Unwind in a concentration camp: China aims to turn the Uyghur Autonomous Region into a “tourist paradise”

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In recent years, China’s repression of its Uyghur minority has garnered serious attention. Beijing’s transport and infrastructure megaproject, the Belt and Road, passes through the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and it has brought the wider world into greater contact with the area. But tensions there are nothing new. Since the late 1980s, following the Ghulja massacre, Xinjiang has been a center of inter-ethnic conflict and a breeding ground for the radicalization of Chinese Muslims, who became disillusioned with legal and peaceful political struggles. Terrorist attacks in the region persisted until the end of 2016, when state repression intensified to unprecedented levels. It was then that hundreds of thousands of people were imprisoned or sent to “re-education camps.” These camps drew widespread criticism from global human rights activists, prompting the Chinese authorities to attempt to improve the region's negative image.

“Genocidal tourism”

Years of intense suppression have taken their toll on Xinjiang: many mosques, cemeteries, and cultural sites have been destroyed or “de-Islamized,” with religious symbols removed and the buildings repurposed. Numerous place names with historical, religious, or cultural significance to the local population are being replaced with names that reflect the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In schools, lessons are now conducted exclusively in the official state language — Putonghua, the standard form of Mandarin Chinese — a practice that was solidified in early 2021 when the National People's Congress back in Beijing declared the use of minority languages in schools unconstitutional. Uyghurs living abroad have either completely lost contact with their relatives or can only communicate through the government-controlled WeChat platform.

These measures were only possible to implement with the use of widespread repression. Human Rights Watch researchers, analyzing data from the Xinjiang prosecutor's office, found that between 2017 and 2021, nearly 10% of the region's population — 540,826 people — were prosecuted, with most of them still in detention.

“Under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee and the dedicated care of the party and central government, Xinjiang has become a land of life, a land of flourishing vitality!” proclaims a propaganda video — “Xinjiang is a Wonderful Land” — that was released three years ago by the Chinese consulate in the UK.

In the past couple of years, however, the region has indeed seen a shift towards “liberalization,” as the authoritarian former governor Chen Quanguo was replaced by Ma Xingrui, a scholar and technocrat from the more liberal Guangdong province. Additionally, Beijing is investing heavily in the development of tourism in the region.

According to official data, from 2021 to 2022 the Xinjiang Department of Culture and Tourism increased its budget by over 90%. In 2023, the department planned to spend 701 million yuan, more than double its 2019 budget. Researchers call this the CPC's new approach to the “Uyghur question” — after suppressing the rebellious, the authorities in Beijing are now trying to win over those who remain outside the camps.

Andrei (name changed for security reasons), a cultural scientist from Kazakhstan, visited Xinjiang in both 2019 and 2023. He describes the “culturalization” of the region as follows:

“During my first visit, Xinjiang felt like a series of cities divided into sectors. Everywhere you looked, there were police — literally at every intersection, creating an atmosphere like an artificially constructed panopticon. You were constantly surrounded by slow-moving police cars, sometimes even armored vehicles, and countless metal fences. If you were driving, they would stop you, check your trunk, and inspect the passengers in your car.

In all public places, at the entrance there were document and face scanners. In ordinary shops, restaurants, and pharmacies, metal detector frames were installed, and security guards were on duty. Even at the entrance to some residential quarters, you could see the same metal detectors. At the entrance to any city, there was a checkpoint — on the slightest suspicion, the police could not let you out of one city or not let you into another.

But already in 2023, this entire huge system of surveillance and control seemed to have evaporated. There were not so many checkpoints, not so many face scanners in parks in plain sight, not so many inspection points... Of course, armored vehicles were still cruising around the capital, and young guys were stopped by police checking their phones, but there was no longer a feeling of North Korea.

Uyghur traders in the central bazaars were briskly selling juices, fruits, and sweets. Chinese tourists were pricing their goods as if nothing were out of the ordinary. I was even able to visit the much less touristy city of Yarkand — on my previous visit I wasn't even allowed out of the railway station there. However, in Yarkand, some plainclothes person followed me literally on my heels, although he did not prevent me from visiting museums and mausoleums.”

Andrei attributes the changes in Xinjiang to the new leadership, to Western pressure, and to the region's push to develop tourism:

“You can't create the image of a prosperous region with endless checkpoints and inspections everywhere, especially since these constant checks were also imposed on Han [ethnic Chinese] tourists. If they were only for Uyghurs, it would have been outright apartheid, so they had to touch up the image.

