China has built more than 100 new facilities in Xinjiang where it can not only lock people up, but also force them to work in dedicated factory buildings right on site, BuzzFeed News can reveal based on government records, interviews, and hundreds of satellite images.

The Factories in the Camps

Forced Labour

China is forcing hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other minorities into hard, manual labour in the vast cotton fields of its western region of Xinjiang, according to new research seen by the BBC.  Based on newly discovered online documents, it provides the first clear picture of the potential scale of forced labour in the picking of a crop that accounts for a fifth of the world’s cotton supply and is used widely throughout the global fashion industry.

China’s ‘tainted’ cotton - forced labour in Xinjiang's cotton industry

A growing body of research has systematically documented Chinese efforts to imprison, detain, and re-educate ethnic Uyghur and minority groups throughout its western Xinjiang province. In this three-part investigation, RAND researchers explore new data on nighttime lighting in Xinjiang to offer new, empirical insights into the coordinated campaign beginning in 2016 to construct the vast majority of Xinjiang’s detention facilities over a multi-year period through mid-2019.

Investigating the Growth of Detention Facilities in Xinjiang Using Nighttime Lighting

Detention

Re-education

Surveillance

Cultural Destruction

The Xinjiang Documentation Project offers a variety of reports from different perspectives on the ongoing events in Xinjiang. The project curates a range of resources and documents including timelines, key documents, translations and media links. 

The UBC Xinjiang Documentation Project

Xinjiang

Eyewitness

Official Documents

Cultural Genocide

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.

Cultural erasure: Tracing the destruction of Uyghur and Islamic spaces in Xinjiang

Culture

ASPI

ASPI researchers have identified and mapped more than 380 suspected detention facilities in Xinjiang, highlighting ‘re-education’ camps, detention centres and prisons that have been newly built or expanded since 2017. This is the largest database of Xinjiang’s detention facilities in existence, and we believe that it covers most such facilities.

Documenting Xinjiang’s detention system

A .zip collection of 380+ suspected detention facilities in Xinjiang and additional info for each one. This file will continue to be updated with new sites and information. 
v1.0

Detention Facilities (v1.0)

v1.01 - Minor changes and new sites added.

Cultural Destruction - Combined (v1.01)

Cultural Destruction - Damaged or Destroyed Subset (v1.01)

Knowledge centre

What makes the case in Xinjiang unique is that the digital enclosure of Uyghur and Kazakh space also harnesses state power and private textile manufacturers to hold them in place in factories—producing a permanent underclass of ethno-racial minority industrial workers. Rather than banishing populations to peripheral ghettos or prisons, in this context terror capitalism works to explicitly “reeducate” the population as industrial workers and implement a forced labor program. 

The Digital Enclosure of Turkic Muslims

The Chinese government has increased its groundless prosecutions with long prison sentences for Uyghurs and other Muslims in recent years in China’s Xinjiang region, Human Rights Watch said today. Since the Chinese government escalated its repressive “Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism” in late 2016, the region’s formal criminal justice system has convicted and sentenced more than 250,000 people.

China: Baseless Imprisonments Surge in Xinjiang

In 2017, detentions of Uighurs, Kazakhs, Hui, and other minorities began to escalate. The first wave targeted Uighur imams and the religiously devout. Soon, prominent academics, novelists, and film directors were also taken into custody. Police and security officers used broad pretexts to justify the detentions, including travelling abroad, having a beard, and owning a prayer rug. A New Yorker long investigation into 'the largest internment of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II'.

Inside Xinjiang’s Prison State: Survivors of China’s campaign of persecution reveal the scope of the devastation

Dahua has 'real time' race detection and Uyghur tracking in its facial recognition technology code. 

Dahua Provides "Uyghur Warnings" To China Police

Women in China's "re-education" camps for Uighurs have been systematically raped, sexually abused, and tortured, according to detailed new accounts obtained by the BBC.

'Their goal is to destroy everyone': Uighur camp detainees allege systematic rape

This report is part of a series that CSIS’s Human Rights Initiative is producing to identify how businesses, governments, multilateral organizations, NGOs, and other actors can work together to address forced labor linked to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. This report first explores the need for supply chain traceability, current approaches, and the challenges the apparel and textile industry faces with forced labor in the XUAR context as well as new tracing technologies. 

