cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/44997219
Op-ed by Dr. Henryk Szadziewski, Director of Research, Uyghur Human Rights Project.
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“Security measures in Xinjiang are relatively more relaxed than in previous years, following a period of political unrest.“ – Lonely Planet China Guide (2025)
This line appears in a sidebar titled “Xinjiang Security” in the August 2025 edition of Lonely Planet’s China country guide. The phrasing obscures much about what has happened in the region since the last one was published in May 2022. Only three months after Lonely Planet released its 2022 edition, the UN described widespread and systematic repression, including arbitrary detention, forced labor, and cultural erasure, finding that the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples may constitute crimes against humanity. This sounds far less like “political unrest” than an assault on an entire people.
Further, the characterization of a “more relaxed” security environment implies it is now safer to tour the Uyghur Region to see what there is to see, even as the US Holocaust Museum’s research center concluded in January 2025 that, “All of the state policies that have led to accusations of atrocity crimes in the Uyghur Region either continue or are currently expanding.”
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Accuracy should be important for Lonely Planet, self-described as “the world’s number one travel guidebook brand” with sales totalling over 150 million. Yet, by downplaying realities on the ground in a region marked by atrocity crimes, it’s salient to explore the responsibilities of guidebook publishers when covering a place like the Uyghur Region.
Travel guides are not human rights documents, however. The purpose of a guidebook is to help travelers plan their trips and navigate destinations, not to serve as an investigative report. Moreover, addressing human rights abuses risks the book being banned in China, rendering it useless to travelers if confiscated at the border.
To its credit, Lonely Planet does mention the economic, religious, and linguistic pressures on “minority peoples,” and references the mass internment of Uyghurs, in a section titled “China’s Ethnic Mosaic” by Bradley Mayhew. This acknowledgment contrasts sharply with the treatment of the Uyghur Region in the “Northwest China” chapter, which uncritically recommends several problematic tourist sites, such as the Xinjiang Region Museum, Id Kah Mosque, Sayram Lake, and Kashgar Old City.
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In a July 2025 China Books Review article, travel writer Thomas Bird notes that the COVID-19 pandemic, rising political tensions, and the dominance of online influencers have all but gutted the international guidebook market about China. Bird laments that the decline of traditional travel writing erodes a more humanistic understanding of the country, insights that cannot be replicated by digital snapshots. The publication history on China guidebooks confirms this decline: DK Eyewitness’ last China guide appeared in 2021, Fodor’s in 2019, Rough Guides and Insight Guides in 2017, and Frommer’s as far back as 2012.
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Tourism has become a tool in the [Chinese] state discourse to present the region [of Xinjiang] as stable and prosperous. In earlier work with my colleague Peter Irwin, we documented how international travel companies and hotel chains contribute to this normalization through their repetition of state narratives, effectively whitewashing atrocity crimes. Guidebook writers and publishers, as part of the tourism industry, similarly carry a responsibility to not obscure human suffering for the sake of access.
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Guidebook writers’ and publishers’ first obligation should be to accuracy about the places they cover. Self-censorship may satisfy Beijing’s sensitivities and sell copies, but it also amplifies propaganda and silences those who already bear the cost of human rights abuses. Publishers should instead provide context, both in print and in their online content, acknowledging the erasures that occur when travelers visit reconstructed sites like Kashgar’s Old City. This applies to other destinations, such as Tibet and Myanmar. In short, writing to their readers, not the Chinese state. Anything less helps to normalize crimes against humanity.