In November 2019, internal Communist Party documents—obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)—provided documentary evidence of how authorities in Xinjiang are using data and artificial intelligence to pioneer a new form of social control.94 The documents showed how authorities are using a data management system called the Integrated Joint Operation Platform (IJOP)—previously reported on by Human Rights Watch—to predictively identify those suspected of harbouring extremist views and criminal intent.95 Among the documents, a bulletin published on 25 June 2017, reveals how the IJOP system detected about 24,412 “suspicious” people in southern Xinjiang during one particular week. Of those people, 15,683 were sent to “education and training” — a euphemism for detention camps—and 706 were “criminally detained”.96

A month before this leak, in October 2019, the US Government added many of the AI and surveillance companies in this dataset—including Dahua Technology, iFlytek, Megvii Technology, SenseTime, Xiamen Meiya Pico Information Co. Ltd, Yitu Technologies and Hikvision97—to the US Entity List because of their roles in human rights violations in Xinjiang.98

However, Chinese tech companies’ activities in Xinjiang go beyond surveillance and extend to areas like propaganda and other coercive measures.

For example, we have found that TikTok’s parent company ByteDance—which is not on the US entity list for human rights violations in Xinjiang—collaborates with public security bureaus across China, including in Xinjiang where it plays an active role in disseminating the party-state’s propaganda on Xinjiang.

Xinjiang Internet Police reportedly “arrived” on Douyin—a ByteDance and video-sharing app—and built a “new public security and Internet social governance model” in 2018.99 In April 2019, the Ministry of Public Security’s Press and Publicity Bureau signed a strategic cooperation agreement with ByteDance to promote the “influence and credibility” of police departments nationwide.100 Under the agreement, all levels and divisions of police units from the Ministry of Public Security to county-level traffic police would have their own Douyin account to disseminate propaganda. The agreement also reportedly says ByteDance would increase its offline cooperation with the police department, however it is unclear what this offline cooperation is.

Tech companies have been piling into Xinjiang since the early 2010s. Huawei has been working for the Karamay Police Department on cloud computing projects since 2011,101 despite its debunked claims to work only with third parties.102 ZTE held its first Smart Cities Forum in Urumqi in 2013,103 and its ‘safe city’ solution has been largely used in surveilance and policing.104 In 2010, iFlytek set up a subsidiary in Xinjiang and a laboratory to develop speech recognition technology,105 especially in minority languages—technologies that are now used by the Xinjiang Government to track and identify minority populations.106

A surveillance industry boom was born out of the central government’s 2015 policy to prioritise ‘stability’ in Xinjiang107 and the national implementation of the Sharp Eyes surveillance project from 2015 to 2020.108 As of late 2017, 1,013 local security companies were working in Xinjiang;109 that figure excludes some of the largest companies operating in the region, such as Dahua and Hikvision, which had already won multimillion-dollar bids to build systems to surveil streets and mosques.110

Also in 2017, even with the central government halting some of the popular ‘PPP’ projects (public– private partnerships that channel private money into public infrastructure projects) that were debt hazards111 and tech companies becoming more cautious about investing in those projects, Xinjiang was an exception for about a year. Tech companies continued to hunt for opportunities in Xinjiang because funding for surveillance-related PPP projects in Xinjiang comes directly from defence and counterterrorism expenditure.112 However, in 2018, the debt crackdown eventually reached Xinjiang and a number of PPP projects there were also suspended. 113

A significant policy that encourages technology companies to profit from the situation in Xinjiang is the renewed ‘Xinjiang Aid’ scheme (援疆政策). Dating from the 1980s, these policies channel funds from other provincial governments to Xinjiang. Since the mass detentions in 2017 this scheme has encouraged companies in other provinces to open subsidiaries or factories in Xinjiang—factories that former detainees are forced to work in.114

A company can contribute to the Xinjiang Aid program, and the broader situation in the region, in many different ways. In 2014, for example, Alibaba began to provide cloud computing technologies for the Xinjiang Government in areas of policing and counterterrorism.115 In 2018, as part of Zhejiang Province’s Xinjiang Aid efforts, Alibaba was set to open large numbers of e-commerce service stations in Xinjiang, selling clothes and electronics.116 There’s no direct evidence that suggests Alibaba sells products sourced from forced labour. But clothing companies that have recently opened up factories in Xinjiang, because of favourable polices and an abundance of local labour—which can include forced labour117—have relied on Alibaba’s platforms to sell clothes to China, North America, Europe and the Middle East.118

Most of ByteDance’s activities in Xinjiang fall under the “Xinjiang Aid” initiative and the company’s cooperation with Xinjiang authorities is focused on Hotan, a part of Xinjiang that has been the target of some of the most severe repression. The area is referred to by the party-state as the most “backward and resistant”.119 According to satellite imagery analysis conducted by ASPI, there are approximately a dozen suspected detention facilities in the outskirts of Hotan.120 The city has seen an aggressive campaign of cemetery, mosque and traditional housing demolition since November 2018, which continues today.