New Approaches to Supply Chain Traceability: Implications for Xinjiang and Beyond

A patent application authored by Huawei and the PRC government includes Uyghur-detection analytics, in the latest proof that the China tech giant uses this explicitly racist technology.  IPVM has found that Huawei, Megvii, and several other PRC tech companies have filed patents in China for various devices and systems for ethnic minority detection. 

Patenting Uyghur Tracking - Huawei, Megvii, More

A leaked Chinese police database, the product of a reporting tool developed by private defense company Landasoft and used by the Chinese government to facilitate police surveillance of citizens in Xinjiang, includes detail about many elements of the arrests and large-scale internment of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. 


Millions of Leaked Police Files Detail Suffocating Surveillance of China’s Uyghur Minority

This is the second in a series of five articles highlighting the massive expansion of the prison system in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region that has taken place in recent years. The prisons have been running in parallel with the much-covered concentration camps (“vocational training centers”) and possess many of the same traits, interning hundreds of thousands without real due process and engaging in labor exploitation. 

The Elephant in the XUAR Pt2: Brand new prisons, expanding old prisons, & hundreds of thousands of new inmates

A new report shows some of the world’s biggest solar companies work with the Chinese government to absorb workers from Xinjiang, programs that are often seen as a red flag for forced labor including  GCL-Poly, East Hope Group, Daqo New Energy, Xinte Energy and Jinko Solar. 

Chinese Solar Companies Tied to Use of Forced Labor

Facing international outcry over its testing of a ‘Uighur alarm’ system, Huawei says it is committed to human rights ‘at the highest level.’ But the tech giant has worked with others to build products touted as capable of identifying ethnicity. Huawei has worked with dozens of security contractors to develop surveillance products, some of which were touted as being able to identify a person’s ethnicity or to help suppress potential protests, according to company marketing documents. 

Huawei worked on several surveillance systems promoted to identify ethnicity, documents show

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. The big data program, the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), apparently flagged the people on the Aksu List, whom officials then sent to 're-education camps.

China: Big Data Program Targets Xinjiang’s Muslims

Uniview, the PRC's third-largest video surveillance manufacturer and a major supplier of China police projects, has racist software used for tracking Uyghurs, IPVM has found. China's three largest security camera manufacturers have all been caught offering racist software. Earlier this month, Dahua was caught using Uyghur analytics and last year Hikvision promoted a Uyghur-detecting AI camera. This shows how PRC video surveillance manufacturers profit from the systematic oppression of Uyghurs.

Uniview Racist Uyghur Recognition Revealed

More than 1 million Uighurs, an ethnic-Muslim minority in China, are being detained in hundreds of Chinese detention facilities and camps, where there are reports of widespread torture and detentions that have evolved into forced labor. The US Department of Homeland Security is now banning products thought to be made in China by forced Uighur labor.

U.S. takes aggressive steps against China for forcing Uighurs into labor

Around 9.5 million Han Chinese live in Xinjiang, making up about 40% of the region's population. How do they view Beijing's policies of surveillance and Uyghur reeducation? “They don’t treat people as human beings. In Xinjiang, if you are not a government worker, your life will be more and more difficult going forward,” he said. It is this prospect that is pushing Xinjiang Han to either accept their role in the reeducation campaign or to leave.

‘The atmosphere has become abnormal’: Han Chinese views from Xinjiang

In this report it is argued based on government documents that the state’s long-term stability maintenance strategy in Xinjiang is predicated upon a perverse and extremely intrusive combination of forced training and labor, intergenerational separation and social control over family units. Much of this is being implemented under the heading and guise of “poverty alleviation”.

Beyond the Camps: Beijing’s Long-Term Scheme of Coercive Labor, Poverty Alleviation and Social Control in Xinjiang

This article examines the inscription of meshrep (mäshräp), an important Uyghur cultural practice, on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage and its subsequent co-optation by the Chinese government to ‘counter extremism’ and promote national integration.

How Uyghur cultural practices are being politicized and co-opted in Xinjiang

Government documents reveal new evidence on China’s efforts to monitor Its people. ChinaFile’s analysis of some 76,000 government procurement notices and corresponding documents related to the purchases of surveillance technology by both central and local governments across China between 2004 and mid-May 2020 is the most comprehensive accounting of China’s surveillance build-up to date. To what degree is Xinjiang a model for the rest of the People’s Republic of China? 

State of Surveillance

A New York Times video investigation identified Chinese companies using a contentious labor program for Uighurs to satisfy demand for personal protective equipment; some of which ended up in the United States and other countries.

