Chen Quanguo (; born November 1955) is a Chinese retired politician who was the Party Secretary of Tibet from 2011 to 2016 and the Party Secretary of Xinjiang from 2016 to 2021, making him the only person to serve as the Party Secretary for both autonomous regions. Between 2017 and 2022, he was a member of the 19th Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party and was also Political Commissar of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps concurrently with his position as Xinjiang Party Secretary.
Originally from Henan, Chen was among the first batch of students to graduate university after the resumption of Gaokao examinations in 1978. Chen worked up the ranks in the party bureaucracy in his home province from a minor local official to the deputy provincial party chief. In 2009, he became Governor of Hebei. In 2011 he became the Party Secretary, the top official, of the Tibet Autonomous Region, developing the region economically and instituting greater policing surveillance.
In 2016, Chen was promoted to the party secretary of Xinjiang. He has since then attracted press for overseeing Xinjiang internment camps targeting Turkic minorities in the region, and he is considered as one of the main architects of the persecution of Uyghurs in China. In both Tibet and Xinjiang, he has earned a reputation for applying draconian measures to sinicize the traditional cultures. In 2022, he was given a post in the Central Rural Work Leading Group of the CCP, and retired later that year after the 20th CCP National Congress, when he was not re-elected to the CCP Central Committee.
Early life and education Born in November 1955, Chen Quanguo is a native of Pingyu County, Henan province. By dint of when he was born he avoided most of the Cultural Revolution and only suffered a delayed education. In December 1973, at the age of 18, Chen enlisted in the People's Liberation Army for four years. He served with the First Army, Third Division Artillery Regiment. He joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in February 1976. After leaving the military in March 1977, he briefly worked at a car parts factory in Zhumadian.
After China resumed the National Higher Education Entrance Examination which was interrupted during the Cultural Revolution, in March 1978 Chen was admitted to the Economics Department of Zhengzhou University in the provincial capital Zhengzhou. At Zhengzhou University he studied political economy.
Career
Henan Chen Quanguo graduated from Zhengzhou University in December 1981 and returned to work in his hometown of Pingyu, Henan. Starting in 1983 he worked for the prefectural government of Zhumadian, and in 1988 became the Party Secretary of Suiping, a county under the administration of Zhumadian. In 1994, he was appointed the head of the Organization Department of the nearby prefecture-level city of Pingdingshan.
From 1995 to 1997 Chen enrolled as a part-time student at the School of Business Administration of Wuhan University of Technology, obtaining a master's degree in economics.From 1996 to 1998 he served as the Mayor and Deputy Party Secretary of Luohe, another prefecture-level city in Henan.
Chen was promoted to Vice Governor of Henan Province in January 1998, and worked in the administration of then Henan Governor Li Keqiang. Chen was regarded as a close confidante of Li. In November 2000 Chen was appointed by the CCP head of the Standing committee of the Henan Provincial committee in the provincial Organization Department. In April 2003 he became the Deputy Party Secretary, President of the Party School of the CCP, and the President of the Henan Institute of Administration.
Hebei (2009–2011) In November 2009, Chen Quanguo was transferred to neighboring Hebei and promoted to Acting Governor and Deputy Party Secretary of the province. He replaced Hu Chunhua, who became the Party Secretary of Inner Mongolia. In January 2010 he was officially elected by the provincial congress as Governor of Hebei at the third session of the 11th National People's Congress.
Tibet (2011–2016) On 25 August 2011, the CCP Central Committee announced the appointment of Chen to the remote Tibet Autonomous Region as Party Secretary, the top official of the region. On 8 May 2012, Chen Quanguo was elected the first secretary of the party committee of the Tibet Military Region.
Shortly after Chen took up his position in August 2011, the region advertised positions for 2,500 additional police, and Chen implemented a new security policy for Tibet in the form of "convenience police stations" (). This divided urban centers into grids, allowing the authorities to systematically observe all activities within the area. As of early 2016, at least 156 of the concrete one- and two-story stations - stocked with wheelchairs, first aid kits, repair tools, umbrellas and even phone chargers for public use - were built in Lhasa, with guards on 24 hour "seamless" surveillance patrols, while two stations are only 15 meters apart.Party boss Chen Quanguo replicating his Tibet policy in Xinjiang, (13 December 2016), Tibetan Review, At least 544 more of these police stations exist throughout urban centers across Tibet.
Chen instituted a policy called the "double-linked household management system" to surveil 81,140 households in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, comprising more than three million people mobilized for security and social issues. The system is described as a method where neighbors spy on each other,In Xinjiang, China applies repressive lessons learned in Tibet, (www.economist.com, 12 December 2019), while Kelsang Dolma in Foreign Policy writes the policy is an "Orwellian social system" where family members are encouraged to report on each other to authorities.Kelsang Dolma, Tibet Was China’s First Laboratory of Repression, (31 August 2020), Foreign Policy,
Self-immolations There was a sharp rise in the number of self-immolations by Tibetan monks and nuns after Chen took office, which began and continued at Kirti Monastery. Within Tibet, 156 monks, nuns, and laypeople self-immolated as of December 2019. According to the International Campaign for Tibet's (ICT) Fact Sheet information,International Campaign for Tibet, Self-immolation fact sheet, (2 December 2019), reviewed by Outside, "Chinese police have beaten, shot, isolated, and disappeared self-immolators who survived."Tracy Ross, Tibet is still burning, (24 September 2019), The families are often arrested or detained, which led in 2014 to a rise in walking or solo protests.
