In the Camps: China's High-Tech Penal Colony

"It’s been reviewed paired with a book that I recommended last year, which was the new edition of James Millward’s big history of Xinjiang, Eurasian Crossroads , that was updated with a chapter on recent repression. What’s important about In the Camps is that there hasn’t been a short, deeply informed book about Xinjiang that you could point somebody to who says, ‘I don’t have a lot of time to devote to this subject, but I want to go deeper than I can even through a long-form journalism piece’. Darren Byler is an anthropologist who has significant on the ground experience and has been doing ethnographic work. He also just published a more scholarly book with Duke University Press, Terror Capitalism , which is very good on related fieldwork but written for other specialists. In the Camps is designed to give a feel for the human experience of having the ground pulled out from under you in every conceivable way. Forms of movement become constrained, everything you’re doing is watched. People are disappearing into camps, but also going silent because of fear of being targeted. It’s an incredibly important story, because of the impact it has on the people involved. Also—and this is something Byler gets at—while it’s a very distinctive and unusual story, it’s not an isolated one. This is an extreme example, with both the assault on the Uyghurs and on Islam as a religion, but the effort to control forms of difference is something that’s happening in other places across China, too. “It’s a dark story: there’s no way around that” Byler also takes pains to show that what is happening in China has parallels in other places and global relevance. The technologies that are being developed to control are ones that are, in some cases, being developed in part by international companies and being used in other locales. I understand why the terms ‘concentration camp’ and ‘genocide’ are sometimes used—because there’s a sense that you need to have the strongest language possible to get attention for this issue. He suggests other ways to frame discussion, however, that are equally appalling and might not lead into back-and-forth discussions. He talks about processes that are tied to carceral systems in all kinds of places, prisons where your every movement is controlled. He writes of varied forms of colonialism. The way that Beijing is trying to control places on the peripheries is very much like a colonial state, but armed with very advanced surveillance technologies. It’s a dark story: there’s no way around that. But he is somebody who—to return to the theme—fills his book with real people. He’s sensitive to things like poetry, which is incredibly important as a form of expression among Uyghurs, both within the PRC and now in exile. You’re not simply reading a catalogue of human rights abuses. It’s the story of a slide toward a very dystopian daily life. Yes, it’s very timely, with the diplomatic boycott by the United States—and other countries—of the Olympics. This is due to multiple concerns about China, including Peng Shuai . But I think if there was one thing to point to, it’s Xinjiang. It’s become a focus in the way that in 2008, when there was talk about a potential boycott, Tibet was the place that came to mind. That they are connected stories comes out in the book. It’s not an isolated thing: some of the methods now being used in Xinjiang were tried out in Tibet or against Falun Gong members. The Party keeps experimenting with and refining techniques and technologies of control. There are also echoes of Mao-era reeducation camps in this as well. It’s facial recognition, checkpoints but also just data collection. That’s something that is relevant across the PRC. It’s happening in Hong Kong as well, this effort to get people’s cellphones and their contacts and to maximize the personal data the government has at its command. Though, of course, that again is not just a China story but a global one."