China Is Using Uyghur Labor to Produce Face Masks

How do we explain the radical shift in the Chinese Communist Party’s policies in the frontier region of Xinjiang, where more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are now interned in prison-like re-education camps? Based on a close reading of official sources, this article explores the evolution of China’s mass internment strategy and the key policy-drivers, institutions, and actors in Xinjiang policy over the last decade.

The Spectre of Insecurity: The CCP’s Mass Internment Strategy in Xinjiang

A confidential document has indicated that the German government is aware of human rights violations in China's Xinjiang region, and warns that Uighurs deported back to China may disappear "indefinitely." The human rights situation in China's northwestern Xinjiang region has "markedly worsened" in recent years, according to a confidential document compiled by the German Foreign Ministry that was leaked to DW. Since late 2016, there has been an "alarming increase" in repressive measures. 

German report spells out China human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims

How should the US and other foreign governments tackle the forced labor problem? A realistic intermediate aim of anti-forced labor policy toward China would be to scare corporations into investing the resources to monitor their supply chains and eat higher production costs to ensure their suppliers’ workers are free. Jordan Schneider lists the tools for governments and the United Nations to combat Xinjiang's forced labour issue. 

What to do about Xinjiang

Factories of Turkic Muslim internment, part of China’s reeducation camp system, are subsidized and directed by the state, and employ many former detainees at a fraction of minimum wage. Companies, both Chinese and foreign, are taking advantage.

How companies profit from forced labor in Xinjiang

The interactive multimedia web experience explores the state of alienation felt by Uyghur Muslims who have fled persecution in China’s Xinjiang province and are attempting to rebuild their lives in Istanbul. About one million Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities are believed to be held against their will in Xinjiang in what human rights groups call “concentration camps”. Fearing the same fate for their loved ones back home, they have been forced to cut off contact with their families.

Living in the Unknown: A multimedia investigation

Uncategorized

An investigation by Taiwanese magazine 'Reporter' which found the victims of the "re-education camps" in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are not only minority groups. In the process of tracing the truth across the country, "Reporter" learned that the family of a Han victim was trying to contact an international organization for her family who had been imprisoned and is now under house arrest, and the Han group who also lost their freedom in Xinjiang For help.

'Han families are also in concentration camps': Report

The Economist investigates the children left behind in Xinjiang. So many parents have been locked up that officials struggle to cope with the left-behind children. 

Orphaned by the state: How Xinjiang’s gulag tears families apart

“If I speak out, they will torture my family”: voices of Uyghurs in exile. The Uyghur diaspora lives in fear of the Chinese state. This journalist spent months recording the stories of London’s nervous community.

“If I speak out, they will torture my family”: Voices of Uyghurs in exile.

A collection of visual assets, documents and data relating to our Cultural Erasure report.

Media Package – Xinjiang's Cultural Erasure

ASPI International Cyber Policy Centre’s newly launched​ ​Xinjiang Data Project​ ​brings together rigorous, empirical research on the human rights situation in Xinjiang. It focuses on a core set of topics including mass internment camps, surveillance and emerging technologies, forced labour and supply chains, the ‘re-education’ campaign and deliberate cultural destruction.

The Xinjiang Data Project: Quantifying cultural erasure and documenting the detention system

Cultural Destruction - Other Cultural Sites (v1.0)

Cultural Destruction - Mosques (v1.0)

Researchers at ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre have now located, mapped and analysed 380 suspected detention facilities in Xinjiang, making it the most comprehensive data on Xinjiang’s detention system in the world. This new database highlights ‘re-education’ camps, detention centres, and prisons which have been newly built or expanded since 2017, and we believe it covers most such detention facilities.

New ASPI research: 'Documenting Xinjiang’s detention system' (in Uyghur)

A zipped media package with visual assets and information about our Documenting Xinjiang's Detention Facilties research output.

Warning: This is a large file with videos. 

Media Package - Documenting Xinjiang's Detention Facilities

A .zip collection of 61 suspected detention facilities in Xinjiang that have expanded since mid-2019, and additional info for each one. This file will continue to be updated with new sites and information. 
v1.0

Detention Facilities - Expanded Camps Subset (v1.0)

New ASPI research: 'Documenting Xinjiang’s detention system'

Download and read the classified documents at the heart of the China Cables on the ICIJ website.

Read the China Cables Documents

Leaks

China cables

This ICIJ investigation demonstrates how the man who signed China’s confidential plans for sweeping extrajudicial detentions and internment camps in Xinjiang had a “lot of ground experience in the trickiest parts of Xinjiang.”

