Sources for the Uyghur crisis

A collection of useful links that provide insight into the situation in Xinjiang, as well as potential objections and counter-arguments. Mostly limited to ones that use Chinese documents/statistics. May be updated sporadically.

China’s initial denial (Chinese source here)

• Description: a New York Times article reporting on China’s denial in 2018 of there being any such thing as re-education centers or counter-extremism training centers

• Notably in 2019 China admitted that they do exist, in a white paper, mentioning that those convicted of extremism will be placed in the centers

• Source: New York Times, and Global Times (an official Chinese state-run newspaper)

China’s white paper on extremism

• Description: an official Chinese source that corroborates their other white paper about the Vocational and Educational Training Centers, contradicting any notion that the centers are voluntary (ctrl+F convicted)
• Source: Xinhua, a state-run news organization from China

Criteria for illegal/extremist behaviour (translation of the 2018 version here)

• Description: a list of regulations by the Chinese government for behaviour that is considered radical, including growing one's beard too long, wearing a niqab, choosing an incorrect name for your child, protesting/boycotting any state policies, downloading/accessing objectionable content

• Note: the beard thing is also mentioned in this older source from before major repressions
• Note: a Global Times defense of China’s policies in the region seems not to deny that beards and veils are considered objectionable

• Source: Xinjiang government website

List of extremist activities

• Description: a list of things considered extremist by authorities in Xinjiang, including wearing star-and-crescent symbols, unjustified purchase of exercise/camping equipment, reading illegal material, participating in the Muslim marriage ceremony, and wearing the niqab
• Source: Chinese government website

Extremist and illegal items (translated here)

• Description: a report by local journalists in Xinjiang about an exhibition of illegal items, including “ornaments, clocks, and banners imprinted with fanatical religious sentiments”, “illegal religious publications”; “‘over-generalized ‘halal’ household products”, “restricted tools and equipments related to violence and terrorism”, and “prayer rugs for illegal underground religious activities”
• Source: archived link from University of British Columbia’s Xinjiang Documentation Project

A Chinese official’s estimate of extremism

• Description: an article that interviews a Xinjiang official who claims as much as 30% of a given village could be polluted by extremism/require “education work”

• Additionally this article mentions that the Muslim marriage ceremony “nikah” is considered a sign of extremism

• Source: Phoenix TV, a Chinese news publication

The China Cables documents

• Description: leaked Chinese documents demonstrating both conditions in the re-education centers, and what charges can lead to sentencing in court
• Source: the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, who were responsible for the Panama Papers - as well as other reporting on climate change lobbying and defense contractors in the Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts
• Potential objections:

• The experts cited include Adrian Zenz (evangelical Christian affiliated with “Victims of Communism” foundation), James Mulvenon (intelligence contractor), and anonymous intelligence sources - all of whom may not be qualified

• Potential response: ICIJ can be trusted to do their homework here - they had over 75 journalists and other partner orgs working on this, and do not serve US interests

• A Uyghur woman in the Netherlands claims to be the leaker of the ICIJ docs, and because she might be motivated against China, the documents could be fake

• Potential response: the ICIJ has explicitly not commented on their sources but they did verify the signature of one of the officials in the documents

Increased criminal arrests in Xinjiang 

• Description: comparisons of arrest and indictment numbers in Xinjiang to China’s total, from 2013 to 2017, noting a sudden sharp increase

• Note: these stats have been extended to 2019 here

• Source: Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, who cover China full-time and are also one of the sources for the “1 million” number
• Potential objections:

• CHRD is a biased source, having received money from the US’s National Endowment for Democracy

• Potential response: even if they are biased, the data is not - if you click on the numbers in any of the tables, they link to archived Chinese government websites that confirm the stats
• Potential response: while the US Congress does fund the NED, the NED is not always in lockstep with its goals - for example this article mentions how towards the end of the Soviet Union, US policy makers supported Mikhail Gorbachev while the NED supported his opponents

The Xinjiang papers

• Description: leaked Chinese documents demonstrating that the re-education centers are more than just schools, how the CPP attempts to placate relatives of detainees, and that misgivings from officials are not tolerated - corroborating the ICIJ’s documents
• Source: New York Times
• Potential objections:

• Grammar mistakes indicate that the documents are forged by US media

• Potential response: according to this blog post, a) only one of the multiple documents contains glaring errors, b) the document with errors is not a formal document but a less formal memo, c) the document with errors is for Uyghurs, and thus was likely originally in Uyghur and translated to Chinese for documentation purposes
• Potential response: the NYT has a whole team of Chinese speakers and thus have no reason to do such a poor job translating only one of the documents

