What to See When Traveling Through a Genocide: Travel Guidebooks and the Uyghur Region
October 31, 2025 | By Dr. Henryk Szadziewski, Director of Research, Uyghur Human Rights Project
“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.” In August 2025, the US government maintained its position that Uyghurs are undergoing a genocide.
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.
Between 2009 and 2012, Kashgar Old City underwent large-scale demolition that displaced its residents and destroyed communal spaces central to Uyghur culture and identity, such as mosques, markets, and neighborhoods. What replaced it was a simulation built for exploitation by non-local investment groups and for tourist consumption. The reconstruction also facilitated the vast surveillance infrastructure imposed on Uyghurs. In contrast, Lonely Planet describes Kashgar as “a thriving, fantastic city with plenty of authentic Uyghur life, food, and music.” Whether intended to boost sales by idealizing the tourist experience or to sidestep controversy and preserve access to the Chinese market, this depiction of the city represents, at best, self-censorship and, at worst, complicity.
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.
Bird is correct that online media is replacing guidebooks. In the Uyghur Region, an area under intense state control, the digital space is dominated by pro-government narratives. A growing number of state-aligned overseas influencers promote the region as safe and “developed,” positioning themselves as debunkers of “Western lies” about human rights abuses. Their privileged access contrasts starkly with the total exclusion of unfettered Uyghur voices. With the closure of Radio Free Asia’s Uyghur Service and the impossibility of independent on-the-ground reporting and research, the discursive space around the Uyghur Region is essentially monopolized by the Chinese state.
Tourism has become a tool in the state discourse to present the region 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.
The value of a guidebook lies in communicating reliable information. Its writers’ on-the-ground experience and their ability to help readers understand the places they visit is at the core of the humanistic mission Thomas Bird references. A guidebook is more than a list of hotels and restaurants; for some travelers, it may be the only resource about a region’s history and culture they might read. Lonely Planet’s glossing over the destruction of Kashgar’s Old City, the repression surrounding religious sites, such as Id Kah Mosque, and the displacement behind Sayram’s scenic beauty, offers a picture separated from reality.
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.
Acknowledgements
The original idea for this piece came from Babur Ilchi, Corporate Campaigns Coordinator at EarthRights International. UHRP Associate Director for Research & Advocacy Peter Irwin provided insightful comments on earlier drafts that helped to shape the final text.