Year Published: 2022
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China’s Settler Corporation and its Human Rights Violations in the Uyghur Region
A report on the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps
The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (also known as the XPCC or Bingtuan or corps) is a state-run paramilitary corporate conglomerate that operates in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Uyghur Region or XUAR) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The XPCC functions as a regional government, a paramilitary organization, a bureau of prisons, a media empire, an educational system, and one of the world’s largest state-run corporate enterprises. The central government of the PRC considers the XPCC a “special system of integration of government, military and enterprise.” As such, the XPCC is a colonial institution, responsible for land expropriation and explicitly dispatched by the top levels of the party-state to act as a military and industrial force to suppress Uyghur dissent.
The XPCC has been sanctioned by the United States government and has been banned from importing its goods into the country, all because of the Bingtuan’s role in human rights violations in the Uyghur Region. Other countries have sanctioned XPCC officials. As this report documents in stark detail, the XPCC is involved in a pervasive program of egregious rights violations that effect the most marginalized people in the Uyghur Region. The region, its people, and their identities are seen as critical security threats to China’s cultural integrity, the stability of the state’s borders, and the absolute authority of the CCP. In the last five years in particular, the XPCC has played a critical role in suppressing Uyghur life, culture, and identity through the following means:
- extrajudicial internment and imprisonment
- land expropriation
- forcible migration of people
- repressive, preemptive policing
- social engineering
- religious persecution
- forced labour
From cradle to grave, Uyghur people are subjected to centrally directed indoctrination delivered by the XPCC. The XPCC’s deliberate program of social engineering requires that every minoritized citizen shed their cultural heritage and language in favour of Han practices and Xi Jinping ideology. This report documents the way this constellation of repressive programs is designed to make the Uyghur people docile and dependent on the state. It identifies the ways the XPCC has operationalized these programs in the last five years to create a reign of terror.
“Until Nothing Is Left” documents in great detail the inner workings and policies of the XPCC, designed to suppress and colonize the Indigenous people of the Uyghur Region. The report provides:
- a clear history of the XPCC
- extensive documentation of the XPCC’s internment and prison system with visuals of their development and growth in the last five years
- in-depth evidence of the colonial government’s human rights violations
- a section on the XPCC’s systematic program of forced labour
- a supply chain risk section that carefully examines XPCC cotton, tomato, chemicals, and construction
- new evidence of the movement of cotton from XPCC to the rest of China and a list of warehouses and logistics companies that are purchasing XPCC cotton, useful for companies procuring cotton from China
- an expose of international investments in and contracts to the XPCC’s main construction company
This report traces some of the XPCC’s most important products and services – cotton, tomatoes, chemicals, and construction – out to the rest of the world through supply chains and investments, revealing the way international spending supports this regime of oppression.
Read full report here.
Documents Related to the XPCC
Over the course of the 18 months of research for this report, HKC collected troves of publicly available XPCC corporate reports, publicity videos, and other related materials. Though they were not all cited in the report, we share all of those materials here for the benefit of researchers and others interested in the Bingtuan.