China is now 'carnivalizing' the culture of its minority groups. This isn't just happening to the Uyghurs — it's happening across the country. The rich cultural heritage of these groups is being reduced to performances of dances and songs for tourists.

A striking example: in the summer of 2022, there was a performance in the XUAR capital titled 'Take Off Your Hijab: Xinjiang is a Beautiful Place.' Can you imagine the level of cynicism? First, they imprison hundreds of thousands of people for their faith, and then they declare that Xinjiang is a beautiful place.”

Zuhra (name changed for security reasons), an Uzbek woman who has been living in Belgium with her Belgian husband for several years, paints a similar picture. After moving to Europe, she met Uyghurs who were very different from the destitute refugees she had known in her native Tashkent. In the spring of 2024, Zuhra decided to visit Xinjiang. She chose to keep wearing her hijab, fully aware that it would draw increased attention:

“On my first day in Urumqi, I took a taxi to the railway station. The driver asked about my nationality, and we had a long conversation. He said, 'I'd like to add you on WeChat, but my family and I are on a list, so my WeChat is monitored.' He was referring to some kind of 'unreliable Uyghurs' list. He also mentioned needing police permission to leave Urumqi, as he was originally from Kashgar.

Whenever I told people in cafes or shops that I was a foreigner from Belgium, they immediately stopped talking to me.

…A Uyghur policeman accused me of searching for my relatives, which he said would put them in danger, because any active communication with people abroad by those in Xinjiang immediately puts you in the 'unreliable' category.

In the old town of Kashgar, I took a photo of a house with a sign that read “tinch-aman aile” in Uyghur and 平安家庭 in Chinese, meaning 'model family.' This indicates that the family is loyal to the CCP. Such signs are used throughout China to designate households that lead a 'socially approved' lifestyle — clean, free of domestic violence, and so on — but in the context of mass repression in Xinjiang, such a sign may carry additional political connotations.”

Ethnic cleansing persists in different forms

In 2018, Human Rights Watch released a major report, titled “Eradicating Ideological Viruses,” all about the repression of Muslims in China. Although repression against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang wasn’t exactly new, Human Rights Watch noted that there was a sharp escalation of terror that began towards the end of 2016. This escalation began when the aforementioned Chen Quanguo was transferred to Xinjiang from Tibet, a region notorious for its forced assimilation policies. In 2017, Tibet ranked just above last place Syria in Freedom House’s annual “freedom in the world” index.

Chen Quanguo introduced a policy under which locals were detained under the pretext of fighting the “three evil forces”: terrorism, extremism, and separatism. For any suspicion of “dissent,” Xinjiang residents were taken into custody and, without trial, sent to so-called re-education camps. Some were simply beaten in them, some were raped, some were sterilized — and all were subjected to a process of forced assimilation. In Beijing, this was called “fighting extremism” and “Sinicization of Islam.” The camps were called “vocational training centers.”

Starting from 2019, many “re-education camps” were gradually closed. Most prisoners were released or transferred to “softer” forms of punishment, such as forced employment or strict public supervision. A more pressing problem of current Xinjiang involves the roughly half a million people still imprisoned in a kind of Chinese GULAG. Yevgeny Bunin, the creator of Shahit.biz, a database containing the names of around 80,000 victims of Xinjiang prisons and camps, explains that:

“People detained in 2017 and 2018 under the regular judicial system (not under the “re-education camps”) and sentenced to long prison terms continue to serve their sentences. There is no information about pardons or early release of any of them.”

Among the most shocking abuses of the camp system, women were imprisoned for having studied the Quran 50 or 60 years ago. Additionally, editors of state-approved textbooks, which were used in all schools across the XUAR, were sentenced to long prison terms, including life sentences, for their work.

Like father, like son

In Xinjiang, it is common practice to imprison entire families. Abduweli (far right), is a well-known linguist and scholar now living in Norway after fleeing repression. Speaking before the Independent Tribunal on Forced Organ Harvesting in China, he recounted how he was targeted for his language activism in Xinjiang. Abduweli was repeatedly detained, beaten, kicked, raped, chained to a “tiger chair,” and subjected to harsh interrogations.

In May 2021, after fleeing to Norway, Abduweli received a letter from the Beijing authorities informing him that the imprisonment of his sister (to the left of Abduweli) and brothers, along with the death of his niece, were revenge for his human rights activities in emigration.

