Throughout the pandemic, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has focused on sharply limiting international travel as a risk vector for the spread of COVID-19, and as a result has kept its borders largely closed. As Beijing edges closer to a total shutdown and lockdowns persist in several other large cities, including Shanghai; the already stringent entry and exit restrictions …
Last month, I spent several days at the Forbidden City, the gargantuan palace in the middle of Beijing where China’s emperors ruled the land for nearly five hundred years. I was there to attend a conference on religion and power in imperial China, but my thoughts were drawn to more contemporary concerns: the plight of the Uighurs in China’s far western province of Xinjiang,