Securitization, surveillance and 'de-extremization' in Xinjiang
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Securitization, surveillance and
‘de-extremization’ in Xinjiang
STEFANIE KAM AND MICHAEL CLARKE *
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Researchers estimate that since 2016 over 1 million people, mostly ethnic Uyghurs,
have been detained in a system of re-education in China’s Xinjiang province, while
the state controls and manages the rest of the mainly Turkic Muslim population
through a series of layered and overlapping hi-tech surveillance systems, check-
points, ‘convenience police stations’ and a multi-tiered police system comprising
formal and informal police forces.1 The objective, as Deputy Secretary of Xinjiang
Zhu Hailun remarked in 2017, is to ‘weave a dense social prevention and control
network’ to ensure ‘no cracks, no blind spots, no gaps’ and to win the ‘People’s
War’ of ‘anti-terrorism and stability maintenance’.2 The Chinese state justifies its
policies in Xinjiang as a form of counterterrorism and ‘de-extremization’, aimed
at preventing Uyghurs from becoming radicalized, and educating and rescuing
Uyghurs who have been radicalized by Islamist extremist ideologies.3
Previous explanations of the counterterrorism strategy followed by the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) have dwelt on the results of China’s securitization and
repression in Xinjiang,4 the historical antecedents and institutional foundations
of its counterterrorism policies,5 and on the sources of China’s counterterrorism
* The authors would like to thank Pascal Vennesson, Li Mingjiang and the two anonymous reviewers for their
helpful comments.
1
Nathan Ruser, Exploring Xinjiang’s detention system, research report (Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Insti-
tute, 24 Sept. 2020), https://xjdp.aspi.org.au/resources/documenting-xinjiangs-detention-system/; Adrian
Zenz and James Leibold, ‘Securitizing Xinjiang: police recruitment, informal policing and ethnic minority
co-optation’, China Quarterly, vol. 242, 2019, pp. 1–25. (Unless otherwise noted at point of citation, all URLs
cited in this article were accessible on 27 Feb. 2021.)
2
‘Chen quanguo jiu zuo hao dangqian xinjiang wendìng gongzuo zuochu pishi zhu qi fankong weiwen de
tongqiangtiebi quebao quan jiang shehui daju hexie wending’ [Chen Quanguo gave instructions on doing the
current stability work in Xinjiang: build a copper wall and iron wall to fight terrorism and maintain stability
to ensure the overall harmony and stability of Xinjiang], People’s Daily, 19 Aug. 2017, http://xj.people.com.
cn/n2/2017/0819/c186332-30628706.html.
3
State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, ‘Full text: vocational education and train-
ing in Xinjiang’, Xinhua, 16 Aug. 2019, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-08/16/c_138313359.htm.
4
David Tobin, ‘A “struggle of life or death”: Han and Uighur insecurities on China’s north-west frontier’,
China Quarterly, vol. 242, 2019, pp. 301–23; Joshua Tschantret, ‘Repression, opportunity, and innovation: the
evolution of terrorism in Xinjiang, China’, Terrorism and Political Violence 30: 4, 2018, pp. 569–88.
5
Marie Trédaniel and Pak K. Lee, ‘Explaining the Chinese framing of the “terrorist” violence in Xinjiang:
insights from securitization theory’, Nationalities Papers 46: 1, 2018, pp. 177–95; Martin Wayne, ‘Inside China’s
war on terrorism’, Journal of Contemporary China 18: 9, 2009, pp. 249–61; Liselotte Odgaard and Thomas Galasz
Nielsen, ‘China’s counterinsurgency strategy in Tibet and Xinjiang’, Journal of Contemporary China 23: 87, 2014,
pp. 535–55.
International Affairs 97: 3 (2021) 625–642; doi: 10.1093/ia/iiab038
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of International Affairs. All rights
reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
INTA97_3_FullIssue.indb 625 29/04/2021 09:19Stefanie Kam and Michael Clarke
strategy.6 While acknowledging the importance of all these factors, this article
draws attention to a feature of state power largely neglected in studies of China’s
counterterrorism strategy: the Chinese party-state’s social engineering of Xinjiang.
Specifically, the article focuses on the central engine of China’s counter
terrorism strategy in Xinjiang: the intersection of securitization, surveillance and
‘re-education’. It draws on interviews conducted between June and December
2019, and on both western and Chinese sources. We argue that the post-9/11 global
expansion of a surveillance-industrial complex, the Chinese party-state’s embrace
of modern technologies, a weak liberal tradition in China, Xi Jinping’s rise to
power in late 2012 and the appointment of Chen Quanguo as Xinjiang’s party
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secretary in 2016 together provide the socio-political background for the intensi-
fication of securitization and surveillance, and the introduction of ‘re-education
and training centres’, in Xinjiang.
The article is organized as follows. First, we provide an overview of the Chinese
party-state’s reliance on the integration of modern, technologically driven securiti-
zation and surveillance to strengthen its top-down social engineering and thereby
to promote the rule of the CCP and ensure the party’s leading role in society.
Surveillance technologies, in this respect, reflect the embrace by the core leader-
ship under Xi Jinping of a form of what Jeffrey Herf refers to as ‘reactionary
modernism’, characterized by the twinning of modern technologies and a rejec-
tion of liberal values.7 In Xinjiang, this is reflected in the central government’s
integration of surveillance with Maoist-era practices such as the mass line and the
‘friend vs enemy’ binary. The heterogenous combination of seemingly new and
old technologies of power serves to enhance the legibility of society by making
the governed territory or population more visible and amenable to centralized
control. The mass line (qunzhong luxian) emerged as a policy technique and political
discourse in the movement to suppress counterrevolutionaries during the Maoist
era. Mao Zedong had stressed that, in order for the mass line to succeed, ‘public
security committees must be organized among the masses everywhere ... in every
township in the countryside and in every department and organization, school,
factory and neighborhood in the cities.’8 In principle, the mass line was a way
to ensure the party remained close and responsive to the masses’ concerns, and
to encourage the masses to work with the authorities in governing society more
effectively. In practice, however, the mass line serves as a mechanism for the party
6
James Leibold, ‘Hu the uniter and the radical turn in China’s Xinjiang policy’, Jamestown Foundation China
Brief 18: 6, 2018, https://jamestown.org/program/hu-the-uniter-hu-lianhe-and-the-radical-turn-in-chinas-
xinjiang-policy/; Adrian Zenz and James Leibold, ‘Chen Quanguo: the strongman behind Beijing’s secu-
ritization strategy in Tibet and Xinjiang’, Jamestown Foundation China Brief 17: 12, 2017, https://jamestown.
