Uyghur poet’s memoir recalls the Xinjiang administration’s retrospective hunt for unPC content in textbooks once commissioned, edited and published by the state:
Following the Urumchi incident in 2009, the regional government had initiated the Looking Back Project (新疆回头看). The Propaganda Department organized special groups to go over Uyghur-language books, newspapers, journals, films, television shows, and recordings from the 1980s to the present. These groups were tasked with identifying any materials that contained ethnic separatist themes or religious extremist content.
. . . Several years later, as one result of these investigations, half a dozen Uyghur intellectuals 
and officials were arrested for editing Uyghur literature textbooks for grades one through eleven. The textbooks had been used in schools for over a decade before the “problem” with them was discovered in 2016.
Word spread that similar “problems” had been found in nearly all Uyghur historical novels, and that they would soon be banned. The government had even banned a popular historical novel by Seypidin Ezizi, the highest-ranking Uyghur official in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. If the work of such a trusted party veteran could be banned, there was little question what the future held for other Uyghur writers.
(Excerpted from Waiting to be Arrested at Night by Tahir Hamut Izgil, translated by Joshua Freeman)
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Ethnic ChinaLit 
Chilling!
A veritable literary inquisition.
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Indeed. As a French literati texted me: “ce n’est plus la Révo Cu, c’est le stalinisme revisité.”
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This isn’t only happening with regard to Uyghurs. Xi also banned a book (in Chinese) about the history of the Mongols which he apparently found gave too much stress to Mongol ethnicity and (presumably) not enough to the Mongols as part of the Zhonghua Minzu. This all appears to be part of the “Chinese Dream”, which is unapologetically based on the ideal of a powerful, culturally Han-based state. The ideology is one of iron control and Han chauvinism from start to finish.
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Readers may also be interested to read about other recent attempts to “cancel” Mongolian culture. To wit: France Offers Fresh Look at Genghis Khan and the Mongols, and “Tamgagui Tur”: Mongolian Theatrical Production Abruptly Cancelled in China.
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