Updated March 25June 22, 2020
Uyghurs in China
Uyghurs (also spelled “Uighurs”) are an ethnic group living
primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
(XUAR) in the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) far
northwest. Uyghurs speak a Turkic language and practice a
moderate form of Sunni Islam. The XUAR, often referred
to simply as Xinjiang (pronounced “SHIN-jyahng”), is a
provincial-level administrative region which comprises
about one-sixth of China’s total land area and borders eight
countries. The region is rich in minerals, produces over
80% of China’s cotton, and has China’s largest coal and
natural gas reserves and a fifth of its oil reserves. The
XUAR is a strategic region for the PRC’s Belt and Road
Initiative, which includes Chinese-backed infrastructure
projects and energy development in neighboring Central
and South Asia.
Sources: CRS using U.S. Department of State Boundaries; Esri;
Global Administrative Areas; DeLorme; NGA.
All or parts of the area comprising Xinjiang have been
under the political control or influence of Chinese,
Mongols, and Russians for long periods of the region’s
documented history, along with periods of Turkic or
Uyghur rule. Uyghurs played a role in the establishment of
two short-lived East Turkestan Republics in the 1930s and
1940s. The PRC asserted control over Xinjiang in 1949 and
established the XUAR in 1955.
Uyghurs once were the predominant ethnic group in the
XUAR; they now constitute roughly 45% of the region’s
population of 24 million, or around 10.5 million, as many
Han Chinese, the majority ethnic group in China, have
migrated there, particularly to the provincial capital,
Urumqi. Many Uyghurs complain that Hans have benefitted
disproportionately from economic development in Xinjiang.
Human Rights Issues
Since an outbreak of demonstrations and ethnic unrest in
2009, and clashes involving Uyghurs and Xinjiang security
personnel that spiked between 2013 and 2015, PRC leaders
have sought to “stabilize” the XUAR through more
intensive security measures aimed at combatting “terrorism,
separatism and religious extremism.” PRC official data
indicates that criminal arrests in Xinjiang increased from
approximately 14,000 in 2013 to 228,000 in 2017.
Two prominent Uyghurs serving life sentences for state
security crimes are Ilham Tohti (convicted in 2014), a
Uyghur economics professor who had maintained a website
related to Uyghur issues, and Gulmira Imin (convicted in
2010), who had managed a Uyghur language website and
participated in the 2009 demonstrationsprotests. In September
2017,
former Xinjiang University President Tashpolat
Tiyip, an Teyip, an
ethnic Uyghur, was convicted of separatism in a
secret trial
and received a death sentence with a two-year
reprieve. His
status is unknown.
InSince 2017, in tandem with a new national policy referred
to as
“Sinicization,” XUAR authorities have instituted measures
measures to assimilate Uyghurs into Han Chinese society
and reduce
the influences of Uyghur, Islamic, and Arabic
cultures and
languages. The XUAR government enacted a
law in 2017
that prohibits “expressions of extremification,”
and placed
restrictions, often imposed arbitrarily, upon face
veils,
beards and other grooming, the practice of some traditional
Uyghur customs, and adherence to Islamic dietary laws
(halal). Thousands of mosques in Xinjiang reportedly have
been demolished as part of what the government calls a
“mosque rectification” campaign; others have been
“Sinicized”—minarets have been taken down, onion domes
have been replaced by traditional Chinese roofs, and
Islamic motifs and Arabic writings have been removed.
China’s new religious policies also have placed greater
restrictions on the Hui, another Muslim minority group in
China who number around 11 million, although these have
been less severe than those placed on the Uyghurs. The Hui
are more geographically dispersed and culturally
assimilated than the Uyghurs, are generally physically
indistinguishable from Hans, and do not speak a nonChinese language.