org/program/chen-quanguo-the-strongman-behind-beijings-securitization-strategy-in-tibet-and-xinjiang/;
James Leibold, ‘The spectre of insecurity: the CCP’s mass internment strategy in Xinjiang’, China Leadership
Monitor, no. 59, 1 March 2019, https://www.prcleader.org/leibold; Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Myunghee
Lee and Emir Yazici, ‘Counterterrorism and preventive repression: China’s changing strategy in Xinjiang’,
International Security 44: 3, 2020, pp. 9–47.
7
Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary modernism: technology, culture, and politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986).
8
Mao Zedong, ‘The party’s mass line must be followed in suppressing counter-revolutionaries’, in Selected works
of Mao Tse-Tung (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1965).
626
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to guide the consciousness of the people so that they embrace these policies and
decisions ‘as their own’. This has led to a situation whereby the mass line is used
to entrench the masses more firmly under the grip of the Chinese party-state and
to guide them in support of the CCP’s core economic and political objectives.9
The following section explains how Xi Jinping’s rise to power in late 2012 has
resulted in the effort to govern Xinjiang under ‘new circumstances’ and the focus
on ‘ethnic unity’ and ‘de-extremization’, in parallel with the centralization of
state institutions and the dominance of security officials in decision-making in
Xinjiang. The next section examines the establishment of ‘convenience police
stations’ under the system of ‘grid-management’ surveillance, and the legaliza-
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tion and institutionalization of the re-education centres in Xinjiang under Chen
Quanguo as Xinjiang’s party secretary. Under this system, surveillance technolo-
gies now complement collective, face-to-face methods of surveillance and Maoist-
era techniques of mass mobilization. The result is increased capacity by the
Chinese party-state to govern and manage the religious and cultural expressions
of Uyghurs with greater intensity. The ‘re-education’ centres reflect a shift away
from the state’s reliance on mass propaganda towards the targeted ideological and
political re-education of Uyghurs by a ‘drip-irrigation’ mechanism.
Governing Xinjiang
As a rising power, China has embraced technology to strengthen the CCP’s rule
and promote a form of resilient authoritarianism.10 While in western contexts
legislative oversight and civil society have served to curb the unlimited expan-
sion of the surveillance-industrial complex, no such barriers have constrained the
Chinese state.11 Here, surveillance technologies have enabled the central govern-
ment to ascribe fixed boundaries for permitted religious and cultural expression,
and introduce mechanisms for monitoring, controlling and regulating such
expression.12
The modern, technologically focused aspects of its governing strategies cannot
be viewed as entirely exogenous to the Chinese communist system, borrowed
from western contexts, nor as endogenous to the western liberal context.13 The
9
Stuart R. Schram, ‘Mao Tse-tung’s thought from 1949 to 1976’, in Roderick McFarquhar and John K. Fair-
bank, eds, The Cambridge history of China, vol. 15, Part 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp.
3–6; Patricia M. Thornton, ‘Retrofitting the steel frame: from mobilizing the masses to surveying the public’,
in Sebastian Heilmann and Elizabeth J. Perry, eds, Mao’s invisible hand: the political foundations of adaptive govern-
ance in China (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2011); Timothy Heath, ‘Xi’s mass line campaign:
realigning party politics to new realities’, Jamestown China Brief 13: 16, 9 Aug. 2013, https://jamestown.org/
program/xis-mass-line-campaign-realigning-party-politics-to-new-realities/.
10
Jinghan Zeng, ‘Artificial intelligence and China’s authoritarian governance’, International Affairs 96: 6, 2020, pp.
1441–59; Andrew Nathan, ‘Authoritarian resilience’, Journal of Democracy 14: 1, 2003, pp. 6–17; Bruce Gilley,
‘The limits of authoritarian resilience’, Journal of Democracy 14: 1, 2003, pp. 18–26; Marlies Glasius, ‘What
authoritarianism is ... and is not: a practice perspective’, International Affairs 94: 3, 2018, pp. 515–34.
11
Ben Hayes, ‘The surveillance-industrial complex’, in Kirstie Ball, Kevin Haggerty and David Lyon, eds, Rout-
ledge handbook of surveillance studies (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), pp. 167–75.
12
James Leibold and Emile Dirks, ‘Genomic surveillance: inside China’s DNA dragnet’, Strategist (Canberra:
Australian Studies Policy Institute, 17 June 2020), https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/genomic-surveillance-
inside-chinas-dna-dragnet/.
13
Kendall Bailes, Technology and society under Lenin and Stalin: origins of the Soviet technical intelligentsia (Princeton:
627
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INTA97_3_FullIssue.indb 627 29/04/2021 09:19Stefanie Kam and Michael Clarke
adaptation and creation of digital technologies here should be seen as devoted to
buttressing the regime’s stability and legitimacy.14 China’s principles of socialist
governance, especially during the Maoist period, claimed that through the science
of Marxism-Leninism it was possible to know ‘truth’ and predict the precise
outcome of any intervention.15 The CCP’s embrace of a technological–industrial
complex to govern society can be seen as an effort to adapt and create modern
technology to support traditional socialist values.16 The creation of the social
credit system in 2014 reflects this continuing effort.17 As stated in the social credit
system planning document, its aim is to ‘cultivate good habits of honesty and
trustworthiness ... to establish a culture of integrity and promote the internali-
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zation of integrity as a traditional value ... to use incentives for trustworthiness
and restraints on untrustworthiness as mechanisms for reward and punish-
ment. The purpose is to improve society’s trustworthiness and credit levels.’18
In Xinjiang, a region where violence is viewed by the central government as a
result of the poverty and exclusion of ethnic minorities, economic development
and securitization projects represent the Chinese party-state’s attempts to ‘fix’ and
regulate the province’s contested and sensitive spaces. As James C. Scott reminds
us, the ‘utopian, immanent, and continually frustrated goal of the modern state’
has been ‘to reduce the chaotic, disorderly, constantly changing social reality
beneath it to something more closely resembling the administrative grid of its
observations’.19 As exerting effective political control over its vast territory poses
a constant challenge for the central government, the legibility of Xinjiang, which
provides the capacity for social engineering, is particularly salient from the Chinese
government’s perspective.20 A central theme of legibility, according to Scott, is the
‘attempt to make society legible, to arrange the population in ways that simplified
the classic state functions of taxation, conscription, and prevention of rebellion’.