• Any US media is not to be trusted

• Potential response: if so, by all means disregard this article, but it does corroborate other non-US sources
• Potential response: interestingly, many Chinese official responses did not initially call them fake, including that of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (instead using the phrase 断章取义 meaning out-of-context), the Global Times, and the embassy to Spain - however, after the initial Ministry of Foreign Affairs response there was a denial by the Xinjiang government

A Chinese policeman’s account of detainments (translated here)

• Description: an archived post from a public verified WeChat account that describes hundreds of daily detainees in a detention facility
• Source: Xinyang Detention Center WeChat (archived link from the Xinjiang Documentation Project)

A different Chinese policeman’s account of a detention facility (translated here)

• Description: another archived post from a different public verified WeChat account that describes hundreds of detainees transported to hearings a day, as well as some to a “labour project”
• Source: Public Security Bureau of Jiyuan, Henan WeChat (archived link from the Xinjiang Documentation Project)

Discouragement of religion

• Description: Uyghurs workers are mentioned in this Chinese article as receiving re-education reminiscent of the centers, including being told to stay away from religion, and receiving ideological/patriotism education (also mentioned here).

• Note: a different government source mentions that a labour project transferred 80k Uyghurs out of Xinjiang between 2017 and 2019 - though these may not all necessarily be detainees

• Source: a Chinese website

Militarized management of workers

• Description: a post in Chinese that mentions a batch of Xinjiang workers under “semi-militarized management”
• Source: Baidu

Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps

• Description: a paper by a pro-CCP research fellow about the implementation of a militarized organization separate from the police in Xinjiang, noting that the Uyghurs are unhappy with their presence there
• Source: Dr. Bao Yajun of the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford

Religious/behavioural restrictions in prison

• Description: Chinese archived court document detailing the account of one imprisoned Uyghur who was given an extra 11 years in prison for praying (namaz), doing wudu, yelling at the inmates who reported him, and not writing a “thought report”. These crimes are characterized as illegal religious activities, inciting ethnic hatred/discrimination, and undermining supervision.
• Source: China Judgements Online, archived link from Xinjiang Victims Database

Minors banned from mosques in Xinjiang

• Description: a photo of a sign outside a mosque saying minors are forbidden from entering, a policy also mentioned in this 2004 US government report 
• Source: Timothy Grose, professor of China Studies at Rose-Hulman
• Potential objections:

• China has a law against religious indoctrination for children

• Potential response: while that is true, asserting that merely entering a mosque can cause religious indoctrination is incredibly Islamophobic

• This is a US source so it’s fake

• Potential response: none tbh, if they choose not to believe any US sources whatsoever then it’s kind of a dead end

China’s hardening rhetoric on Islam

• Description: an article quoting various Chinese officials echoing Trump’s “Muslim ban” rhetoric to justify crackdowns on Muslims
• Source: Al-Jazeera, a non-Western news organization

Adrian Zenz’s sterilization report

• Description: a report detailing the evidence of forced suppression of birth rates among Xinjiang’s Uyghur population, using mainly Chinese sources/websites/reports. Includes evidence of steep growth rate decline in Uyghur prefectures (especially in rural areas), punishment for birth control violations, low growth rate targets, sterilization procedures, and early widowing.
• Source: Adrian Zenz, Jamestown Foundation
• Potential objections:

• Adrian Zenz is a far-right bigot, and a Western source

• Potential response: from what I’ve seen he’s definitely said some pretty unsavoury things (mostly in line with the way a lot of evangelical Republicans think). I certainly don’t like him but when it comes to his data in the sterilization report it’s generally quite well-sourced. Even official Chinese media doesn’t dispute most of his sourcing.

• Han population dropped as well

• Potential response: natural growth rate is the more useful metric here since Han residents have also been moving out of Xinjiang

• Han growth rates also dropped, not just Uyghur

• Potential response: the decrease in minority counties (especially Hotan and Kashgar) is much more pronounced

• Decrease in Uyghur growth rates is natural due to deradicalization, education, and modernization

• Potential response: the decrease is much too steep to be natural, and this type of decrease does not happen over the course of just a few years
• Potential response: if this were the case, the decrease in rural areas would be less than in urban areas, but the opposite is true even in Uyghur dominated cities like Hotan and Kashgar (source 1 and 2 for their respective rural prefectures)

• Xinjiang’s natural growth rate is higher than China’s average

• Potential response: this does not account for the sharp decrease
• Potential response: Zenz’s data separates minority and Han counties, which shows the drop for minority counties much more starkly even if ultimately Xinjiang’s natural growth rate is higher than average

• One of the rates from the report has a discrepancy with the Xinjiang Statistical Yearbook

• Potential response: Zenz uses a different dataset - from the Xinjiang Social Economic Development Reports, because the XSY numbers were erratic and questionable (according to his rebuttal)

• Zenz claims that 80% of China’s total IUD placements were in Xinjiang when in fact it’s 8.7%

• Potential response: Zenz’s wording was confusing in the non-updated version but it’s 80% of net placements, meaning insertions minus removals. Additional note: he also includes data that shows Xinjiang's number of performed sterilization surgeries increasing nearly 19-fold from 2014 to 2018, giving "China Health and Hygiene Statistical Yearbook, table 8–8–2" as his source.

