Xinjiang Year Zero

Since 2017, the Chinese authorities have detained hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities in 'reeducation camps' in China's northwestern Xinjiang autonomous region. While the official reason for this mass detention was to prevent terrorism, the campaign has since become a wholesale attempt to remould the ways of life of these peoples—an experiment in social engineering aimed at erasing their cultures and traditions in order to transform them into 'civilised' citizens as construed by the Chinese state. Through a collection of essays penned by scholars who have conducted extensive research in the region, this volume sets itself three goals: first, to document the reality of the emerging surveillance state and coercive assimilation unfolding in Xinjiang in recent years and continuing today; second, to describe the workings and analyse the causes of these policies, highlighting how these developments insert themselves not only in domestic Chinese trends, but also in broader global dynamics; and, third, to propose action, to heed the progressive Left's call since Marx to change the world and not just analyse it. Since 2017, the Chinese authorities have detained hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities in ‘reeducation camps’ in China’s northwestern Xinjiang autonomous region. While the official reason for this mass detention was to prevent terrorism, the campaign has since become a wholesale attempt to remould the ways of life of these peoples—an experiment in social engineering aimed at erasing their cultures and traditions in order to transform them into ‘civilised’ citizens as construed by the Chinese state. Through a collection of essays penned by scholars who have conducted extensive research in the region, this volume sets itself three goals: first, to document the reality of the emerging surveillance state and coercive assimilation unfolding in Xinjiang in recent years and continuing today; second, to describe the workings and analyse the causes of these policies, highlighting how these developments insert themselves not only in domestic Chinese trends, but also in broader global dynamics; and, third, to propose action, to heed the progressive Left’s call since Marx to change the world and not just analyse it. Contents 7 Abbreviations 10 Figure, map, and plates 11 Tables 13 Preface 15 Xinjiang year zero: An introduction 21 Part I: Discursive roots 31 1. Nation-building as epistemic violence 33 2. Revolution and state formation as oasis storytelling in Xinjiang 45 3. Blood lineage 55 4. Good and bad Muslims in Xinjiang 65 5. Imprisoning the open air: Preventive policing as community detention in northwestern China 79 Part II: Settler colonialism 89 6. Oil and water 91 7. Recruiting loyal stabilisers: On the banality of carceral colonialism in Xinjiang 109 8. Triple dispossession in northwestern China 119 9. Replace and rebuild: Chinese colonial housing in Uyghur communities 131 10. The spatial cleansing of Xinjiang: Mazar desecration in context 141 11. Camp land: Settler ecotourism and Kazakh removal in contemporary Xinjiang 159 12. Factories of Turkic Muslim internment 177 Part III: Global connections 187 13. The global age of the algorithm: Social credit, Xinjiang, and the financialisation of governance 189 14. Surveillance, data police, and digital enclosure in Xinjiang’s ‘Safe Cities’ 197 15. Transnational carceral capitalism and private paramilitaries in Xinjiang and beyond 219 16. Chinese feminism, Tibet, and Xinjiang 225 17. China: Xinjiang :: India: Kashmir 233 Conclusion 245 Appendix: Xinjiang timeline 249 Author biographies 267 Bibliography 271 Uyghurs,Kazakhs,Muslims,China,reeducation camps,surveillance state,coercive assimilation