Such practices of simplification entail the taking of ‘exceptionally complex, illeg-
ible, and local social practices, such as land tenure customs or naming customs, and
[creating] a standard grid whereby it could be centrally recorded and monitored’.21
Examination of the underpinnings of Beijing’s social engineering of Xinjiang
Princeton University Press, 1978); Martin J. Wiener, English culture and the decline of the industrial spirit, 1850–1980
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
14
Samantha Hoffman, Programming China: the Communist Party’s autonomic approach to managing state security, PhD
diss., University of Nottingham, 2017.
15
Elaine Jeffreys and Gary Sigley, ‘Governmentality, governance and China’, in E. Jeffreys, ed., China’s govern-
mentalities: governing change, changing government (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 7.
16
Alex Goik, ‘“Constructing a culture of honesty and integrity”: the evolution of China’s Han-centric surveil-
lance system’, IEEE Technology and Society Magazine 38: 4, 2019, pp. 75–81.
17
State Council Information Office of the PRC, ‘Guowuyuan guanyu yinfa shehui xinyong tixi jianshe
guihua gangyao 2014–2020 de tongzhi’ [Notice of the State Council on issuing the planning outline for
the construction of the Social Credit System 2014–2020] (Beijing, 14 June 2014), http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/
content/2014-06/27/content_8913.htm.
18
State Council Information Office of the PRC, ‘Guowuyuan guanyu yinfa shehui xinyong tixi jianshe guihua
gangyao 2014-2020 de tongzhi’.
19
James C. Scott, Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1998), p. 82.
20
David O’Brien, ‘The mountains are high and the emperor is far away: an examination of the ethnic violence
in Xinjiang’, International Journal of China Studies 2: 2, 2011, pp. 389–405; J. H. Chung, Centrifugal empire:
central–local relations in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).
21
Scott, Seeing like a state, p. 2.
628
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society in the context of its counterterrorism and ‘de-extremization’, and the mass
internment of Uyghurs, reveals the orientation, effectiveness, contradictions and
consequences of the CCP’s statecraft in recent years.
Enabled by the absence of checks and balances, technology has granted the CCP
the capacity not just to assume a leading role in framing who or what constitutes a
security threat in Xinjiang, but to use surveillance tools to monitor, regulate and
control individuals with greater intensity.22 Chinese security personnel rely on an
intelligence-led policing system known as the ‘integrated joint military operations
platform’ (yi ti hua lianhe zuozhan pingtai) to notify them ‘on activities or circum-
stances deemed suspicious’ and to prompt ‘investigations of people the system
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flags as problematic’.23 Information and personal data collected from detainees’
immediate and extended family, friends and neighbours, and their religious circle,
enable authorities to ascertain whether an individual poses a threat to society.24
As ‘a means to an end’, namely the ‘protection’ and ‘management’ of either the
population at large or specific segments thereof, surveillance technologies permit
the party-state to undertake ‘social sorting’—the ‘identification and ordering
of individuals in order to “put them in their place” within local, national and
global “institutional orders”’—and thus to ascribe to those individuals particular
penalties, constraints or sanctions according to their categorization.25 Such social
sorting through surveillance functions not simply to increase the visibility of
this population to the party-state, but also to ‘permit an internal, articulated and
detailed control’ that would ‘make people docile and knowable’ by ‘induc[ing]
in the [population] a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the
automatic functioning of power’.26
This aim has been highlighted in the central government’s legalization and
institutionalization of mass ideological and political ‘thought’ work on Uyghurs.
China’s white paper of 16 August 2019 on ‘vocational education and training in
Xinjiang’ highlighted the thrust of the party-state’s ‘ideational, propagandistic,
and cultural work’ on the Uyghur population.27 The document indicated that the
party-state’s objective is to define and regulate the values, beliefs and loyalties of
the Uyghurs so that they become ‘useful’ subjects for maintaining the regime’s
political security.
The CCP has also relied on Maoist-era governing practices in Xinjiang: specifi-
cally, the practice of identifying and distinguishing social contradictions through
the ‘friend vs enemy’ binary, and the mass line model. Mao Zedong stated that
as contradictions inhere within a socialist society, there was a need to clearly
22
James Leibold, ‘Surveillance in China’s Xinjiang region: ethnic sorting, coercion, and inducement’, Journal of
Contemporary China 29: 121, 2020, p. 46.
23
China’s algorithms of repression (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1 May 2019), https://www.hrw.org/sites/
default/files/report_pdf/china0519_web.pdf.
24
Chen Peng, Qu Ke, Chen Gang and Wang Yong, ‘Fankong beijing xia de geren tezheng shuju goucheng yu
she kong geti de wajue fenxi’ [Personal characteristic data composition in the context of anti-terrorism and
mining analysis of individuals involved in terrorism], Journal of Intelligence, vol. 4, 2018, pp. 38–41.
25
Richard Jenkins, ‘Identity, surveillance and modernity: sorting out who’s who’, in Ball et al., eds, Routledge
handbook of surveillance studies, pp. 160, 162.
26
Michel Foucault, Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison (New York: Vintage, 1995), pp. 172, 201.
