Credit: Carolyn Drake Hello from the greater Sea-Tac area! Andy and Tammy here with a bonus episode, interviewing Darren Byler, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado and an expert on the Uyghur people, a Muslim community in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China.
Thanks for this great discussion. Regarding the people sent to work in factories outside of Xinjiang, Darren made a couple interesting statements I haven’t seen elsewhere: he estimated the total number may be around 250,000, and he suggested that the people sent to inner China were “surplus labor” (rather than former inmates of the camps). I’d really appreciate sources or further reading for this, or just understanding how he arrived at those tentative conclusions.
Also: do we know anything about the number of people coerced into labor within the XUAR itself—either the total number or the breakdown between former detainees and “surplus labor”? There is this government target of 1.3 million (new?) textiles jobs that people sometimes cite and that I think is mentioned in the podcast, but it’s a pretty crude guide. Even if those 1.3 million jobs materialize, do we currently have a basis to guess how many might represent coerced labor? What about coerced labor within the XUAR in other sectors? We’ve got at least rough figures for people detained and for some of the family planning stuff (mostly from Zenz), but it seems like there’s less on the figures for forced labor, which seems like the thing that the outside world might actually have a bit more leverage over.
Adrien Zenz is not a reliable source of information
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/21/china-detaining-millions-uyghurs-problems-claims-us-ngo-researcher/
Do you folks have sources on the bit with 10%+ of the population, coerced work, forced sterilization, false terrorism charges, etc?
Thanks for this great discussion. Regarding the people sent to work in factories outside of Xinjiang, Darren made a couple interesting statements I haven’t seen elsewhere: he estimated the total number may be around 250,000, and he suggested that the people sent to inner China were “surplus labor” (rather than former inmates of the camps). I’d really appreciate sources or further reading for this, or just understanding how he arrived at those tentative conclusions.
Also: do we know anything about the number of people coerced into labor within the XUAR itself—either the total number or the breakdown between former detainees and “surplus labor”? There is this government target of 1.3 million (new?) textiles jobs that people sometimes cite and that I think is mentioned in the podcast, but it’s a pretty crude guide. Even if those 1.3 million jobs materialize, do we currently have a basis to guess how many might represent coerced labor? What about coerced labor within the XUAR in other sectors? We’ve got at least rough figures for people detained and for some of the family planning stuff (mostly from Zenz), but it seems like there’s less on the figures for forced labor, which seems like the thing that the outside world might actually have a bit more leverage over.