China Uses DNA to Map Faces, With Help From the West; The New York Times, December 3, 2019

Sui-Lee Wee and Paul Mozur, The New York Times; China Uses DNA to Map Faces, With Help From the West

Beijing’s pursuit of control over a Muslim ethnic group pushes the rules of science and raises questions about consent. 

"The Chinese government is building “essentially technologies used for hunting people,” said Mark Munsterhjelm, an assistant professor at the University of Windsor in Ontario who tracks Chinese interest in the technology.

In the world of science, Dr. Munsterhjelm said, “there’s a kind of culture of complacency that has now given way to complicity.""

Data leak reveals how China 'brainwashes' Uighurs in prison camps; BBC, November 24, 2019

BBC; Data leak reveals how China 'brainwashes' Uighurs in prison camps

"The leaked Chinese government documents, which the ICIJ have labelled "The China Cables", include a nine-page memo sent out in 2017 by Zhu Hailun, then deputy-secretary of Xinjiang's Communist Party and the region's top security official, to those who run the camps...

The memo includes orders to:

• "Never allow escapes"
• "Increase discipline and punishment of behavioural violations"
• "Promote repentance and confession"
• "Make remedial Mandarin studies the top priority"
• "Encourage students to truly transform"
• "[Ensure] full video surveillance coverage of dormitories and classrooms free of blind spots"

The documents reveal how every aspect of a detainee's life is monitored and controlled: "The students should have a fixed bed position, fixed queue position, fixed classroom seat, and fixed station during skills work, and it is strictly forbidden for this to be changed.

"Implement behavioural norms and discipline requirements for getting up, roll call, washing, going to the toilet, organising and housekeeping, eating, studying, sleeping, closing the door and so forth."...

The leaked documents also reveal how the Chinese government uses mass surveillance and a predictive-policing programme that analyses personal data."

‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims; The New York Times, November 16, 2019

Austin Ramzi  and Chris Buckley, The New York Times; ‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims

 "The directive was among 403 pages of internal documents that have been shared with The New York Times in one of the most significant leaks of government papers from inside China’s ruling Communist Party in decades. They provide an unprecedented inside view of the continuing clampdown in Xinjiang, in which the authorities have corralled as many as a million ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and others into internment camps and prisons over the past three years. 

The party has rejected international criticism of the camps and described them as job-training centers that use mild methods to fight Islamic extremism. But the documents confirm the coercive nature of the crackdown in the words and orders of the very officials who conceived and orchestrated it.

Even as the government presented its efforts in Xinjiang to the public as benevolent and unexceptional, it discussed and organized a ruthless and extraordinary campaign in these internal communications. Senior party leaders are recorded ordering drastic and urgent action against extremist violence, including the mass detentions, and discussing the consequences with cool detachment.

Children saw their parents taken away, students wondered who would pay their tuition and crops could not be planted or harvested for lack of manpower, the reports noted. Yet officials were directed to tell people who complained to be grateful for the Communist Party’s help and stay quiet."

What It’s Like to Live in a Surveillance State; New York Times, February 3, 2018

James A. Millward, New York Times; What It’s Like to Live in a Surveillance State

"Will the big-data police state engulf the rest of China? The rest of the world?

As China’s profile grows on the international stage, everyone would do well to ask if what happens in Xinjiang will stay in Xinjiang."