As recently reported in the press, since Spring 2017, hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other minority Muslims in Xinjiang have “disappeared” into “political re-education centres,”euphemistically labelled mäktäp (Uy. schools) by frightened locals. Their purported crimes vary from travelling abroad to study (or having a relative who did so) to having Western social media apps on their phone. Most…
DetailsTo suppress views of China that it does not like, the party is trying to replicate its domestic censorship on a global scale, says Isabel Hilton This is a guest contribution to our debate: Should the West worry about the threat to liberal values posed by China’s rise? KISHORE MAHBUBANI urges “Western minds” to seek…
DetailsChina’s massively popular social media platform WeChat appears to have further tightened requirements for user registration, demanding access to all files and media content, and potentially giving the authorities access to everything on a user’s smartphone, RFA has learned. A newly registered WeChat account resulted in a pop-up request on Thursday, calling for permission to…
DetailsChina’s surveillance state already tracks people’s faces. Now it’s also going to track their cars, the Wall Street Journal has reported (paywall). From July 1, China’s Ministry of Public Security will oversee a program to install a radio-frequency identification chip in the windshields of new cars when they’re registered. While installing the chips won’t be mandatory this…
DetailsThe firms profiting from China’s rights abuses are often backed by Western investors. BY CHARLES ROLLET ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MAGEE FOR FOREIGN POLICY In the far western region of Xinjiang, China has created one of the world’s most sophisticated and intrusive state surveillance systems to target the predominantly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority. Part of what Beijing…
DetailsGulag Style When we talk about Xinjiang’s re-education system, we often compare it with Soviet’s Gulag. Satellite imageries also confirm many re-education camps are heavily guarded detention facilities like Gulag or Nazi camps. More satellite imageries: List of Re-education Camps in Xinjiang 新疆再教育集中营列表 All satellite images are from Google Earth.medium.com But this kind of Gulag…
DetailsAs the world outside China remembers the Tiananmen Square massacre, the story of two Chinese dissident refugees in Taiwan highlights why this country should accept many more In the past week, there have been a couple of high profile examples of Taiwan providing sanctuary to Chinese dissidents. And this has raised the question of what…
DetailsHow a Mao-era Chinese agricultural conglomerate came to dominate the African tomato market. Ahundred workers were picking tomatoes in a field near Wusu, a town in northern Xinjiang Province, China, half way between the provincial capital, Ürümqi, and the border with Kazakhstan. Most were migrants from Sichuan Province, with a few Uyghurs. A teenage girl…
DetailsWASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressmen Randy Hultgren (R-IL) and James P. McGovern (D-MA), Co-Chairs of the bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, addressed the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights on the human rights situation in China’s Xinjiang province. The Co-Chairs’ remarks were broadcast via video at the start of the subcommittee’s “Exchange of Views on the Human Rights Situation…
DetailsJessica Batke Jessica Batke is a ChinaFile Senior Editor. She is an expert on China’s domestic political and social affairs, and served as the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research Analyst for… More A version of this piece was written for and will appear in Issue 56 of China Leadership Monitor. After the 19th Party…
DetailsAcademics in Australia might reflect on the fact that scholarly books critical of the Chinese Communist Party are now shunned by publishers. Scholars who work on China know that continued access to the country requires them to play by Beijing’s rules, which for most means self-censorship – the dirty secret of China studies in Australia.…
DetailsBefore he disappeared from his luxury apartment at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong on Jan. 27, 2017, Xiao Jianhua, a Chinese-Canadian billionaire, favored female bodyguards. Why, exactly, was unclear: Perhaps he simply liked being surrounded by women; perhaps he trusted them more than men. Whatever the reason, those guards weren’t much help when…
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