• You can’t compare Xinjiang’s net placements to China's total because there are also regions with net negative placements

• Potential response: this is actually true. Instead it is more useful to compare net IUD placements per 100k between regions, in which case Xinjiang's numbers would be 963 per 100k, which is three times that of the runner-up Guizhou's 303 per 100k. China's average would be 21.6. Basically the data still supports the idea of coercive IUD placements but the methodology is a little shaky.

• One of Zenz’s tables lists hundreds of IUD placements per capita, which would mean Uyghur women getting multiple IUD placements a day

• Potential response: this just seems to be a typo that was corrected in the updated version (it’s supposed to say per 100k)

• Zenz claims that Kizilsu set their 2020 growth target for 1.05 per mille when in fact it’s 1.05 per cent (in other words 10.5 per mille)

• Potential response: Zenz’s rebuttal states that 10.5 was their max allowable growth rate while 1.05 was their target

• Zenz’s sources do not support the claims that women who violated birth control policies would be put in a vocational center, or that IUD insertion is done by force

• Potential response: this one mentions that those who are pregnant outside official policies will be urged to terminate their pregnancy and educated
• Potential response: I think this source wasn’t in the report but it states "for those who have more than two children illegally, in addition to doubling the social maintenance fee for each child in accordance with the relevant provisions of the newly revised Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Population and Family Planning Regulations, at the same time, long-term birth control measures and vocational skills education and training are taken"
• Potential response: this government website says that all women who meet IUD placement conditions (without contraindication) must get them placed immediately. It also says "ensure that the implementation rate of long-term contraceptive measures exceeds 75%", and mentions that there is fear and resistance among women towards IUD placement

• Zenz’s claim that the growth rate of Gulbagh district (a heavily Han district) is 7.8x that of Hotan County is disputable

• Note: this one holds water. Zenz lists Gulbagh’s growth rate as 15.17 and Hotan County’s as 2.22, which is only 6.8x (I messaged Zenz on Twitter and it looks like that’s a typo). Additionally, while he lists his source for Gulbagh, his source in the paper for Hotan County just says “see main text body”. In Zenz’s rebuttal, he posts a link for the Hotan County number but I couldn’t find it in the source - though it should be noted I was relying on Google translate. However, if the numbers are correct, this discrepancy in growth rates is significant due to historically higher rural rates.
• Note: Gulbagh’s Han birthrate was 17.3 per mille, much more than its minority population’s birth rate of 8.1 per mille.

• Note: Zenz is not the only person to compile data on suppressed birthrates. One blog has compiled this Google Sheet document that compares data from official national statistical yearbooks between regions to show the abnormalcy of Xinjiang’s numbers (graph here). I was also able to find documents replicating Zenz’s findings on birth control operations - one for Xinjiang vs. China and another between provinces in 2018. More analysis of Xinjiang’s numbers has been documented here. Even discarding any editorializing or analysis Zenz may do of the data himself, the evidence he provides still stands and speaks for itself.

Supplemental: various sources for the “1 million” number. In my opinion this is a pretty rough estimate of Uyghurs in re-education centers and thus should be treated with caution. We know of course from CHRD’s table of arrests that the numbers could be rather large.

1. A 2018 Zenz report which does some quick calculations based on data presented by a Japanese researcher of Uyghurs, arriving at around 1 million. The Japanese researcher cites Istiqlal TV which is a pro-Uyghur organization that seemingly received a leak from a Chinese public security official. Hard to verify.
2. A CHRD report that asserts 1.1 million based on percentage estimates from 8 Uyghurs in separate villages. Although the CHRD used fairly conservative percentages, the math here seems prone to being off.
3. A Chinese white paper that mentions 1.29 million people a year in vocational training from 2014-2019, though the wording here is unclear.
4. A WeChat post by a village cadre (translated here) claiming that in one village, nearly a quarter of Uyghur adults were detained, corroborating CHRD’s percentages.
5. An AFP analysis that supposedly uses publicly available government documents hinting at large numbers based on supplies purchased for the centers, like shoes, books, and police equipment - though they don’t seem to link those documents, thus hard to verify.

It is, of course, pretty concerning that China hasn’t given their own number of Uyghurs in detention.

Supplemental: satellite imagery projects by ASPI, Shawn Zhang, and Buzzfeed. This is not in my wheelhouse, but the blog post linked here does what appears to be a decent job going through everything. These projects also provide additional evidence for the possibility of 1 million Uyghurs in re-education centers, based on floor space and estimated capacity.