China Cables
The China Cables are a cache of secret Chinese government documents from 2017 that were obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) - known for their work on the Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Pandora Papers and FinCEN Files - and published two weeks after the New York Times published their Xinjiang Papers investigation in November 2019.
Sourced from exiled Uyghurs, the China Cables include a classified list of guidelines, personally approved by the region’s top security chief, that effectively serves as a manual for operating the camps which held hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uighurs and other minorities at the time of publication. The leak also features previously undisclosed intelligence briefings that reveal, in the government’s own words, how Chinese police are guided by a massive data collection and analysis system (the Integrated Joint Operation Platform, or IJOP) that uses artificial intelligence to select entire categories of Xinjiang residents for detention.
Key Reading:
The China Cables Investigation (ICIJ, Published November 2019)
The Xinjiang Papers Investigation (NYT, Published November 2019)
Further Reading:
Cameras made by Chinese surveillance company Hikvision are deeply integrated into an intelligence program aimed at tracking and detaining Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in Xinjiang, according to a new report.
A Q&A with Darren Byler, author of a new book on China’s oppressive policies against Uyghurs and other Muslims in western China. "In general, what we are seeing is a shift from mass internment to coerced labor and mass imprisonment [...] At the same time, those who are deemed more serious risks have either been sentenced to prison terms or are still being held as they await trial."
Diplomatic measures, sanctions, targeting forced labor, calls for investigations and a 2022 Olympics boycott, and other efforts to stop Beijing’s campaign against Uyghurs appear to have little effect. Week after week, lawmakers around the world have continued to put pressure on China over alleged human rights abuses against Uyghurs in an escalating diplomatic conflict, which one expert says has become something of a stalemate.
A big data program for policing in China’s Xinjiang region arbitrarily selects Turkic Muslims for possible detention, Human Rights Watch said today. A leaked list of over 2,000 detainees from Aksu prefecture provided to Human Rights Watch is further evidence of China’s use of technology in its repression of the Muslim population.
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.
This terrain assessment describes how Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang were targeted by digital and biometric surveillance technologies of the “re-education” system. Its main conclusion is that the world is witnessing the birth of a new form of technology-enabled systems of social and behavioral control. This rise in authoritarian statecraft coincides with breakthroughs in face surveillance, voice recognition, automated data recovery tools and algorithmic assessments of social media histories in China’s private and public technology industry.
This report describes and analyzes a leaked government document known as the Karakax List which contains in-depth information about the familial and social circles of internees from eight Uyghur neighborhoods.
The “Karakax List”, named after the county of Karakax (Qaraqash) in Hotan Prefecture, represents the most recent leaked government document from Xinjiang. Over 137 pages, 667 data rows and the personal details of over 3,000 Uyghurs, this document presents the strongest evidence to date that Beijing is actively persecuting and punishing normal practices of traditional religious beliefs, in direct violation of its own constitution.
A new leak of highly classified Chinese government documents has uncovered the operations manual for running the mass detention camps in Xinjiang and exposed the mechanics of the region’s Orwellian system of mass surveillance and “predictive policing.”
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.