The Xinjiang Data Police
By Darren Byler,
Noema
| 10. 08. 2020
Preparing For War
Baimurat saw the advertisement for the new job sometime around December 2016. He had come back to China from Kazakhstan a few years before in order to find better medical care for his second child. But despite his college degree from a Chinese university, he had not been able to find steady work. Like more than 80% of Kazakh and Uighur college graduates, he was chronically underemployed.
Baimurat had grown up in Xinjiang, the northwest border region of China where Turkic Muslim Kazakhs and Uighurs make up the majority of the population. He understood that Muslim-majority countries like Kazakhstan had much more to offer him in terms of financial opportunities. But since his family was back in China and the medical system was better there, he made the difficult choice to return.
In late 2016, the local Public Security Bureau in his home county of Qitai began recruiting people to become “assistant police” — a type of citizen policing role that the authorities described as a kind of supermarket or mall security guard position. “Since I graduated...
Related Articles
By Liyan Qi and Jonathan Cheng, The Wall Street Journal | 03.26.2025
photo via Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by 3.0
Chinese scientist He Jiankui set off global outrage and landed in prison after he skirted ethical guidelines and claimed he had produced genetically modified babies designed to resist HIV infection.
Now, the self-styled ...
By Luis Prada, Vice | 03.14.2025
public domain photo by Voice of America via Wikimedia Commons
Back in 2019, Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui proudly announced to the world that he had created two genetically edited human babies, fully expecting a round of applause and three cheers...
By Nick Cumming-Bruce, New York Times | 03.13.2025
A United Nations commission on Thursday accused Israel of targeting hospitals and other health facilities in Gaza that provide reproductive services, including an I.V.F. clinic where thousands of embryos were destroyed, in what it called an effort to prevent Palestinian...
By Craig S. Smith, Forbes | 03.08.2025
One recent evening in Shenzhen, a group of software engineers gathered in a dimly lit co-working space, furiously typing as they monitored the performance of a new AI system. The air was electric, thick with the hum of servers and...