It’s a report that has been widely reported on in the media at the time. They could not just “craft data” and get away with it. Forging verifiable data is the stupidest thing that a think tank could do if they want their future reports to also be picked up by mainstream media. They can be creative with their conclusions or accusations, but claiming that official government data says X, while it doesn’t, that’s not going to fly and they know it.
There was also per county data available, showing a correlation between the size of the decline and the ethnic makeup of the county: “The largest declines have been in counties where Uyghurs and other indigenous communities are concentrated. Across counties that are majority-indigenous the birth-rate fell, on average, by 43.7 percent in a single year between 2017 and 2018. The birth-rate in counties with a 90 percent or greater indigenous population declined by 56.5 percent, on average, in that same year.” https://www.aspi.org.au/report/family-deplanning-birthrates-xinjiang/
The meme checks out: https://www.ceicdata.com/en/china/population-birth-rate-by-region/cn-population-birth-rate-xinjiang . Birth rate was 1.588 in 2017 and at a similar level in the years before that, 1.069 in 2018, 0.814 in 2019 and so on.
Extra surveillance and repression reportedly started in 2014, mass incarceration in 2017.
If it wasn’t deniable by pundits like you, then it wouldn’t be a dog whistle.
To me this looks as much as a gaff as Elon Musk his Nazi salutes. This “gaff” is yet another obvious dog whistle by USA republicans.
Whataboutism? I’m not going there. All your arguments against the data that you don’t like were ad hominem. You have no objective basis for your narrative other than your personal beliefs.