The conceptual evolution of poverty alleviation through labour transfer in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, work placements of re-education detainees and Xinjiang’s implementation of the national Poverty Alleviation through Labor Transfer programme for the transfer of rural surplus labourers operate under fundamentally different policies. Drawing on new documentary and witness evidence, it is argued that within Xinjiang’s unique context of frontier settler colonialism, its recent coercive labour transfer programme evolved alongside decades-long efforts to facilitate surplus labour transfers throughout China. From 2014, when Beijing shifted the region’s work focus towards de-extremification, Uyghur underemployment was framed as a matter of social stability and national security. Between 2017 and 2019, labour transfer coercion dramatically increased alongside campaigns of mass internment and of enforcing poverty alleviation work goals. Xinjiang’s shift in 2021 from a campaign-style mobilizational to an institutionalized approach deepens coercive risks of this often poorly understood coercive labour strategy.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• Xinjiang
• Uyghurs
• poverty alleviation
• labour transfer
• forced labour

Acknowledgement

The author thanks the peer reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Byler (2021b, 110–15) basically adopts this tripartite scheme of Xinjiang’s forced labour systems and related material, albeit without citing my work (Zenz 2019).

2 During the period 2010–14 while conducting fieldwork in Kashgar, Rune Steenberg met Uyghurs who in his view voluntarily participated in labour transfers (conversation, April 2023).

3 Interview conducted by my research team in Turkey, early 2021.

4 Written communication, September 2022.

5 Interview by Rune Steenberg, May 2022, used with permission.

6 Interviews, September–October 2022.