With the apparent strong backing of Communist Party
General Secretary Xi Jinping, beginning in 2016, the new
Communist Party Secretary toof the XUAR, former Tibet
Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, stepped up security
measures aimed at the Uyghur population. Such actions
have included the installation of thousands of neighborhood
police kiosks, more intrusive monitoring of Internet use,
and the collection of biometric data for identification
purposes. The central government sent an estimated one
million officials and state workers from outside Xinjiang,
mostly ethnic Han, to live temporarily in the homes of
Uyghurs to assess their loyalty to the Communist Party.
https://crsreports.congress.gov
Uyghurs in China
Mass Internment
According to some estimates, since 2017, Xinjiang
authorities have arbitrarily detained approximately 1.5
million Turkic Muslims, mostly ethnic Uyghurs and a
smaller number of Kazakhs, in “reeducation camps.” PRC
officials describe the Xinjiang facilities as “vocational
education and training centers” where “trainees” study
Chinese, learn job skills, and undergo “de-extremization”
and are and
be “cured of ideological infection.” Some may have
engaged in religious and ethnic cultural practices that the
government now perceives as extremist, or as manifesting
“strongly religious” views or thoughts that could lead to the
spread of religious extremism or terrorism. Detainees
reportedly are compelled to renounce many of their Islamic
beliefs and customs and to undergo self-criticisms.
According to some former detainees, treatment and
conditions in the camps include crowded and unsanitary
conditions, forced labor, food deprivation, beatings, and
sexual abuse.
In July 2019, Xinjiang officials claimed that most detainees
had “returned to society.”been released. Many Uyghurs living abroad,
however,
say that they still have not heard from missing
relatives in
Xinjiang. Over 400 prominent Uyghur
intellectuals intellectuals
reportedly have been detained or their
whereabouts are
unknown. Some detainees have received
prison sentences.
Forced and Involuntary Labor
According to some reports, the government has begun to
move large numbers of Uyghurs, including many former
detainees, into textile, apparel, and other labor-intensive
industries in Xinjiang and other PRC provinces. Uyghurs
who refuse to accept such employment may be threatened
with detention. They continue to be heavily monitored
outside of work, and are required to attend political study
classes at night. In March 2020, the CongressionalExecutive Commission on China released a report, “Global
Supply Chains, Forced Labor, and the Xinjiang Uyghur
Autonomous Region.” A study by the Australian Strategic Policy
Policy Institute identified nearly 120 Chinese and foreign
companies, including global brands, that the institute
alleges directly or indirectly benefit from Uyghur labor in
potentially abusive circumstances.
Selected U.S. Responses
Trump Administration officials have openly condemned
PRC forced-assimilation policies and the mass, arbitrary
detention of Uyghurs. On October 1, 2019, U.S. Customs
and Border Protection
announced that it had blocked certain
shipments of goods
suspected of having been made with
forced labor from five
countries, including China, pursuant
to Section 307 of the
Tariff Act of 1930. The Chinese
goods, sportswear made
for a U.S. company, were
suspected of using forced labor
from a Xinjiang reeducation
camp.
OnIn October 7, 2019, the U.S. Department of Commerce
announced that it would add 28 PRC entities to the Bureau
of Industry and Security (BIS) “entity list” under the Export
Administration Regulations (EAR), for their connections to
PRC human rights abuses against Uyghur and other Turkic
Muslims in Xinjiang. The action imposes licensing
requirements prior to the sale or transfer of U.S. items to
these entities. On October 9,In May 2020, the Commerce Department
placed an additional nine PRC entities on the list.
In October 2019, the State Department
announced visa
restrictions against an unspecified number
of Chinese
government and Communist Party officials who
are are
believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, the
detention detention
or abuse of Uyghurs or other members of Muslim
minority groups in Xinjiang.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has held two
hearings on human rights issues in China during the 116 th
Congress, in which witnesses provided accounts of the
mass internment of Uyghurs. In October 2019, the
Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC)
held a hearing entitled “Forced Labor, Mass Internment,
and Social Control in Xinjiang.” In March 2020, the CECC
held a roundtable entitled “Global Supply Chains, Forced
Labor, and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” and
released a report by the same name.
The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act (S. 178) passed in
the Senate on September 11, 2019, and in the House on
December 3, 2019, with an amendment to the Senate bill.
