Since 2016, an estimated one million Uyghurs and members of other Turkic Muslim minorities have disappeared into a vast network of ‘re-education camps’ in the far west region of Xinjiang, China in what some experts call a systematic, government-led program of cultural genocide. Those outside detention are subject to intensive surveillance through a network of hi-tech surveillance systems, checkpoints and interpersonal monitoring. While many countries now acknowledge these problems as a reality of President Xi Jinping's China, a more accurate understanding of how the detentions are perceived both within China and in the global community is crucial. This is the Melbourne book launch of The Xinjiang Emergency: Exploring the causes and consequences of China's mass detention of Uyghurs, edited by Michael Clarke.