It’s been a bad couple of weeks for Beijing, thanks to leaks of classified documents detailing how to impose mass incarceration on the Uyghur Muslim minority, speeches by high-ranking government officials and the claims of an apparently defecting Chinese spy. Helen Raleigh of The Federalist adds up the damages and offers a warning to the U.S.
Beijing usually takes pride in its tight grip of the information that flows inside and outside of China. However, several recent incidents seem to reveal that Beijing’s iron fist may be losing its grip.
Only a week ago, The New York Times reported on the Xinjiang Papers, a 403-page collection of reportedly classified Chinese documents—including speeches by Chinese leader Xi Jinping and other Communist Party officials—on plans to carry out the mass incarceration of the Uyghur Muslim minority population in Xinjiang, as well as government directives instructing local officials on how to coerce Uyghur students with lies and threats. We were told by the reporters that the leak of such classified documents out of China was unprecedented.
While the world was still digesting the Xinjiang Papers, two more China-related intelligence information bombs were dropped over the last weekend.
First, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) reported newly leaked details from the China Cables. These were classified Chinese government documents, including a manual for operating the internment camps that hold millions of Uyghur Muslims and other minorities, and intelligence briefings that uncover “how Chinese police are guided by a massive data collection and analysis system that uses artificial intelligence to select entire categories of Xinjiang residents for detention.”
These leaked documents reveal “the inner workings of the camps, the severity of conditions behind the fences, and the dehumanizing instructions regulating inmates’ mundane daily routines.” ICIJ also tweeted that more than 75 journalists and dozens of media partners are working together to report on information uncovered by the China Cable.
I’m sure we will be hearing more in the coming days. The leaked China Cables, in addition to the recently leaked Xinjiang Papers, present indisputable evidence that in the Chinese Communist Party’s own words, China is committing ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang, in the most deliberate and systematic fashion.
h/t MT