On his return from the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) summit in Johannesburg, Chinese President Xi Jinping made a brief stopover in Xinjiang on Saturday, August 26. It was an opportunity to celebrate the "hard-won social stability" in the Uyghur autonomous region and to call for the "normalization" of politics there. In his speech, delivered to the cadres of the Communist Party and reported by state broadcaster CCTV, Xi "stressed that the priority is to maintain social stability" and "use this stability to guarantee development." Xinjiang, China's northwesternmost region, is the scene of an intense crackdown, with over 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities interned in "re-education" camps.

This short visit is the Chinese leader's second since launching the "Yanda" ("strike hard") campaign in 2014, following a series of attacks attributed to Uyghur separatist activists. In July 2022, Xi had already extolled the return of "stability and unity" to the region, taking time out to greet locals and attend traditional Uyghur dances. With this latest visit, the Chinese leader is calling on the local authorities to stay the course in what appears to be a new phase of the region's takeover that emphasizes assimilation, rather than repression. In particular, he stressed "the need to combine the development of the fight against terrorism and separatism with the normalization of social stability and respect for the law," according to CCTV, which quoted the president but did not broadcast an audio extract of his speech.

"I think Xi wants to convince the world that the policy pursued in Xinjiang has been a resounding success. Both of Xi's visits [in 2022 and 2023] are about presenting to the world a face of confidence, that Xi's made no mistake, so as to change the international narrative that his government has committed 'crimes against humanity' against the Uyghurs" said Maya Wang, associate director for Asia at the NGO Human Rights Watch.

China rejects these accusations, calling them "the lie of the century." Beijing has, however, acknowledged the existence of camps, once called "transformation through education" centers in official documents, before being officially renamed "vocational training centers." In 2019, the governor of Xinjiang, Shohrat Zakir, claimed that "all the students who participated have graduated." The following year, a white paper entitled "Employment and Labor Law in Xinjiang" stated that "every year from 2014 to 2019, Xinjiang provided training sessions to, on average, 1.29 million workers in the city and countryside."

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