In November 2019, Beijing Radio and Television Bureau announced its “Xinjiang Aid” measures in Hotan, to “propagate and showcase Hotan’s new image”—after more than two years of mass detention and close surveillance of ethnic minorities had taken place there. These measures include guiding and helping local Xinjiang authorities and media outlets to use ByteDance’s news aggregation app for Jinri Toutiao (Today’s Headlines) and video-sharing app Douyin to gain traction online.121 A Tianjin Daily article reported this April that after listening to talks by representatives from ByteDance’s Jinri Toutiao division, Hotan Propaganda Bureau official Zhou Nengwen (周能文) said he was excited to use the Douyin platform to promote Hotan’s products and image.122

Technology companies actively support state projects, even when those projects have nothing to do with tech. Also under the Xinjiang Aid umbrella, telecom companies such as China Unicom send their ‘most politically reliable’ employees to Xinjiang123 and deploy fanghuiju (访惠聚) units to villages in Xinjiang. ‘Fanghuiju’ is a government initiative that sends cadres from government agencies, state-owned enterprises and public institutions to regularly visit and surveil people.124

The China Unicom fanghuiju units were reportedly tasked with changing the villages, including villagers’ thoughts that are religious or go against CCP doctrines.125 Adding some of China’s more well-known technology and surveillance companies to the US Entity List was largely symbolic—after Huawei, Dahua and Hikvision were blacklisted in the US, Uniview’s president told reporters that, at a time when ‘leading Chinese technology companies are facing tough scrutiny overseas’, companies such as Uniview had the opportunity to grow and pursue their overseas strategies.126

Unfortunately, it’s extremely difficult for international authorities to sanction the circa 1,000 homegrown local Xinjiang security companies. However, as companies such as Huawei seek to expand overseas, foreign governments can play a more active role in rejecting those that participate in the Chinese Government’s repressive Xinjiang policies.

For example, the timeline of Huawei’s Xinjiang activities should be taken into consideration during debates about Huawei and 5G technologies. Huawei’s work in Xinjiang is extensive and includes working directly with the Chinese Government’s public security bureaus in the region. The announcement of one Huawei public security project in Xinjiang—made in 2018 through a government website in Urumqi127—quoted a Huawei director as saying, ‘Together with the Public Security Bureau, Huawei will unlock a new era of smart policing and help build a safer, smarter society.’128 In fact, some of Huawei’s promoted ‘success cases’ are Public Security Bureau projects in Xinjiang, such as the Modular Data Center for the Public Security Bureau of Aksu Prefecture in Xinjiang.129 Huawei also provides police in Xinjiang with technical support to help ‘meet the digitization requirements of the public security industry’.130

In May 2019, Huawei signed a strategic agreement with the state-owned media group Xinjiang Broadcasting and Television Network Co. Ltd at Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen. The agreement, which aims at maintaining social stability and creating positive public opinion, covered areas including internet infrastructure, smart cities and 5G.131

In 2018, when the Xinjiang Public Security Department and Huawei signed the agreement to establish an ‘intelligent security industry’ innovation lab in Urumqi. Fan Lixin, a Public Security Department official, said at the signing ceremony that Huawei had been supplying reliable technical support for the department.132 In 2016, Xinjiang’s provincial government signed a partnership agreement with Huawei.133 The two sides agreed to jointly develop cloud computing and big-data industries in Xinjiang. As mentioned above, Huawei began to work in cloud computing in Karamay (a Huawei cloud-computing ‘model city’ in Xinjiang)134 as early as 2011 in several sectors, including public security video surveillance.

In 2014, Huawei participated in an anti-terrorism BRI-themed conference in Urumqi as ‘an important participant of’ a program called ‘Safe Xinjiang’—code for a police surveillance system. Huawei was said to have built the police surveillance systems in Karamay and Kashgar prefectures and was praised by the head of Xinjiang provincial police department for its contributions in the Safe Xinjiang program.

Huawei was reportedly able to process and analyse footage quickly and conduct precise searches in the footage databases (for example, of the colour of cars or people and the direction of their movements) to help solve criminal cases.135

Since mass detentions began in Xinjiang over two years ago, state-affiliated technology companies such as those covered in this report have greatly expanded their remit and become a central part of the surveillance state in Xinjiang. Xinjiang’s crackdown on religious and ethnic minorities has been completed across the region. It has used and continues to use several different mechanisms of coercive control, such as arbitrary detention, coerced labour practices136 and at-home forced political indoctrination. Technology companies are intrinsically linked with many of those efforts, as the state’s crackdown offers ample opportunities for incentivised expansion and profitability.137