27
State Council Information Office of the PRC, ‘Full text: vocational education and training in Xinjiang’.
629
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distinguish ourselves (i.e. friends) from our enemies.28 For Mao, to police the
Chinese revolution, there was a need ‘to patrol that ever shifting thin red line
that separated revolutionary friend from reactionary enemy’.29 Mao relied on the
disciplinary and regulatory tool of the mass campaign and rectification techniques
to coerce, persuade and educate those individuals at the boundary. For Mao, the
mass line was a means by which the party could politically mobilize party cadres
into carrying out the ‘people’s war’ against counter-revolutionaries.30 Since 9/11,
the discourse of the ‘people’s war’ has re-emerged in the strategic discourse of
the war on terror.31 In 2013 Zhang Chunxian, then party secretary in Xinjiang,
called for the party to improve its ability in ‘publicizing, educating, organizing
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and serving the masses’, and to ‘unite all ethnic groups’ in the ‘people’s war on
terror’.32 The participation of the masses is also inscribed in several sections in
China’s 2015 counterterrorism law (articles 5, 8, 9, 44, 48, 51, 74, 78).33 There are
three dimensions of China’s ‘people’s war on terror’: building understanding and
awareness of the dangers of extremism and terrorism through mass ‘deradicali-
zation’ propaganda; counteracting extremism and terrorism through grassroots
‘deradicalization’ activities; and providing reward mechanisms to incentivize
tip-offs about extremism and terrorism.34
Xinjiang in the Xi Jinping era
Since coming to power, President Xi has emphasized the need for governing
Xinjiang under ‘new circumstances’ (xin xing shi xia xinjiang gongzuo).35 Xi has
stressed ‘ethnic unity’ and ‘de-extremization’ as two key strands of governing
Xinjiang in the pursuit of ‘social stability’ and ‘enduring peace’ (chang zhi jiu an).36
The shift in policy emphasis from economic development, which was highlighted
at the first Central Xinjiang Work Forum (XJWFI) held on 17–19 May 2010, to
security and stability at the second Central Xinjiang Work Forum (XJWFII)
28
Mao Zedong, ‘On the correct handling of contradictions among the people’, in Selected works of Mao Tse-Tung.
29
Michael Dutton, Policing Chinese politics: a history (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), p. 4.
30
Mao Zedong, ‘The party’s mass line must be followed in suppressing counter-revolutionaries’, in Selected works
of Mao Tse-Tung.
31
‘Zhang Chunxian: dailing qunzhong da yi chang fankong weiwen de renmin zhanzheng’ [Zhang Chunxian:
leading the masses to fight a people’s war against terrorism and maintaining stability], People’s Daily, 18 July
2013, http://politics.people.com.cn/n/2013/0718/c1001-22238301.html.
32
‘Zhang Chunxian’.
33
‘Zhonghua renmin gongheguo fan kongbu zhuyi fa’ [Anti-Terrorism Law of the People’s Republic of China],
Xinhua, 27 Dec. 2015, http://www.xinhuanet.com//politics/2015-12/27/c_128571798.htm.
34
‘Xinjiang gao yuan tanqin ganjing kaizhan “qu jiduan hua” xuanjiang huodong’ [Xinjiang High Court visits
relatives and police officers to carry out ‘de-radicalization’ propaganda activity], Sina, 25 Aug. 2017, https://
sifa.sina.cn/2017-08-25/detail-ifykiuaz0709279.d.html?from=wap; ‘Zhangchunxian: Yong fazhi yueshu,
wenhua duichong de fangfa “qu jiduan hua”’[Zhang Chunxian: legal restraint and cultural methods of
‘deradicalization’], People’s Daily, 16 Feb. 2015, http://politics.people.com.cn/n/2015/0216/c70731-26575784.
html; ‘Xinjiang zhongjiang 6 ming jubao bao kong zhongda xiansuo qunzhong jiangjin da 220 wan’ [Xinjiang
rewards 6 people who report major clues about violence and terrorism], Global Times, 9 Oct. 2016, https://mil.
huanqiu.com/article/9CaKrnJXXxI.
35
‘Xijinping zai di er ci zhongyang xinjiang gongzuo zuotan hui shang fabiao zhongyao jianghua’ [Xi Jinping
delivered an important speech at the Second Central Xinjiang Work Forum], Xinhua, 29 May 2014, http://
www.xinhuanet.com/photo/2014-05/29/c_126564529.htm.
36
‘Xijinping zai di er ci zhongyang xinjiang gongzuo zuotan hui shang fabiao zhongyao jianghua’.
630
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on 28–9 May 2014, occurred in the light of a number of violent incidents in or
connected to Xinjiang in 2013 and 2014.37
At the XJWFII, Xi stressed that the focus of the current struggle in Xinjiang
was to crack down severely on violent terrorist activities under the socialist rule
of law and to strengthen the defence and governance capabilities of the masses,
building a wall of iron and steel and a network that stretched from ‘heaven to
earth’. Xi remarked that to safeguard the country against separatism, there was a
need to ‘strengthen national unity and build a great steel wall so that the people of
all nationalities jointly safeguard the unity of the motherland, safeguard national
unity and maintain social stability’. Linking the issue of national unity to the strug-
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gle against separatism, Xi stated that national unity was the ‘lifeline of the people’
and would propel the dream of the ‘great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’. He
called on the party leadership to build Xinjiang’s grassroots party organizations
into a ‘strong fighting fortress’ to ‘serve the masses, maintain stability, and oppose
separatism’.38
This emphasis on enhancing ‘stability’, on safeguarding national unity and on
the party’s leading role in society has arguably come to be the hallmark of Xi’s
tenure as president and general secretary of the CCP.39 In the context of Xinjiang,
this dynamic was reflected in the downgrading of the State Ethnic Affairs Commis-
sion (SEAC) and State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) in favour of
the United Front Work Department (UFWD) of the CCP, and in the creation
of the National Security Commission (NSC) in November 2013.40 The SEAC, as
Taotao Zhao and James Leibold document, was gradually sidelined as the locus
of ethnic minority governance after 2009, as provincial-level ‘UFWD offices
assumed primary responsibility for ethnic work in ethnic minority regions, with
SEAC officials left to follow the direct lead of their Party counterparts’.41 The
establishment of the Xinjiang UFWD bureau in 2017 further indicated the party’s
efforts under Xi to centralize control over the region.42
The NSC, meanwhile, created as a party and not a state body, prioritized ‘polit-
ical’ and ‘homeland’ security, institutionalizing the conflation of regime security
with national security.43 In October 2014 the NSC established a National Anti-
Terrorism Intelligence Centre to strengthen anti-terrorism intelligence-gathering
37
Ondřej Klimeš, ‘Advancing “ethnic unity” and “de-extremization”: ideational governance in Xinjiang under
“new circumstances” (2012–2017)’, Journal of Chinese Political Science 23: 3, 2018, pp. 413–36.
