The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the site of the largest mass repression of an ethnic and/or religious minority in the world today. Researchers estimate that since 2016 one million people have been detained there without trial. In the detention centres individuals are exposed to deeply invasive forms of surveillance and psychological stress, while outside them more than ten million Turkic Muslim minorities are subjected to a network of hi-tech surveillance systems, checkpoints and interpersonal monitoring. Existing reportage and commentary on the crisis tend to address these issues in isolation, but this ground-breaking volume brings them together, exploring the interconnections between the core strands of the Xinjiang emergency in order to generate a more accurate understanding of the mass detentions' significance for the future of President Xi Jinping's China.

Reviews

'An ambitious, in-depth analysis of the mind of Beijing as it hounds its Turkic peoples through a staggering range of unprovoked assaults on their ancient culture, language, traditions and religion. Despite its obvious academic appeal, reams of footnotes and painstaking scholarship, this anthology is also a compilation that makes essential reading for avid China watchers eager to make sense of the Uyghur crisis.'
Bitter Winter

'A powerful, but anguishing read even for more specialised readers!'
Michael Sheringham, Asian Affairs 54.2

1 Framing the Xinjiang emergency: colonialism and settler colonialism as pathways to cultural genocide?- Michael Clarke
Part I: Context
2 Echoes from the past: repression in the Uyghur region now and then - Sandrine Catris
3 The Kashgar Dangerous House Reform Program: social engineering, 'a rebirth of the nation' and a significant building block in China's creeping genocide - Anna Hayes
4 Settler colonialism in the name of counterterrorism: of 'savages' and 'terrorists' - Sean R. Roberts
Part II: Discourses and practices of repression
5 Pathology, inducement and mass incarcerations of Xinjiang's 'targeted population' - Timothy A. Grose and James Leibold
6 Two-faced: Turkic Muslim camp workers, subjection and active witnessing - Darren Byler
7Corrective 're-education' as (cultural) genocide: a content analysis of the Uyghur primary school textbook Til-Ädäbiyat (2018, rev. 1st ed) - Dilmurat Mahmut and Joanne Smith Finley
8 Predatory biopolitics: organ harvesting and other means of monetizing Uyghur 'surplus' - Matthew P. Robertson
Part III: Domestic and international implications
9 'Round the clock, three dimensional control': the evolution and implications of the 'Xinjiang mode' of counterterrorism - Michael Clarke
10 The effect of Xinjiang's virtual lockdown on the Uyghur diaspora - Ablimit Baki Elterish
11 'Window of opportunity': the Xinjiang emergency in China's 'new type of international relations' - David Tobin
Index

Editor

Michael Clarke is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Defence Research, Australian Defence College and a Visiting Fellow at the Australia-China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney