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:
Who are the Uyghurs? Genocide, forced labour and endless Chinese atrocities; Dolkun Isa interview
Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, discusses the history of Chinese repression in Xinjiang and his lived experiences of the system of forced assimilation, the silencing of influential Uyghur figures and China’s mass detention of Uyghurs.
The “Xinjiang Papers”: How Xi Jinping commands Chinese policy
This report shows how the Xinjiang papers reveal the centralised decision-making behind the persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
Great Wall of Steel: China’s Global Campaign to Suppress the Uyghurs
This report posits that the focus on how Uyghurs are treated within China ignores China’s harassment of Uyghurs and Kazakhs living abroad.
Suspicion and subjugation in Xinjiang
The Chinese authorities have long treated the region – and its people – with suspicion. The abuses there can no longer be ignored.
Historic Uyghur culture is under existential threat
Shaped over centuries by pilgrimage, trade, art and war, a unique culture has been suppressed and exploited by Beijing. Can Uyghur distinctiveness re-emerge?
The Xinjiang Emergency: Exploring the causes and consequences of China's mass detention of Uyghurs
The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the site of the largest mass repression of an ethnic and/or religious minority in the world today. Existing reportage and commentary on the crisis tend to address the various forms this takes in isolation, but this ground-breaking volume brings them together, exploring the interconnections between the core strands of the Xinjiang emergency in order to generate a more accurate understanding of the mass detentions' significance for the future of President Xi Jinping's China.
Genocidal processes: social death in Xinjiang
This paper builds on critical genocide studies literature to historically contextualize China’s “fusion” policy used to justify its policies of extralegal internment camps and inter-generational separation in Xinjiang.
Surviving the Crackdown in Xinjiang
As mass detentions and surveillance dominate the lives of China’s Uyghurs and Kazakhs, a woman struggles to free herself.
The Roots of Cultural Genocide in Xinjiang
The notion that a genocide is underway in the twenty-first century seems outlandish. But whatever the merits of the term, the evidence of the atrocities that China has committed against Uyghurs is undeniable.
Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang
(Originally published November 2006, revised February 2021) Eurasian Crossroads is an essential resource for anyone seeking to learn about the complex historical context of the genocide taking place in Xinjiang today. James Millward, who is widely regarded as the leading historian of Chinese Central Asia, provides an accessible-yet-thorough examination of the various peoples and empires that have called the region home.
Why Did the United States Take China’s Word on Supposed Uighur Terrorists?
On Oct. 20, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo quietly entered into the Federal Register that the United States no longer recognized the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) as a “terrorist organization.” China, which portrays ETIM as part of the supposed Uighur terrorist threat that justifies its brutal crackdown in Xinjiang, immediately complained bitterly.
Land of Strangers: The Civilizing Project in Qing Central Asia
At a time when understanding the roots of the modern relationship between Uyghurs and China has taken on new urgency, Land of Strangers illuminates a crucial moment of social and cultural change in this dark period of Xinjiang’s past.
China’s system of oppression in Xinjiang: How it developed and how to curb it
This report describes the history of Uyghur oppression in Xinjiang, outlining the current conditions in the region and Chinese surveillance policies, as well as policy recommendations for addressing the ongoing oppression.
Securing China's Northwest Frontier: Identity and Insecurity in Xinjiang
In the first study to incorporate majority Han and minority Uyghur perspectives on ethnic relations in Xinjiang following mass violence during July 2009, David Tobin analyses how official policy shapes identity and security dynamics on China's northwest frontier. He explores how the 2009 violence unfolded and how the party-state responded to ask how official identity narratives and security policies shape practices on the ground.
China’s oppression of Xinjiang’s Uyghurs: a visual history
Today, Xinjiang’s Uyghurs are subject to a comprehensive, targeted campaign of surveillance and control. According to leading researchers and human rights groups, as many as 1.5 million have been placed in concentration camps. This ongoing program of repression follows decades of tension between the Uyghurs and the Chinese government. So, how did we get here?
A Uighurs’ History of China
It is impossible to make sense of the current crisis in Xinjiang without an understanding of the distinctive trajectory of Uighur history, which is intertwined with that of the regional great power, China.
China Cables: Who Are the Uighurs and Why Mass Detention?
China’s mass detention of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities living in its western region of Xinjiang has sparked alarm and condemnation across the world. The China Cables investigation reveals classified Chinese government directives that provided operational plans for the internment camps and orders for carrying out mass detentions guided by sweeping data collection and artificial intelligence.
To better explain China’s actions in Xinjiang and the findings of the China Cables, this report answers some key questions about who is involved, the crackdown’s origins, and the significance of the secret documents.
Good and Bad Muslims in Xinjiang
For those outside of China, a robust critique of China’s approach in Xinjiang must extend to the philosophical underpinnings that its policies continue to share with the domestic War on Terror in the West.
China’s Protracted Securitization of Xinjiang: Origins of a Surveillance State
This article focuses on two key developments in the contemporary history of Xinjiang that help make sense of the ‘surveillance state’ as the culmination of a sustained security agenda aimed at tightening the grip of the Communist Party of China (CCP) on the region. The first is the abandonment of the moderate approach which characterized China’s ethnic minority policies in the early years of the ‘reform and opening up’ (1980s). A second key development is the issuing in 1996 of the directive ‘Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Document No. 7’. This set of instructions established a new security agenda for Xinjiang that defined the contours of much of the practices now observed in the region.
China’s Uyghur Repression
In the name of combating Islamic extremism, the Chinese Communist Party has embarked on a massive campaign of harassment and detention of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang province.