38
‘Xijinping zai di er ci zhongyang xinjiang gongzuo zuotan hui shang fabiao zhongyao jianghua’.
39
Sheena Chestnut Greitens, ‘Domestic security in China under Xi Jinping’, China Leadership Monitor, vol. 59, 1
March 2019, https://www.prcleader.org/greitens.
40
Leibold, ‘Hu the uniter’.
41
Taotao Zhao and James Leibold, ‘Ethnic governance under Xi Jinping: the centrality of the United Front
Work Department and its implications’, Journal of Contemporary China 29: 124, 2020, p. 491.
42
‘Zhongyang tongzhan bu sheli jiu ju fuze xinjiang diqu xiangguan gongzuo’ [The Central United Front Work
Department set up its ninth bureau responsible for Xinjiang-related work], Sina, 4 May 2017, http://news.
sina.com.cn/c/nd/2017-05-04/doc-ifyeychk7010044.shtml.
43
David Lampton, ‘Xi Jinping and the National Security Commission: policy coordination and political
power’, Journal of Contemporary China 24: 91, 2015, pp. 759–77; Jean-Pierre Cabestan, ‘China’s institutional
changes in the foreign and security policy realm under Xi Jinping: power concentration vs fragmentation
without institutionalization’, East Asia 34: 2, 2017, pp. 116–17.
631
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in order to boost its pre-emptive and preventive counterterrorism capabilities.44
The fact that both Meng Jianzhu, secretary of the CCP Political and Legal Affairs
Commission, and Zhang Chunxian, party chief of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autono-
mous Region, were ‘initially identified as sitting in the NSC’ also indicated the
NSC’s domestic and Xinjiang-orientated priorities.45 In 2018, little more than six
months after assuming his role as vice-minister of public security, Shi Jun was
reassigned to be the vice-minister of UFWD, and in 2019 was appointed head
of the office of the Central Xinjiang Work Coordination Group (XWCG).46 His
possession of both portfolios further indicates the dominance of security officials
in official policy formation in Xinjiang.47
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Under Xi, the goal of ‘social stability’ and ‘enduring peace’ in Xinjiang was
to be attained through reinvigoration of ‘mass line’ forms of party mobilization
through mass dissemination of ‘deradicalization’ propaganda at the grass roots.48
This was to be complemented by intensive ‘de-extremization’ work, including
‘concentrated re-education training’ via ‘drip-irrigation’ political and ideological
re-education so as to penetrate the ‘hearts and minds’ of those deemed to be at
risk of ‘extremism’.49
For instance, in an announcement in February 2013, the then Xinjiang party
secretary Zhang Chunxian stated that 200,000 CCP cadres would be ‘walking the
mass line’ through 9,000 different ‘grassroots’ villages and communities in rural
southern Xinjiang in order to ‘aid and assist’ villagers over the next three years and
‘win the hearts’ of the Uyghurs.50 The campaign was launched under the rubric
‘visit, benefit, gather’ (fang hui ju), with the stated goal of ‘exploring the people’s
conditions; benefiting the people’s livelihood; and fusing with the masses’ senti-
ments’ (fang minqing, hui minsheng, ju minxin).
Following further violence in May and July the following year, Zhang
Chunxian called for a ‘people’s war against terrorism’ that would not only
‘cut weeds’ but also ‘dig out the roots’ of extremism.51 Between May 2014 and
June 2015, the authorities also launched a year-long campaign against terrorism,
vowing to ‘strike hard’ against perpetrators, resulting in hundreds of accelerated
44
You Ji, ‘China’s National Security Commission: theory, evolution and operations’, Journal of Contemporary
China 25: 98, 2016, p. 190.
45
Cabestan, ‘China’s institutional changes’, p. 117.
46
‘Zhongyang tongzhan bu fu buzhang shi jun ren zhongyang xinjiang gongzuo xietiao xiaozu bangongshi
zhuren’ [Central UFWD vice-minister Shi Jun appointed head of the office of the Central Xinjiang Work
Coordination Group], Caixin, 26 March 2019, http://www.caixin.com/2019-03-26/101397149.html.
47
Jessica Batke, ‘Central and regional leadership for Xinjiang policy in Xi’s second term’, China Leadership Moni-
tor, no. 56, 16 May 2018, https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/clm56jb.pdf.
48
M. Yi, ‘Yining xian yingzao “qu jiduan hua” xuanchuan jiaoyu wei meng shengshi’ [Intensive ‘counter-
radicalization’ propaganda and education in Yining county], Xinjiang Daily, 15 Jan. 2015, http://www.xjdaily.
com/culture/002/1171759.shtml.
49
Chen Fang, ‘Xinjiang qu jidian hua diaocha’ [A survey of Xinjiang deradicalization], Phoenix Information, no.
82, 12 Oct. 2015, http://news.ifeng.com/mainland/special/xjqjdh/.
50
Meilian Lin, ‘Winning Uyghurs’ hearts’, Global Times, 11 May 2014, http://www.globaltimes.cn/
content/859697.shtml.