Xinjiang’s architect of mass detention: Zhu Hailun

Urdu translation of the leaked China Cables telegram document.

چائنا کیبلز: ٹیلیگرام کے بارے میں دستاویزات خارج ہوگئیں

Urdu translation of the leaked China Cables IJOP daily bulletin documents.

چائنا کیبلز: "مربوط مشترکہ کارروائی کے پلیٹ فارم" کے بارے میں شائع شدہ بلیٹن

Urdu translation of the leaked China Cables court case documents.

چائنا کیبلز: عدالت سے متعلق کیس سے متعلق دستاویزات خارج ہوگئیں

Russian translation of the leaked China Cables telegram document.

китайские депеши: Утечка документов телеграммы

Russian translation of the leaked China Cables daily bulletin documents.

китайские депеши: Утечка ежедневных бюллетени Совместной комплексной операционной платформы

Russian translation of the leaked China Cables court case documents.

китайские депеши: Утечка документов судебного дела

Malay translation of the leaked China Cables telegram document.

China Cables: Dokumen telegram yang bocor

Malay translation of the leaked China Cables daily bulletin documents.

China Cables: Bocor "Buletin" setiap hari dari Platform Operasi Bersama Bersepadu

Malay translation of the leaked China Cables court case documents.

China Cables: Dokumen kes mahkamah yang bocor

Indonesian translation of the leaked China Cables telegram document.

China Cables: Dokumen telegram bocor

Indonesian translation of the leaked China Cables daily bulletin documents.

China Cables: Dokumen "Buletin" harian yang bocor dari Platform Operasi Gabungan Terpadu

Indonesian translation of the leaked China Cables court case documents.

China Cables: Dokumen kasus pengadilan bocor

French translation of the leaked China Cables telegram document.

China Cables: Fuite de documents de télégramme

French translation of the leaked China Cables IJOP daily bulletin documents.

China Cables: Fuite des documents du bulletin quotidien IJOP

French translation of the leaked China Cables court case documents.

China Cables: Fuites de documents judiciaires

Arabic translation of the leaked China Cables telegram document.

البرقيات الصينية: وثائق برقية مسربة

Arabic translation of the leaked China Cables IJOP daily bulletin documents.

البرقيات الصينية: النشرة اليومية المسربة لمنصة التشغيل المشتركة المتكاملة

Arabic translation of the leaked China Cables court case documents.

البرقيات الصينية: وثائق قضية محكمة مسربة

An in depth oral history of Xinjiang's detention system based on eyewitness and survivor accounts.

Weather Reports: Voices from Xinjiang

Drawing on research in the region between 2010 and 2017, government documents, and colonial theory, this article introduces and interrogates the “Three News” housing campaign. It argues that by imposing what I call “authoritarian reflectiveness,” the CCP intends to uproot Uyghur configurations of order and replace them with Han domestic sensibilities.

If you don’t know how, just learn: Chinese housing and the transformation of Uyghur domestic space

Residential Demolition

Arabic translation of the ICIJ China Cables report.
الترجمة العربية لتقرير الكابلات الصينية ICIJ

فضح: كتيبات إرشادات التشغيل الصينية المتعلقة بالحجز الجماعي والاعتقال باستخدام الحلول الحسابية أو الخوارزمية

French translation of the ICIJ China Cables report.
Traduction française du rapport ICIJ China Cables.

Révélés : Les manuels chinois d'internement et d'arrestation de masse pare algorithme

Malay translation of the ICIJ China Cables report.
Terjemahan bahasa Malaysia dari laporan ICIJ China Cables.

Terdedah: Panduan Operasi China Untuk Tahanan Besar-Besaran Dan Penahanan Menggunakan Algoritma

Indonesian translation of the ICIJ China Cables report.
Terjemahan bahasa Indonesia dari laporan China Cable ICIJ.

Terbongkar: Manual Operasi Cina untuk Penahanan dan Penangkapan Massal Berdasarkan Algoritme

Russian translation of the ICIJ China Cables report.
Русский перевод отчета ICIJ China Cables.

