This archive report was first published on 20 November 2019.
China's Xinjiang Crackdown: A Tale of Power and Weakness ¶
Leaked documents to The New York Times have shed light on the Chinese Communist Party's policies in Xinjiang, a nominally autonomous region in northwestern China. The documents reveal the party's rationale and implementation of its policies, as well as its inner workings.
According to the documents, Xi Jinping, the party's chairman and president, reacted strongly to a series of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang in the spring of 2014. Previously, the party's policy toward the region's ethnic minorities had been based on the idea that economic development and improved living standards would defuse dissent. However, after the attacks, Mr. Xi jettisoned this notion and announced that it would be necessary to transform the thinking of Xinjiang's Muslims through psychological means.
This initiated a campaign of mass indoctrination against what the party called the 'virus' of 'religious extremism.' The effort targeted everyday expressions of Islamic belief and even secular aspects of non-Chinese culture. Mr. Xi also called for expanding surveillance through high-tech systems and low-tech boots on the ground.
Between 2016 and 2018, some 350,000 people were arrested and prosecuted, and more than one million Uighurs and Kazakhs were interned extralegally to undergo indoctrination. Some detainees were then transferred to factories associated with the camps, where they were made to work for low or no wages.
The leaked documents also reveal the reaction of local Han officials tasked with enforcing Mr. Xi's campaign. Officials who had lived and worked in Xinjiang for years hesitated when the party center called upon them to lock up thousands of their constituents for alleged thought crimes. For example, Wang Yongzhi, the party boss of Yarkand, struggled with this mandate and ultimately released some 7,000 internees.
However, the C.C.P. accused Mr. Wang of corruption and punished him for his actions. The documents mention that more than 12,000 investigations were conducted into the behavior of Xinjiang officials suspected of inadequately pursuing Beijing's mandate.
With this, the leaked papers underscore the C.C.P.'s vast power: the party can round up hundreds of thousands of people and detain them indefinitely, while silencing other citizens and compelling obedience from officials. But they also suggest its weakness: officials have been quietly resisting policies imposed from the top, and the party is cutting itself off from reality and choking off the information it needs to govern.