51
‘Xijinping dui xinjiang wulumuqi shi “5·22” baoli kongbu an zuochu chong yao pishi’ [Xi Jinping gave
important instructions on the May 22 terrorist attack in Urumqi], Xinhua, 22 May 2014, http://www.xinhua-
net.com//politics/2014-05/22/c_1110811523.htm; Emily Rauhala, ‘China now says almost 100 were killed in
Xinjiang violence’, Time, 4 Aug. 2014, https://time.com/3078381/china-xinjiang-violence-shache-yarkand/.
632
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arrests and trials of suspected ‘terrorists’.52 During an inspection tour in August
2014, the then minister for public security Guo Shengkun stated that in order to
‘severely crack down on violent terrorist activities’ it was ‘necessary to vigorously
strengthen intelligence and information work, and overall social prevention and
control’.53
A parallel development during this period is the trend of Uyghurs collabo-
rating with transnational Islamist militant groups abroad,54 which increased
concerns within China about attacks on China.55 From this point onwards, cadres
sent to the ‘grass roots’ became ‘front-line soldiers’ in the ‘people’s war on terror’.
‘Winning the hearts’ of the Uyghur people was jettisoned in favour of identifying
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‘radical or deviant elements’ in these areas.56 By late 2014 and early 2015, local
officials in Xinjiang were subjecting such ‘deviant elements’ to ‘education transfor-
mation work’ in a small number of localities, relying on a ‘drip-irrigation’ propa-
ganda and education model of transforming the grass roots.57 In Yining County,
for example, ‘20 villages’ carried ‘out education transformation work for ‘key
personnel’ where ‘lecturers were hired to explain policies and legal knowledge to
the students of all ethnic groups’. After ‘nine days of training’ the ‘trainees’ had
become ‘deeply aware of the harmfulness of religious extremism’.58 The Xinjiang
authorities also launched a ‘rectification’ campaign on religion across southern
Xinjiang,59 and passed several regulations on religious extremism.60
As Greitens and colleagues have argued, growing concerns about the threat of
transnational Uyghur militancy around 2012–2014 were an important motivating
52
‘Xinjiang qidong yanda bao kong zhuanxiang xingdong’ [Xinjiang launches special campaign against violence
and terrorism], People’s Daily, 24 May 2014, http://politics.people.com.cn/n/2014/0524/c1001-25058771.html;
‘Xinjiang 1 nian da diao bao kong tuanhuo 181 ge 112 ming zaitao zhe zishou’ [181 violent and terrorist groups
destroyed in one year, 112 fugitives surrendered in Xinjiang], Xinhua, 25 May 2015, http://www.xinhuanet.
com/politics/2015-05/25/c_127836721.htm.
53
‘Gonganbuzhang Guoshengkun niannei di sanci fu Xinjiang diaoyan fankong’ [Minister for Public Security
Guo Shengkun visits Xinjiang for the third time this year to investigate and fight terrorism], People’s Daily, 6
Aug. 2014, http://politics.people.com.cn/n/2014/0806/c1001-25416246.html.
54
‘About 300 Chinese said fighting alongside Islamic State in Middle East’, Reuters, 15 Dec. 2014, https://www.
reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-china-idUSKBN0JT0UX20141215; Stefanie Kam, ‘Uyghur cross-
border movement into southeast Asia: between resistance and survival’, in Michael Clarke, ed., Terrorism
and counter-terrorism in China: domestic and foreign policy dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp.
173–86.
55
‘Xinjiang xuezhe: Xinjiang baokong shijian 5 niannei renghui chengxian xiangshang shitou’ [Xinjiang
scholar: Xinjiang violence and terrorism will continue to show upward momentum within 5 years], Sina, 7
Dec. 2013, http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2013-12-07/214728913745.shtml.
56
Pan Congwu and Liu Yan, ‘“Fang hui ju” zhugong “qu zongjiao jiduan hua”’ [Visit, benefit, gather focuses
on “de-radicalization”], Sina, 24 Jan. 2015, https://news.sina.cn/2015-01-24/detail-iavxeafs0373452.d.html;
Leibold, ‘The spectre of insecurity’, p. 4.
57
Chen, ‘Xinjiang qu jidian hua diaocha’.
58
‘Xinjiang Yiningxian: kaizhan qu jiduanhua jizhong jiaoyu’ [Yining County, Xinjiang: carrying out “de-radi-
calization” intensive education], Xinjiang Agricultural Information, 12 Jan. 2015, http://www.agri.cn/DFV20/
XJ/dfzx/dfyw/201501/t20150113_4331764.htm.
59
The ‘three illegals’ campaign refers to illegal religious activities, illegal religious publications and illegal reli-
gious networks.
60
Zunyou Zhou, ‘“Fighting terrorism according to law”: China’s legal efforts against terrorism in China’, in
Clarke, ed., Terrorism and counter-terrorism in China, pp. 75–98; ‘Xinjiang ju di zuzhi minzhong shibie 75 zhong
zongjiao jiduan huodong’ [Xinjiang Bureau organized the people to identify 75 kinds of religious extremist
activities], Sina, 24 Dec. 2014, http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2014-12-24/093231321497.shtml; Cui Jia, ‘Curbs on
religious extremism beefed up in Xinjiang,’ China Daily, 29 Nov. 2014, https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/
china/2014-11/29/content_18996900.htm.
