Under pressure from the authorities, poor farmers, small traders and idle villagers of working age attend training and indoctrination courses for weeks or months, and are then assigned to stitch clothes, make shoes, sweep streets or fill other jobs.

The efforts parallel the social engineering carried out in Xinjiang’s indoctrination camps, which have held one million or more Uighurs and Kazakhs. Many laborers attend political courses similar to those in the camps, and practice military drills and learn Chinese songs.

Watch: We obtained rare footage looking inside the contentious labor program — where the movements and even meals of workers in uniforms are tightly controlled.

Fact-check: The government says it is helping villagers out of poverty and slowing the spread of religious extremism with steady work. But official documents, interviews and visits by The Times to Xinjiang show that local plans uproot villagers, restrict their movements and pressure them to stay at the jobs.

Big picture: The labor programs, along with the camps, are carrying out plans by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to entrench control over Xinjiang, where Muslim minorities make up about half the population.