Often, the self-immolators, and solo protestors, carry illegal pictures of the 14th Dalai Lama, and/or make long life prayers for the Dalai Lama, as well as shout for independence from China. The immolations were seen to be a form of extreme protest against the Chinese government's crackdown on Buddhists from the region,Resistance in Tibet: Self-immolation and Protest. International Tibet Network, 3 May 2013. and described in Outside as offerings by the self-immolators of their bodies to show the world how badly Tibet is suffering. The Dalai Lama blames the self-immolations on Chinese policies, and said, "Some kind of policy, some kind of cultural genocide is taking place". In March 2011, before Chen began his tenure, the Dalai Lama resigned from his political role to continue in his role as Tibet's spiritual leader.
Arrests and disappearances
Tibet government-in-exile's Central Tibetan Administration leader Lobsang Sangay states, "If you protest in Tibet, more often than not you get arrested, or beaten up, sometimes tortured, sometimes you disappear, sometimes you die". Mysterious deaths were reported during Chen's tenure.Relentless: Detention and Prosecution of Tibetans under China’s “Stability Maintenance” Campaign, (www.hrw.org 22 May 2016), The earlier mass arbitrary arrests of monks and nuns at Kirti Monastery in March–April 2011 were followed by reports of disappearances into custody, which continued through Chen's tenure.
In December 2013, Chen described his policy as a "Stability Maintenance Campaign" in a statement, included in a Human Rights Watch report:
Re-education camps
During Chen's tenure, forced evictions of at least 5,000 nuns and monks studying at Larung Gar Buddhist Academy and residing in Larung Gar, began in 2013 and continued past August 2016, with a major demolitions order for 4,600 residences dated from June 2016. After residences were demolished, the nuns and monks were bussed away and reports by Tibetan Review, Radio France International, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) quotation A second video, circulated a few days after the first, shows 12 Tibetan nuns dancing on the stage of a theater in front of what appears to be an audience of officials. The nuns, dressed in religious robes, perform a choreographed dance routine to the song, “The Song of the Emancipated Serfs.” The song is associated with official Communist Party celebrations and was originally performed in front of Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1959. state 600 people were sent directly to re-education camps and centers located in Nyingtri, while a detention center in Sertar was being prepared for an additional 800 nuns. Other reported re-education centers and camps for the monastic community of Yarchen Gar are reported as located in and around Chamdo City and Jomda County.
More nuns than monks were forcibly evicted and detained. The HRW report also details persecution and abuses to which the nuns are subjected in Nyingtri, and refers to a video in which nuns are forced to sing and dance on a stage. Another 300 of Larung Gar's monastic Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, which were not directly detained in re-education camps, were to register for forced re-education programs with prefectures in their home towns. Reports also state the nuns and monks are banned from re-entering other monastic institutions.'Relentless Detention and Prosecution of Tibetans under China’s “Stability Maintenance” Campaign,' Human Rights Watch 22 May 2016
Economic development In 2015 during Chen's tenure, a transfer of 280,000 Han settlers to Tibet's capital Lhasa was authorized, as part of China's urbanization plans. The Central Tibetan Administration states 7.5 million Han and 6 million Tibetans live in the region, as of 2015, and adds, "Under the guise of the economic and social development, Beijing encourages its population to migrate to Tibet with the clear aim to marginalize Tibetans from the economic, educational, political and social life of the region". During Chen's tenure, Tibet's ethnic majority has been "swamped" by promoting economic development that encourages migration from elsewhere in China. In September 2011, at least 226 "key projects" for the development of Tibet were awarded to Han owned companies.Beijing sends a new flood of Han migrants to Lhasa: Tibetans risk disappearing, (www.asianews.it, 27 January 2015), Only Han college graduates in Tibet or Tibetans that speak fluent Mandarin secure well-paid private sector jobs.Adrian Zenz, "Full Employment" in Tibet: The Beginning and End of Chen Quanguo’s Neo-Socialist Experiment, (jamestown.org, 26 February 2018), Chinese data shows that Tibet's GDP grew by 11.8% in 2012. The growth rate in 2013 was 12.1%. The growth rate in 2014 was 12%, ranking first in the country. The growth rate in 2015 was 11%, and the region's GDP exceeded 100 billion CNY for the first time. In the first half of 2016, Tibet led other provinces and cities in China at a growth rate of 10.6%.
Xinjiang (2016–2021)