All Reading

This section contains a curated list of useful articles, investigations, books and other reading materials. The list is updated on a weekly basis and suggestions for additions are welcome.

Starting Points:

Eyewitness Accounts

Overview Reports

Lists / Databases of Victims

Satellite Imagery of Camps, Prisons & Cultural Destruction

Lina K 21/06/2022 Lina K 21/06/2022

Four Takeaways From a Times Investigation Into China’s Expanding Surveillance State

China is collecting a staggering amount of personal data from everyday citizens at a previously-unknown scale, a Times investigation has found.

Lina K 05/04/2021 Lina K 05/04/2021

Surviving the Crackdown in Xinjiang

As mass detentions and surveillance dominate the lives of China’s Uyghurs and Kazakhs, a woman struggles to free herself.

Lina K 29/04/2020 Lina K 29/04/2020

Exclusive: Amazon turns to Chinese firm on U.S. blacklist to meet thermal camera needs

Amazon.com Inc has bought cameras to take temperatures of workers during the coronavirus pandemic from a firm the United States blacklisted over allegations it helped China detain and monitor Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Lina K 28/11/2019 Lina K 28/11/2019

Mapping more of China's tech giants: AI and surveillance

This public database maps companies and organisations to visualise a holistic picture of the increasingly global reach of China’s tech giants, including companies working in the artificial intelligence (AI) and surveillance tech sectors.

Lina K 24/11/2019 Lina K 24/11/2019

Exposed: China’s Operating Manuals for Mass Internment and Arrest by Algorithm

A new leak of highly classified Chinese government documents has uncovered the operations manual for running the mass detention camps in Xinjiang and exposed the mechanics of the region’s Orwellian system of mass surveillance and “predictive policing.”

Lina K 23/11/2019 Lina K 23/11/2019

The China Cables Investigation

China Cables is an investigation into the surveillance and mass internment without charge or trial of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang province, based on leaked classified Chinese government documents.

Lina K 05/05/2019 Lina K 05/05/2019

China’s Algorithms of Repression: Reverse Engineering a Xinjiang Police Mass Surveillance App

This report provides a detailed description and analysis of a mobile app that police and other officials use to communicate with the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), one of the main systems Chinese authorities use for mass surveillance in Xinjiang. The findings provide an unprecedented window into how mass surveillance actually works in Xinjiang, because the IJOP system is central to a larger ecosystem of social monitoring and control in the region.

Lina K 18/01/2018 Lina K 18/01/2018

China testing facial-recognition surveillance system in Xinjiang

Chinese surveillance chiefs are testing a facial-recognition system that alerts authorities when targets stray more than 300 metres from their home or workplace, as part of a surveillance push that critics say has transformed the country’s western fringes into a high-tech police state. Authorities in Xinjiang have been experimenting with the “alert project” since early 2017, according to Bloomberg.

Lina K 17/12/2017 Lina K 17/12/2017

Digital police state shackles Chinese minority

Mass disappearances, beginning the past year, are part of a sweeping effort by Chinese authorities to use detentions and data-driven surveillance to impose a digital police state in the region of Xinjiang and over its Uighurs.