Abduweli's sister, Sajide Ayup, a geography teacher, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for “two-facedness” (a term used for public servants who are seen as “nationally or religiously oriented”), “extremism,” and “terrorism.” This sentence came despite her having publicly condemned her own brother's activities in 2016.

Sajide's husband was not detained, but their children are separated from their parents. Seventeen-year-old Seyide is studying in Zhejiang, a province in eastern China, while eleven-year-old Arafat is in a boarding school in Guangzhou, in southern China near Hong Kong.

Abduweli's brother, Erkin Ayup, was held under investigation for nearly three years before being sentenced to 14 years in prison. His daughter, Mihray Erkin — Abduweli's niece — died in an internment camp in late 2020. Mihray, a plant biotechnology graduate from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Tokyo, was a researcher at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. She was compelled to return to Xinjiang in August 2019 after her parents were threatened by the authorities, a common practice in China.

Abduweli's cousin, Geyret Eysa, and his eldest son, Turkizat, are also in prison, though the reasons for their detention are unclear. There is no information available about Geyret's younger son, Kamal.

Abduweli's wife’s brothers, Nurmemet and Eysajan, are imprisoned on various “terrorism” charges, and there has been no news for some time about her brother Memeteli. Her cousins — Ablikim, Abduhelil, Adil, and Rozikari — have served or are still serving time. Rozikari's younger son, Abdunebi Rozi, was reportedly sent to another city for forced cotton picking while he was still in school.

In October 2020, Abdunebi and another boy died in a fire that swept through the dormitory where they were sleeping. Government officials secretly buried his body. In total, about 15 members of linguist Abduweli Ayup’s family have been directly affected by the repressions, with around 30 more affected indirectly.

As Human Rights Watch notes, “Perhaps the most innovative — and disturbing — of the repressive measures in Xinjiang is the government’s use of high-tech mass surveillance systems. Xinjiang authorities conduct compulsory mass collection of biometric data, such as voice samples and DNA, and use artificial intelligence and big data to identify, profile, and track everyone in Xinjiang. The authorities have envisioned these systems as a series of “filters,” picking out people with certain behavior or characteristics that they believe indicate a threat to the Communist Party’s rule in Xinjiang.”

Researchers refer to this as “totalitarianism 3.0” — a state of control in which new technologies enable a level of power that renders 20th-century methods of ethnic cleansing “inefficient” by comparison. Instead of completely destroying the indigenous population of an unstable region, it is now considered more effective to carry out “re-education.” This involves imprisoning the most fervent and committed individuals while subjecting the rest to ideological conditioning. The actions of the authorities in the Xinjiang region have been labeled as genocide by the U.S. government, as well as by the parliaments of Australia, Canada, France, and the UK.

Tourist facade

Researchers point out that, until recently, Xinjiang's cultural and religious history meant its population was more culturally aligned with Bukhara, Almaty, and even Baghdad than it was with Beijing. Kazakhstan, which hosts the largest Uyghur diaspora in the world — over 200,000 people — illustrates how the ongoing repression in Xinjiang echoes through the Uyghur communities of post-Soviet Central Asia.

Dilshat (name changed for security reasons), a student in Almaty, is one of the few Uyghurs willing to share his story — even anonymously — due to the intense fear of both Kazakh and Chinese authorities among Central Asian Uyghurs.

He notes that in recent years, information from East Turkestan has become scarce. Previously, investigations by journalists and activists served as the main sources of news, but these have diminished. After China reopened its borders with Kazakhstan, Dilshat’s aunt traveled to visit relatives in Xinjiang. She reported that nearly all young people — a demographic that, for safety reasons, rarely attends mosques — had endured some level of “re-education” at the camps. The presence of surveillance is felt even in everyday life — people only sit down to eat after leaving their mobile devices in another room. Despite such precautions, discussing politics or criticizing the authorities still remains highly risky, and is rarely done.

“Now you can visit Xinjiang from Kazakhstan not just as an 'independent traveler,” says Karim (name changed for security reasons), a young Uyghur from Almaty and a friend of Dilshat. “I’ve seen several ads for ‘Almaty — Xinjiang’ tours that are relatively affordable. You travel in a group, possibly with a security officer, and get to explore the 'beautiful ancient culture.'”

