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Excellent overview from @JimMillward & @RianThum of the dispossession, institutional capture, & domination of Uyghur society, which together build a new frontier of global capitalism & state power. CC: @BeijingPalmer @niubi
The structural antagonisms in Xinjiang cannot be understood outside of a drive for natural resources and commodity crops as China becomes manufacturer for the world. https://livingotherwise.com/2019/07/22/adam-hunerven-capitalism-and-terror-in-northwest-china/
My current work (Terror Capitalism [Duke U. Press 2021]) builds on this. It shows that the current reeducation system builds on this older material process of dispossession to generate capital in three interconnected ways.
First, lucrative state contracts are given to private and public corporations to build and deploy data-intensive technologies that surveil and manage Uyghur men and other populations.
Then, using more than 90,000 police contractors and vast amounts of biometric and social media data extracted from those groups, private and state companies use expropriated data and low-wage policing labor to improve their technologies and expand their market share.
Finally, this system holds targeted groups in place through biometric and social surveillance, producing new forms of self-discipline and labor for private manufacturers.
Importantly aspects of these systems of control are not unique to China, but are instead spreading around the world, and from multiple sources. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/24/surveillance-tech-facial-recognition-terror-capitalism
This, as well as the rise of new forms of Sinophobia noted by @andybliu, are why systems in Xinjiang must be thought of as a new frontier formation of global capitalism which demands an internationalist response. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/xinjiang-uigher-camps/
