News on China over the past weeks has been dominated by the findings of the independent report from the Newlines Institute, in cooperation with Raoul Wallenberg Centre, which argues that China bears state responsibility for breaching every article of the 1948 Genocide Convention in their treatment of the Uyghur people of Xinjiang province.

Parliaments around the world are now studying and debating it, and many are considering following the path set by the Netherlands and Canada in declaring the situation in Xinjiang a genocide. This is as it must be: some 151 counties are signatories to the Genocide Convention (including China), and each has a duty under the Convention to make their own determination of whether a situation meets the criteria set out in the Convention.

But where the international community ultimately falls on this issue will be a pivotal event in the history of this century. China is currently the second-most powerful country in the world, and its trajectory is still firmly upwards. Sooner or later, China is expected to be able to successfully challenge the US for the top position, if current trends are maintained.

Against that background, the issue of the genocide of the Uyghurs will be of global significance in at least one of two ways. First, if China continues with its policies and successfully destroys the Uyghur identity, and the response from the …