Ecotourism as Racial Capitalism

Abstract

Abstract China’s Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2011–2015) designated the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region as a major up-and-coming tourist destination as part of a programme called ‘Ecological Civilisation’ (shengtai wenming 生态文明). As the crackdown on Turkic Muslims accelerated from 2017 onwards, more and more Uyghur villages and places from which Kazakhs and other pastoralist communities had been displaced in the name of ‘ecological migration’ were branded as locations for tourists to appreciate ‘nature’ and ‘folklore’. This essay analyses land expropriation and labour injustice at these ecotourism sites from the angle of colonial racial capitalism and shows that the expansion of ecological capitalism in China remains hinged on the production of brutal economic inequalities and cycles of vulnerability among racialised and minoritised bodies.