Barracks of a paramilitary unit operated by XPCC. Credits.

Meet a sinister multi-billion-dollar conglomerate that has its own military force, universities, and jails.

by Ruth Ingram

Bitter Winter, 08/23/2022

Beijing’s persecution in Xinjiang is deeply tied in with an organization set up specifically to squeeze out ethnic identities on its westernmost flank.

Shocking proof that the persecution of indigenous Turkic peoples in Xinjiang has been engineered and propelled by an organization specifically set up to squeeze out its indigenous population, has been uncovered by new research.

The extent to which the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), also known as the Bingtuan, originally set up seventy years ago to guard the Western frontiers, has mutated over time to create an “environment of extraordinary terror and oppression” has been laid bare by academics at the Sheffield Hallam University’s Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice.

According to “Until Nothing is Left, China’s Settler Corporation and its Human Rights Violations in the Uyghur Region,” the XPCC, steered by Beijing, but run locally, has evolved to the point whereby even the most intimate moments of Uyghur life are “surveilled, judged, and punished.”

The alarming conclusions of the report found that the small border force set up in 1954 during the Mao era, now functions as an immense multi-billion-dollar conglomerate with thirteen listed companies, and direct and indirect corporate  holdings amounting to more than 862,000 entities worldwide.

Originally focused on agriculture and construction, the Bingtuan also now operates corporations in energy, mining, chemicals, oil and gas extraction, logistics, apparel, electronics, wine, food processing, insurance, tourism, and many other sectors. “The goods produced by the XPCC reach far into global supply chains, and XPCC construction projects operate not only in the XUAR but throughout China and across Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa,” note the authors.

Managing one sixth of the region’s total land, one sixth of the region’s total population, and much of its governing structures, the XPCC has its own military force, media networks, and high-quality schools and universities. It runs prisons, distributes and requisitions land, and mobilizes hundreds of thousands of Han from inner China to settle the region, and thereby dilute the indigenous population, building them houses and even cities, and grabbing land from local farmers to do so.

Most troubling, the Bingtuan has been charged with building and running the vast network of so-called re-education centers and forced labor programs that have seen more than a million corralled into ex-judicial detention to face torture and every kind of privation, and many more swallowed up into euphemistically named “poverty alleviation” schemes around China making goods for Western markets.

“All enterprises and investment projects in the region are expected as part of their corporate responsibility to engage in the government’s programs to ‘transform’ and indoctrinate Uyghur people and to ‘transfer’ and coerce them into labor-intensive work,” states the report. Subsidies and incentives are lavished on compliant companies and all entities operating in Bingtuan territory are obliged to perform central roles in the repression inflicted on the Uyghurs and other minoritized citizens.

The human rights violations implicit in its reach earned the XPCC and two of its highest officials sweeping US sanctions in July 2019 thereby banning all products under its umbrella from entering the USA.

The report points out that XPCC products, particularly tomatoes, coal, cotton and wool fabrics cited for export cannot escape tainting global supply chains, and although now forbidden from entering the U.K. and the United States, are polluting trade around the world due to their complex and opaque accountability networks.

One case study after another showing XPCC encroachment on land, its appropriation of scarce water resources, its destruction of ancient and traditional settlements and cultural and religious landmarks prove incontrovertibly that the relentless forward march of the paramilitary corporation, ordered by Beijing, has one end goal, that of the elimination or at the very least total assimilation of the Turkic peoples.

The economic, physical, mental, and emotional effect on the local population has taken its toll as farmers whose families have tilled their land for centuries see bulldozers raze their oasis homes, carved pillars and orchards to build concrete monolithic housing estates for incoming Chinese settlers. Many are even given bonuses if they demolish their own homes, and surrender their land without a whisper, after which they are forcibly relocated to state-run and monitored communities, “sterile, treeless, and anodyne,” say the authors, “maximizing visibility and surveillability.”

The report’s deep dive into the machinations of the XPCC reveal an orchestrated campaign lead by Beijing and collaborated with on the ground, to terrorize every Turkic citizen into shedding their cultural heritage and language in favor of Han practices and Xi Jinping’s vision of a “New Era.”

Xi’s orders to “chop the weeds and destroy their roots, eliminate the evil until nothing is left,” are personified in the roll out of tyranny since 2016 which has seen the XPCC transform the Uyghur region into a virtual open prison. Those who weren’t interned, lived under the spotlight of surveillance and networks of neighborhood snitches, the terror of practicing any religious faith, knocks on the door at midnight, disappearing academics, authors and friends and communities were gripped by the fear of what tomorrow might bring.

Every action and decision was, and still is, laced with the fear that disobedience would mean incarceration without trial. All these charges are laid at the feet of the XPCC by the authors of the report, who urge the international community to stand jointly against the monolith.

“The main purpose of the XPCC is to control, intimidate, disperse, and ultimately break down the Uyghur people until there is nothing left of their culture,” said Laura Murphy, Professor of Human Rights and Contemporary Slavery at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University and one of the authors of the report.

“The corporate empire that it has built on the backs of its forced labor programs has a huge footprint in the global economy, and it’s essential that world leaders in both business and government stand against the XPCC and its violations of human rights. As long as companies around the world continue to source from XPCC subsidiaries, Uyghurs and other local peoples in the region will continue to suffer.”

Direct action and a raft of more sanctions, including import bans on goods grown, processed or manufactured by the XPCC, should be imposed and Magnitsky sanctions widened to include more of its leaders, particularly the chief instigator of the worst excesses of recent clampdowns, former CCP Xinjiang Secretary Chen Quanguo himself, says the report.

Backing the research, 20 co-chairs of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) from across the political spectrum and the world, have called for urgent action to hold the XPCC to account. Reiterating the need for robust trade measures against the body, to include “export controls against the 2,873 companies internationally in which the XPCC holds a majority stake,” it also advocates reforming modern slavery legislation to ban the import of goods made by the XPCC and other entities responsible for forced labor in the Xinjiang region.

Following the release of the report, Uyghur groups, including the World Uyghur Congress and the End Uyghur Forced Labour coalition have joined forces to call on “all companies in all countries to sever all relationships with XPCC companies and subsidiaries.”