“Orwellian” is a much-abused word; but in the case of Xinjiang, in China, its use is entirely apposite. Authorities’ grip on the resource-rich, violence-stricken north-western region – and most of all on the lives of its Uighur Muslims – grows tighter by the day. Orwell would recognise the relentlessness of surveillance, the innovative means employed, and the linguistic distortions that underline rather than disguise the exercise of power.
“The happiest Muslims in the world live in Xinjiang,” a propaganda official there claimed this year. Beijing points to high investment in the region and, for example, extra points for Uighur students in college entrance exams. But a series of recent reports have unveiled a digital police state. Technological advances such as facial recognition software and biometric data collection are married to a vast and expanding security apparatus, a bureaucracy that inserts itself into all parts of life, and traditional hard power: shows of force by heavily armed police.
Officials have collected DNA from millions of residents this year under what they describe as a free Physicals for All healthcare programme. It follows a regional security directive urging the collection of “three-dimensional portraits, voiceprints, DNA and fingerprints”. At checkpoints, armed police use handheld devices to check smartphones for banned apps. At petrol stations, machines scan drivers’ identity cards and faces. One prefecture requires each car to have a GPS tracking device. At knife shops, machines etch the identity details of the buyer on to each blade. Official forms ask householders about their prayer habits.
The tightening of controls was triggered by deadly violence: ethnic riots in Urumqi in 2009, which killed almost 200 people, mostly Han Chinese, and knife, bomb and vehicle attacks, some outside Xinjiang. Authorities blame terrorist separatists for all problems. But rights groups, exiles and analysts say that many more in the Turkic-speaking Uighur community are frustrated by economic inequality, discrimination and tight restrictions on cultural and religious expression or criticism of authorities, all of which officials conflate with separatism and violent extremism.
Beijing insists that people enjoy “unparalleled” religious freedom. Regional and local rules and policies include banning “abnormally” long beards; outlawing baby names seen as excessively religious; prohibiting government workers from fasting, and forcing restaurants to open during Ramadan. Thousands of residents – mostly Uighurs – have spent months in “political education centres” where they are drilled in Communist party doctrine and patriotism. More draconian still is the interrogation and detention of the relatives of exiles. Some measures may indeed have prevented attacks. But they are also breeding anger and, analysts fear, radicalisation. Uighurs recently described being driven to fight in Syria by anger at Beijing rather than Islamist fervour.
The region is unique in China in the level of repression. But it has become a laboratory for measures then used elsewhere. And as Chinese global ambitions grow, these techniques are likely to be exported: Beijing knows that parts of its vast One Belt, One Road infrastructure scheme will be vulnerable to militant attacks. What happens in Xinjiang is unlikely to stay in Xinjiang.
