All Reading
This section contains a curated list of useful articles, investigations, books and other reading materials. The list is updated on a weekly basis and suggestions for additions are welcome.
Starting Points:
UN Uyghur report leaves no room for denial and no excuse for inaction
Despite the relatively narrow scope of Bachelet’s report, it strongly verifies the nature of human rights abuses in Xinjiang in relation to arbitrary detention, and frames them within statements made by Chinese state sources.
Assessing the impact of CCP information operations related to Xinjiang
This report explores the online tactics used by the Chinese Communist Party to deny revelations or claims of human rights abuses occurring in Xinjiang.
Cultivating friendly forces: The Chinese Communist Party’s influence operations in the Xinjiang Diaspora
This report explores how the CCP’s united front system is used to monitor the Uyghur diaspora and counter criticism of its policies in Xinjiang.
Borrowing mouths to speak on Xinjiang
This report explores how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses foreign social media influencers to shape and push messages domestically and internationally about Xinjiang that are aligned with its own preferred narratives.
The architecture of repression: Unpacking Xinjiang’s governance
This report is a part of a larger online project which can be found on the Xinjiang Data Project website. The project maps and analyses the governance mechanisms employed by the Chinese party-state in Xinjiang from 2014 to 2021 within the context of the region’s ongoing human rights crisis. The authors have located and scrutinised thousands of Chinese-language sources, including leaked police records and government budget documents never before published. For policymakers, this report will provide an evidence base to inform policy responses including possible sanctions. For the general public and anyone whose interests are linked to Xinjiang and China more broadly, this project can inform risk analysis and ethical considerations.
Xinjiang's Architecture of Repression
This chart maps the key bureaucratic offices involved in designing, coordinating and implementing the Chinese Communist Party’s policies in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in western China.
Family De-planning: The Coercive Campaign to Drive Down Indigenous Birth-rates in Xinjiang
In this report, ASPI provides new evidence documenting the effectiveness of the Chinese government’s systematic efforts to reduce the size of the indigenous population of Xinjiang through a range of coercive birth-control policies.
Cultural erasure: Tracing the destruction of Uyghur and Islamic spaces in Xinjiang
The Chinese government has embarked on a systematic campaign to rewrite the cultural heritage of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China by desecrating or “rectifying” mosques and indigenous sacred sites. This report maps over 900 mosques and other important Uyghur religious-cultural sites across Xinjiang, analyses their condition before and after 2017, and then used statistical extrapolation to estimate the full extent of their destruction and alteration.
Documenting Xinjiang’s Detention System
This database of nearly 400 suspected detention facilities in Xinjiang highlights ‘re-education’ camps, detention centres and prisons that have been newly built or expanded since 2017.
Xinjiang Detention and Cultural Sites Interactive Map
ASPI researchers have located, mapped and analysed over 380 suspected detention facilities in Xinjiang that have been built or expanded since 2017, making it the most comprehensive dataset on Xinjiang’s detention system in the world. The project has also located and analysed hundreds of mosques and other important Uyghur and Islamic cultural sites in Xinjiang and assessed how many have been demolished or damaged since 2017. Both datasets are viewable on this interactive map.
Genomic surveillance: Inside China's DNA dragnet
The Chinese Government is building the world’s largest police-run DNA database in close cooperation with key industry partners across the globe. Yet, unlike the managers of other forensic databases, Chinese authorities are deliberately enrolling tens of millions of people who have no history of serious criminal activity. Those individuals (including preschool-age children) have no control over how their samples are collected, stored and used.
Uyghurs for Sale: ‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang
This report reveals how the forced transfers of Uyghurs to factories across China are linked to the supply chains of dozens of international brands.
Mapping more of China's tech giants: AI and surveillance
This public database maps companies and organisations to visualise a holistic picture of the increasingly global reach of China’s tech giants, including companies working in the artificial intelligence (AI) and surveillance tech sectors.
Mapping Xinjiang’s Detention Camps
This November 2018 report by ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre collates and adds to the current open-source research into China’s growing network of extrajudicial ‘re-education’ camps in Xinjiang province.