit the site.
The question the propaganda does not discuss, thus, is why exactly thirteen years of anti-xie-jiao propaganda were needed in a remote area where there are no xie jiao. By examining the propaganda carefully, one can find some answers. While ostensibly the propaganda targeted the religious groups banned as xie jiao, in fact the brochures distributed and the talks given by the police officers warned more broadly against “illegal” religion, “superstition,” and “anti-scientific and anti-government ideas.”


The fight against the xie jiao is a pretext to promote materialism, atheism—and loyalty to the Communist Party. Prominent in the propaganda about the “horseback anti-xie-jiao police squad” is a herder introduced as “Uncle Mamtsulaiman Jiakefu, a 30-year-old party member of the Kyrgyz ethnic group.” He reported on the effect on him of the indoctrination against the xie jiao: “I want to play the vanguard and exemplary role of a Communist Party member and tell my family, relatives and fellow villagers that for resisting the xie jiao you should always follow the Party and listen to the Party,” he said. The old herder has never seen a xie jiao—but he perfectly understands what the propaganda is all about.