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factor in the collective repression of Uyghurs, mass ideological and political
re-education in Xinjiang, and increased surveillance and coercion of Uyghur
diaspora networks.61 While this may have been the case, this concern on its own
was insufficient to generate the concerted momentum that lay behind the breadth
and depth of the policies witnessed in Xinjiang today. Ultimately, since taking
power in 2012 Xi has emphasized governing Xinjiang under new circumstances,
‘social stability’ and ‘enduring peace’, and ensuring the dominance of security
officials over the official policy-formation agenda in Xinjiang, all of which have
served as overarching drivers for the social engineering that has now occurred in
the province. Under Xi Jinping, authorities in Xinjiang began pursuing a grass-
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roots ‘de-extremization’ strategy in Xinjiang through the ‘visit, benefit, gather’
and ‘bonding as relatives’ programmes, and through tightened policing and control
of religious expression. These practices served the end of shaping and normalizing
Uyghurs in Xinjiang society according to state-prescribed categories of normal
and abnormal behaviour.62
‘Grid-style’ surveillance and convenience police stations
Following his appointment as Xinjiang’s party secretary in August 2016, Chen
Quanguo began a process of expanding the ‘grid-style management’ system
already in place in Xinjiang by further incorporating surveillance technologies
to supplement grassroots security patrols.63 The practice of grid-style manage-
ment was introduced around 2013–2014 in Xinjiang, during the tenure of Zhang
Chunxian as Xinjiang party secretary.64 This approach focused on dividing urban
communities into smaller units, on ‘strengthening’ and ‘innovating’ in social
governance at the grassroots level, and on promoting the role of communities
in maintaining social stability.65 Chen introduced ‘convenience police stations’
(bianmin jingwu zhan) within the geometrically organized spatial ‘zones’ established
under the ‘grid-style management’ system in Xinjiang. First pioneered in Tibet
when Chen was party secretary there from August 2011 to August 2016, these
new police stations functioned as critical nodes in the ‘zones’: they are manned
round the clock by security personnel, and equipped with CCTV cameras linked
to police databases.66
The grid-style surveillance and convenience police stations now in place
in Xinjiang resemble the ‘closely meshed grid of material (technological and
non-technological) coercions’ described by Michel Foucault in his characteriza-
61
Greitens et al., ‘Counterterrorism and preventive repression’.
62
Foucault, Discipline and punish.
63
Adrian Zenz and James Leibold, ‘Xinjiang’s rapidly evolving security state’, Jamestown Foundation China Brief
17: 4, 2017, https://jamestown.org/program/xinjiangs-rapidly-evolving-security-state/.
64
Mengyuan Chen, ‘Xinjiang wangluo hua zhili tizhi de youhua yanjiu’ [Construction on the optimization of
grid-based management system in Xinjiang], master’s diss., Xinjiang Normal University, 2017.
65
Wu Qiang, ‘Urban grid management and police state in China: a brief overview’, China Change, 12 Aug.
2014, https://chinachange.org/2013/08/08/the-urban-grid-management-and-police-state-in-china-a-brief-
overview/.
66
Zenz and Leibold, ‘Securitizing Xinjiang’.
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tion of the dispositif (apparatus).67 The result is the disciplining and censoring of
individual thought according to state-prescribed norms. As one Chinese academic
in Beijing explained:
In my view, at least five years ago, power has shifted to the hands of the security police—
you could say there is now a state of semi-martial law in Xinjiang and Tibet. It was very,
very difficult, if not impossible, for someone from the interior provinces to check into a
hotel in Xinjiang without the proper papers. Even checking into a hotel in the city does
not mean you have privilege to access the elites or the masses. In the villages, few people
there would like to talk to you.68
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In October 2016, Xinjiang’s regional authorities introduced the ‘bonding as
relatives’ programme. The programme’s stated goal is to foster inter-ethnic
harmony and unity through state-mandated home stays, where Han cadres are
assigned a Uyghur household and live with them in their homes over a period
of time.69 Such initiatives place local cadres in a position where they guide ‘the
possibility of conduct’ by structuring the ‘possible field of action’ of Uyghur
villagers.70
‘Striking the minority in isolation, and uniting and educating the majority’
China’s white paper of 16 August 2019 on ‘vocational education and training in
Xinjiang’ highlighted the party-state’s ‘ideational, propagandistic, and cultural
work’ on the Uyghur population.71 The document states that officials must not
only deal with ‘terrorist crimes in accordance with the law’ but also ‘educate and
rescue personnel infected with religious extremism and minor crimes’ in order
to treat ‘both symptoms and the root causes’ of religious extremism.72 Through
‘education and training’, the document asserts, the training centres will train
individuals in the common language (putonghua) to increase their ‘civic aware-
ness’, teach them the laws, enhance their professional skills and deradicalize them,
detaching them from radical extremist ideologies, all with the aim of helping
Xinjiang to ‘achieve social stability and enduring peace’. Upon ‘graduating’ from
the ‘re-education’ centres, the Uyghur and also Kazakh people are assigned by the
state to work as low-skilled labour in factories directly connected to ‘re-education’
centres or in nearby ‘industrial parks’ to which companies throughout China have
been given incentives to relocate.73
As sites for the CCP’s strategy of ‘de-extremization’, the ‘vocational skills
education and training centres’ rely on the principle of ‘striking the minority
67
Michel Foucault, Power/knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1980), pp. 194, 104.
68
Author interview with Chinese academic 1, Beijing, 27 Nov. 2019.
69
‘Xinjiang gezu renmin jieqin huzhu nuanxin gushi yiqian ling yi yeye jiang bu wan’ [People of all ethnic
groups in Xinjiang ‘bond as relatives’], CCTV news, 7 July 2017, http://news.cctv.com/2018/07/07/ARTIzsQ-
doKU60LJzjdkM1KBI180707.shtml.
70
Michel Foucault, ‘The subject and power’, Critical Inquiry 8: 4, 1982, p. 790.
71
State Council Information Office of the PRC, ‘Full text: vocational education and training in Xinjiang’.
72
State Council Information Office of the PRC, ‘Full text: vocational education and training in Xinjiang’
(emphasis added).
73
State Council Information Office of the PRC, ‘Full text: vocational education and training in Xinjiang’.
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in isolation, and uniting and educating the majority’ (guli daji ji shaoshu, tuanjie
jiaoyu zhengqu da duoshu).74 Through a combination of discipline and constant
surveillance, the re-education system aims to achieve a twofold goal: to isolate
and ultimately destroy the irreconcilable opponents of the state, and to coercively
transform those who are willing into productive subjects. One university professor
in China who has conducted extensive fieldwork in Xinjiang explained the imple-
mentation of this principle as follows:
Now, we cannot even talk about this concept of interethnic mingling in southern Xinjiang.
Now, [we talk about] preventive counterterrorism. We must follow Chen Quanguo’s
words, to take those with the potential to commit terrorism, those with terrorist videos on
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their phones—to put them together so that they cannot commit terrorism and kill people.
