BEIJING -- The so-called "Han settler colonialism" in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region is a mere fabrication by Adrian Zenz, a so-called German scholar, said a research report released by the Xinjiang Development Research Center on Friday.

Adrian Zenz claimed the natural population growth rate of the Han ethnic group in the Gulbagh subdistrict of Hotan City was 151.7 per 1,000 in 2018 while the rate of the natural population growth for Hotan County was 2.22 per 1,000.

But the statistics provided by Hotan Prefecture showed the natural population growth rate of the Han ethnic group in the subdistrict was just 1.2 per 1,000 in 2018, while the natural population growth rate in Hotan County was 5.29 per 1,000, according to the report titled "Slanderer Adrian Zenz's Xinjiang-related Fallacies Versus the Truth."