> it has never invaded outside its traditional borders
Your notion of "traditional borders" is where this becomes nonsense. With a little bit of revisionist history you can justify all sorts of invasions, such as the 1959 invasion of Tibet, or the desire to retake Taiwan. In reality, China is an empire, with several of its regions very unhappy to part of it (Tibet, Xinjiang, and probably more if you could only ask its people).
Only empire which exists right now is the western empire lead by US, its days are numbered, then when the propaganda curtain falls, it will be a shock. I had people of Xinjiang as my class mates, they laugh at your propaganda.
I am not taking your word for it at all, but if they "laugh" at this, I wouldn't want to have anything to do with them:
You know what?
Most of you don't even know a single Uigur in your whole life, everything you learnt about Xinjiang/Uigur is from western media(ofc, wikipedia, The "Free" Encyclopedia, and from some random "Xinjiang experts" who funded by some Hawkish think tanks which backed by the US gov.
But I do know many westerners like you in HN, Twitter, etc. And, since I have the more reliable information and experience, just like the one you replied, I know you more than you know Xinjiang/Uigurs, so, my oponion about you is way more reliable than your oponions about Xinjiang/Uigurs. I can easily judge you are ignorant due to credulousness and misinformation.
Now, do you understand why there's "laugh"? They/We are not laughing at "this", we are laughing at people like you.
TBH, I do enjoy browsing China-related comments in HN, it's like watching a comedy, you guys may never get this, untill you take a flight to China/Xinjiang, if you did, you'd find the funny part
How your knowing westerns from HN and Twitter makes your opinion more reliable than westerners that know about you from wiki?