Now [the policy priority] is to bring the death rates down. These people have problems.
If you check their phones [you will find] bomb making propaganda material ... [there is a
need for greater] education, and [to familiarize them with] the law.75
In the Chinese government’s efforts at social engineering in Xinjiang, the
state’s reliance on political and ideological re-education by ‘drip-irrigation’ relies
on both sovereign and biopolitical power. The sovereign, as described by Giorgio
Agamben, acts by exercising the right to deny some persons proper political status,
reducing them to ‘bare life’ by placing their very biological existence in the hands
of the sovereign authority.76 As argued by Derek Gregory, bare life—the basis
of sovereignty—has been repeatedly invoked by colonial states in their efforts
to remake the histories and geographies of subjects.77 Biopower, which brings
‘life and its mechanisms into the realm of explicit calculations’, functions to
coercively transform Uyghurs by ‘normalizing’ their habits and modifying their
‘extreme’ and ‘aberrant’ thought and behaviour.78 In the context of Xinjiang,
entrenched ethno-racializing schemes—which historically locate Han Chinese
at the advanced end of a development trajectory along which the ‘backward’
Uyghur ethnic minorities must inevitably follow—have emerged in parallel with
strategic discourses of deviance and risk, within the setting of the ‘war on terror’.79
Biopolitics, according to Foucault, involves both discipline and regulation. Disci-
pline involves efforts to optimize the individual’s ‘capabilities, and the extortion
of [his] forces’, and entails controlling, regulating, correcting and ‘normalizing’.80
Regulation is concerned with the ‘biopolitics of the population’. Here ‘society’s
control over individuals [is] accomplished on and through the desires and practices
of the target population’.81
The project of socially engineering Xinjiang explicitly serves the ends of state-
making and regime legitimation. First, by raising the suzhi (quality) of Xinjiang’s
74
People’s Congress, Xinjiang weiwu’er zizhiqu qu jiduanhua tiaoli [Ordinances on counter-radicalization in Xinji-
ang Uyghur Autonomous Region], art. 10, 2017.
75
Author interview with Chinese academic 2, Beijing, 25 Nov. 2019.
76
Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).
77
Derek Gregory, The colonial present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), p. 11.
78
Michel Foucault, The history of sexuality, vol. 1: An introduction (New York: Vintage, 1978), p. 143.
79
Michel Foucault, ‘Society must be defended’: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76 (New York: Picador, 2002).
80
Foucault, Discipline and punish, pp. 170, 146, 151, 154.
81
Foucault, The history of sexuality, p. 139.
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population, the Chinese party-state seeks to improve the tools of production to
advance Xi’s vision of the ‘great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’.82 State-
making strategies in modern China, as Patricia Thornton has noted, have been
defined by the pursuit of ‘moral regulation and social control’.83 The CCP’s practice
of ‘engineering’ the nation-state can therefore be seen as closely linked to efforts
to ‘normalize’ behaviour through political and ideological re-education, reforma-
tive training and punishment. The result has been a clear emphasis by the Chinese
party-state on the physical, mental and moral attributes of the individual, and the
cultivation of subjects who are loyal and committed to the party-state’s interests.
Official narratives on the links between poverty, social exclusion and radicali-
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zation in Xinjiang reflect this emphasis on raising the physical, mental and moral
suzhi of the Uyghurs.84 For instance, in 2018 the secretary of the Party Committee
of the Education Bureau of Yutian County noted that because ‘the parents of
these children were poisoned by extreme ideologies’ and were ‘unwilling to send
their children to school’, the children ‘could not speak Mandarin and failed to
develop good life habits’. However, after being enrolled in the elementary school
of Yutian County Vocational and Technical Education Training Centre, the
children have developed ‘good daily habits’ such as learning to wash their faces,
brush their teeth and attend to ‘personal hygiene’.85 Security is instrumentalized
in the service of technocratic and bureaucratic goals in order to socially engineer
Xinjiang into what Børge Bakken refers to as an ‘exemplary society’.86 According
to Bakken, the exemplary society is one in which ‘human quality’ is based on the
exemplary norm, and exemplary behaviour is regarded as a force for realizing a
modern society of an ‘ideal’ order. In short, it is both educative and disciplinary.87
There are remarkable parallels between such discourses and the state-led settler
colonial discourses of the West, which were also premised on a similar ‘civilizing’
logic. The Australian government justified its amalgamation of Aboriginal people
and replacement of Aboriginal identity and practices as born out of concern for
the ‘welfare’ of subject populations and the desire to eradicate ‘defective’ elements
of the population. Perceiving Aboriginal culture to be ‘inherently flawed’, the
administrators of ‘Aboriginal affairs’ saw their actions as ‘synonymous with civili-
zation and progress’.88
Second, as a technique for reproducing and maintaining the party’s legiti-
macy, the drive to ‘sort’ individuals, for example as Han, Kazakh or Uyghur,
82
Delia Lin, Civilising citizens in post-Mao China: understanding the rhetoric of suzhi (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017).
83
Patricia M. Thornton, Disciplining the state: virtue, violence, and state-making in modern China (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Asia Center, 2007).
84
Michael L. Zukosky, ‘Quality, development discourse, and minority subjectivity in contemporary Xinjiang’,
Modern China 38: 2, 2012, pp. 233–64; State Council Information Office of the PRC, ‘Full text: vocational
education and training in Xinjiang’.
85
‘Yuan biaoti: Shidi zoufang xinjiang zhi jiao peixun zhongxin’ [On-site visit to Xinjiang Vocational Education
and Training Center], China.com, 22 Oct. 2018, https://news.china.com/domestic/945/20181022/34224039_
all.html.
86
Børge Bakken, The exemplary society: human improvement, social control, and the dangers of modernity in China
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 1.
87
Bakken, The exemplary society, p. 1.
88
Robert van Krieken, ‘Cultural genocide in Australia’, in Dan Stone, ed., The historiography of genocide (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 145.
637
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