Разоблачение: эксплуатационные инструкции КНР, основанные на алгоритмах массового интернирования и арестов

Chinese translation of the ICIJ China Cables report.
ICIJ中国电缆报告的中文翻译。

曝光:中国利用计算程序实施大规模拘留和逮捕的运作方式

Urdu translation of the ICIJ China Cables report.
آئی سی آئی جے چائنہ کیبلز کی رپورٹ کا اردو ترجمہ۔

بے نقاب: ریاضی کے الگورتھم کے کلیوں کے ذریعے اجتماعی نظر بندی اور حراست کے لیے چین کے عملی ہدایت نامے

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.

Genomic surveillance: Inside China's DNA dragnet

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.

Mapping Xinjiang's detention camps

In this op-ed, Tom Cliff posits that, by rejecting the idea that Chinese leaders do not realise the effects of what they are doing, the questions ‘Why are they doing it? What do they hope to achieve?’ become relevant.

Xinjiang today: Wang Zhen rides again?

How China’s government conflates Uyghur identity with mental illness.

"Once their mental state is healthy, they will be able to live happily in society"

In this report, Timothy Grose offers a detailed picture of the multilayered identities of contemporary Uyghur youth and an assessment of the effectiveness of the "Xinjiang Class" re-education programme in meeting its political goals.

Negotiating inseparability in China: A conversation with Timothy Grose

The Chinese authorities turned to a Massachusetts company and a prominent Yale researcher as they built an enormous system of surveillance and control.

China uses DNA to track its people, with the help of American expertise

How one university student was almost buried by the "people's war on terror".

A summer vacation in China's Muslim gulag

This episode of Four Corners, from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, exposes how China is creating the world's largest prison. Contains a video with transcript.

Tell the world

A researcher shares her account of police surveillance, home raids, evictions and arrests while conducting doctoral research in Xinjiang between 2014 and 2016.

I was in China doing research when I saw my Uyghur friends disappear

A new report revealed a broad campaign that targeted Muslims in China and their diaspora in other countries, beginning as early as 2013.

China's software stalked Uyghurs earlier and more widely, researchers learn

The Chinese state has destroyed and desecrated Uyghur historical and holy places at a scale unprecedented in the history of Eastern Turkistan (Altishahr, Xinjiang) as a Chinese-dominated region. Among the demolished places were mosques, and these have received the bulk of international media attention. But another kind of sacred site - the Mazar - has arguably been a more significant crux of desecration.

The spatial cleansing of Xinjiang: Mazar desecration in context

Shrine

For the past year, Paul Mozur has been investigating the story of a son determined to free his mother from a repressive system of detention and surveillance in western China. Today, we hear from the mother herself for the first time.

A woman's journey through China's detention camps

In a major ethical leap for the tech world, Chinese start-ups have built algorithms that the government uses to track members of a largely Muslim minority group.

One month, 500,000 face scans: How China is using AI to profile a minority

Artificial Intelligence

Why has the Communist Party come to rely on mass internment to control the Uyghurs? What are the implications for China’s future political development under President Xi Jinping? And how should the international community respond?

Patriotic songs and self-criticism: why China is ‘re-educating’ Muslims in mass detention camps

In Part 2 of a BuzzFeed News investigation, ex-prisoners detail the horrors of China’s detention camps. See also: "Built to last".

What they saw

In Part 1 of 2, a BuzzFeed News investigation obased on thousands of satellite images reveals a vast, growing infrastructure for long-term detention and incarceration. See also: "What they saw".

Built to last

More than a million Muslims have been arbitrarily detained in China’s Xinjiang region. As this report explores, the re-education camps are just one part of the government’s crackdown on Uyghurs.

China's repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang

As China silences Uyghur poets’ voices in Xinjiang, Uyghur poets and artists in the diaspora have spoken up, bearing eloquent witness to the catastrophe in their homeland. Some under their own names and others using pseudonyms, these writers and artists, many of whom live in Turkey’s large Uyghur refugee community, are giving expression to the pain, as well as the resilience, of their people.

Uighur poets on repression and exile

Authorities take down once-bustling Uighur neighbourhoods to create a compliant economic hub.

After mass detentions, China razes Muslim communities to build a loyal city

This 2017 report details the rapidly growing surveillance state in Xinjiang and its tools: security checkpoints, facial scanners, ID cards and other advanced technology.

Twelve days in Xinjiang: How China's surveillance state overwhelms daily life

In the absence of officially reported numbers or other hard evidence, researchers of various stripes have converged on the figure of one million as a common estimate of the people the Chinese government is detaining in Xinjiang’s camps. But where does this figure come from, and how is it formulated?

Knowledge centre

Topics

Featured datasets