Madina, 50, who is half-Kazakh and half-Uyghur, speaks both languages fluently. She decided to visit her relatives in Ghulja, the largest Chinese city near the Kazakh border, in the summer of 2024.

In an interview with The Insider, Madina revealed that she and her sister were the only ones interrogated by border guards, who confiscated their phones for 40 minutes.

In the 10 years since Madina had last visited Ghulja, she said the city has become more “secular”:

“A real Uyghur nightclub has appeared in the city! With a Uyghur DJ, Uyghur rap, and so on. Young people are having fun, drinking whiskey, and smoking hookah. They say there are even Uyghur prostitutes now, whereas before only Chinese women worked the streets.”

Some of Madina’s relatives declined to meet with her. She believes the reason is fear that they would be accused of communicating with foreigners. When Madina asked about what had been happening in the region over the past five or six years, the locals were reluctant to respond:

“They give the standard answer that everything is fine. But I did learn something: there were camps, and all my sisters went through them. But they didn’t say anything bad about it. They said it was just an educational camp: you get up in the morning, put on the assigned tracksuits, and start learning. Chinese language, Chinese culture, traditions, everything in Chinese — until evening. They lived like that for about a year and a half to two years without leaving. Mothers were, of course, allowed to see their children.”

The atmosphere of repression makes it very difficult for visitors to understand what locals really think about such treatment. “They’re already tamed — the ones I met,” Madina explained with a shrug. “So they are happy with everything. But how many others are unhappy with it, I don’t actually know.”

In October 2023, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev visited the XUAR. During his meeting with the Xinjiang regional governor, the main focus was not on the rights of ethnic Kazakhs or Uyghurs, but on enhancing tourism and economic ties between Kazakhstan and China. “We will encourage Kazakh tourists to explore your country’s natural beauty and its achievements in socio-economic development,” stated President Tokayev.

In response, China declared 2024 the “Year of Tourism in Kazakhstan,” and in March, the first Kazakhstan Tourism Forum was held in Urumqi, the capital of XUAR. The forum aimed to boost tourist flow between the two countries, with Kazakhstan being the only country enjoying a visa-free arrangement with China.

Xinjiang is vital in this context, serving as a key geographical link between China and Kazakhstan — and, by extension, with the rest of Central Asia. This significance is reflected in its description as the “Shining Pearl of High Quality Joint Construction of the Belt and Road Initiative between China and Kazakhstan,” a title given by Jiang Wei, the Chinese Consul General in Almaty, in his column last year.

Rune Steenberg, a Danish anthropologist fluent in both Uyghur and Chinese, is a leading expert on the “Uyghur issue.” Due to restrictions preventing him from conducting fieldwork in Xinjiang, Rune and his colleagues rely on “Remote Ethnography” — gathering information through interviews with people who have recently left the region, exploring economic connections, cross checking rumors, analyzing Chinese media, and interpreting the nuanced language of Uyghur culture.

Over the past two years, Rune has interviewed around 40 individuals, including Kazakhs who visited relatives, Western journalists, diplomats, and a few tourists. He notes that while there seem to be fewer police and military personnel on the streets of XUAR, residents are now monitored through an administrative system. Each person is assigned a “social worker” who must approve any travel or other significant activities.

Steinberg identifies three major issues: the ongoing illegal imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of residents, the erosion of Uyghur and other minority languages, and the shift from traditional agriculture to forced or semi-voluntary state labor.

“Government propaganda paints Uyghurs as terrorists and suspects, making it extremely difficult for them to find decent work. Many have had their businesses forcibly shut down and taken away, and their freedom of movement has been severely restricted, complicating trade. Much of their land has been confiscated, making farming nearly impossible. As a result, many are compelled to participate in state labor programs because they have no other options. Refusing these programs would also be viewed suspiciously by the Communist Party. Uyghurs who don’t speak Chinese well have even fewer alternatives.”

The researcher views the development of tourism in Xinjiang as a form of “settler colonialism” and social engineering aimed at “Sinicizing” the region. Steinberg believes that tourism is being used as a tool to create a false impression that everything is fine in Xinjiang.

“Beijing wants to give the appearance of benefiting the local population through tourism and other initiatives. However, they are not just encouraging but also forcing people to alter their culture to align with government objectives. This push is toward Chinese ‘modernity’ and a culture more akin to contemporary Han norms, even though the Uyghurs still outwardly preserve some aspects of their local culture and traditions.”