Xinjiang will not be allowed to be like Afghanistan

Editor's note: Obidov Mukhammad Dalimovich, a journalist from Uzbekistan, recently paid a visit to a vocational education and training center in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region where he talked with interviewees and recorded his feelings of Xinjiang and the center. Excerpts:

In China's Belt and Road Initiative, Xinjiang is a hub that links the West and the East. Across the whole of Xinjiang, one can see mosques and prospering development brought by the reform measures the Chinese central government has launched, including reeducation projects for Uygur people.

In the center, I was told I can talk freely with anyone I met, even without an interpreter standing by, because of the linguistic similarity between our two languages. The center, denounced by some Westerners as a "prison", "labor camp" or "detention camp", is like a boarding school where trainees can learn to use computers, and practical skills such as hairdressing, gardening, restaurant management and cooking.