The act would impose visa and economic sanctions
pursuant to the Global Magnitsky Act (subtitle F of P.L.
114-328) upon PRC officials responsible for human rights
abuses in Xinjiang, and it would enact restrictions on the
U.S. export of items that “provide a critical capability” to
the PRC government “to suppress individual privacy,
freedom, and other basic human rights.” The Uyghur
Forced Labor Prevention Act (S. 3471 and H.R. 6210),
introduced in March 2020, would in part invoke Section
307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 and thereby restrict the import
of any “goods, wares, articles and merchandise mined,
produced, or manufactured wholly or in part” in Xinjiangand other Muslims in Xinjiang.
On June 17, 2020, President Trump signed the Uyghur
Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 into law (P.L. 116-145).
The act aims to impose visa and economic sanctions on
PRC officials determined to be responsible for human rights
abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups
in Xinjiang. The act also mandates the Department of State,
the Director of National Intelligence, and the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, respectively, to submit reports to
relevant Congressional committees on the following:
human rights abuses, including detention and forced labor,
against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the XUAR;
the security and economic implications posed to the United
States by PRC policies in Xinjiang, including a list of
Chinese companies that are involved in constructing or
operating internment camps or producing mass surveillance
equipment for Xinjiang; and U.S. efforts to protect Uyghur
Americans and ethnic Uyghurs from China legally studying
and working in the United States from harassment or
intimidation by officials or agents of the PRC government.
Pending legislation includes the Uyghur Forced Labor
Prevention Act (S. 3471 and H.R. 6210), which among
other provisions would create a presumption of denial of
import into the United States of “significant goods, wares,
articles and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured
wholly or in part” in Xinjiang or by certain Xinjiang-related
entities pursuant to the forced labor import ban in Section
307 of the Tariff Act of 1930.
Alleged Terrorism
The PRC government has attributed numerous deadly
incidents in the XUAR to the East Turkestan Islamic
Movement (ETIM), which it portrays as a Uyghur separatist
and terrorist group with ties to global terrorist
organizations. The U.S. government designated ETIM as a
terrorist organization under Executive Order 13224 in 2002
(to block terrorist financing) and placed ETIM on the
Terrorist Exclusion List in 2004 (to prevent the entry of
terrorists into the United States). ETIM is not on the
Department of State’s narrower “Foreign Terrorist
Organization” (FTO) list. Roughly 100 Uyghurs from
China entered Islamic State territory during 2013-2014,
according to the New America Foundation.
At its height, ETIM, whose members reportedly spent time
in Afghanistan and Pakistan from the late-1990s to the mid2000s, was a small, loosely organized and poorly financed
group that lacked weapons and had little if any contact with
global jihadist groups, according to some experts. The U.S.
government “identified sufficient evidence” to consider
three violent incidents in China purportedly involving
Uyghurs as terrorist attacks in 2014. The lack of available
information in most other cases has made it difficult to
verify PRC accounts of alleged terrorist activity. In 2019,
the Department of State reported that in 2018, there was a
lack of independent evidence that ETIM is still active.
Thomas Lum, Specialist in Asian Affairs
https://crsreports.congress.gov
IF10281
Uyghurs in China
IF10281
Thomas Lum, Specialist in Asian Affairs
Disclaimer
This document was prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). CRS serves as nonpartisan shared staff to
congressional committees and Members of Congress. It operates solely at the behest of and under the direction of Congress.
Information in a CRS Report should not be relied upon for purposes other than public understanding of information that has
been provided by CRS to Members of Congress in connection with CRS’s institutional role. CRS Reports, as a work of the
United States Government, are not subject to copyright protection in the United States. Any CRS Report may be
reproduced and distributed in its entirety without permission from CRS. However, as a CRS Report may include
copyrighted images or material from a third party, you may need to obtain the permission of the copyright holder if you
wish to copy or otherwise use copyrighted material.
https://crsreports.congress.gov | IF10281 · VERSION 3436 · UPDATED