Terror Capitalism – The Enclosure of Uyghurs in Xinjiang

[english] – This podcast is part of the online discussion series China and the Left.

Announcement: Rather than using frameworks of “human rights” or “ethnic conflict,” this talk considers the economic factors that have produced protest and violence in Northwest China (Xinjiang). Using a Marxist mode of analysis, it argues that the material and digital enclosures of Uyghurs can be thought of as part of a process of “original accumulation.” Because Uyghurs have been framed by state authorities as a threatening, yet detainable, subject population, their existence offers technology companies space and funding that is unavailable in other parts of China to develop new technologies. These new technologies can then be used to assist in the “legal” theft of their labor when they are assigned to work in unfree conditions. Building on analysis of labor exploitation in Eastern China and forms of development in other spaces in China, the talk describes the way state power is channeled through infrastructure and institutions to intensify ethno-racialization and produce a “reeducation labor regime” at a frontier of global capitalism.

Sponsors: gongchao.org, Made in China Journal, positions politics, and Critical China Scholars. 

Chinese minutes: 在第一节由Darren Byler主讲的《恐怖资本主义：中国西北被囚禁的维吾尔人》，一名参加者为其报告及部份答问内容做了中文记录：简体字及繁体字。