In Xinjiang’s Tech Incubators, Innovation Is Inseparable from Repression

In 2017, the Urumqi High-Tech Industrial Development Zone, in the capital of Xinjiang, published a catalogue of the “entrepreneurial and innovative” projects underway in its jurisdiction. The Xinjiang University Information Technology Innovation Park Co., Ltd. aimed to improve capacity for “grassroots makerspaces.” Another company was using blockchain “to establish an Asia-Europe big data trading platform.” But the catalogue also heralded innovation of a very different kind.