Reporting by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists helped force a shift in Beijing’s public stance on Xinjiang, according to new academic research — from denying the existence of a vast detention camp system to justifying it and, eventually, to partially dismantling it.
In an article published in Modern China , a peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to China studies, political scientist Jan Švec traces how China responded to growing global scrutiny of its “re-education” campaign in Xinjiang between 2014 and 2022. Švec, who’s based at the Institute of International Relations in Prague, used official Chinese documents, state media analysis, leaked files, and international reporting to argue that international exposure played a decisive role in forcing Beijing to adjust both its narrative and its policies.
Following ethnic rioting, and a series of deadly terror attacks within and outside Xinjiang which Beijing blamed on Uyghurs, President Xi Jinping launched a “Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Extremism” in 2014 that framed Uyghur identity as a security threat. Local authorities experimented with so-called “de-extremization” centers, openly praising them in regional media. At this stage, there was little international awareness — and little effort to conceal what was happening.
That changed dramatically in 2017, when mass detentions expanded across the region. As arrests surged, Beijing imposed a strict information blackout. References to the camps disappeared from national media, and Xinjiang coverage was softened to emphasize development and stability. But outside China, journalists, researchers and Uyghur exile groups began piecing together evidence of mass incarceration.
Švec says a turning point came in late 2019 after the U.S. imposed sanctions over the repression of Uyghurs and ICIJ published the China Cables , a trove of leaked internal documents that laid bare how the camps operated. The files included detailed instructions on surveillance, discipline and indefinite detention , confirming in the Chinese government’s own words what survivors and investigators had long alleged: the camps were coercive, centrally coordinated and part of a sweeping program of mass surveillance and population control.
China, which denies human rights abuses and says religious freedom is respected in Xinjiang, responded to the China Cables investigation by decrying it as “pure fabrication and fake news.”
China Cables and a second leak published that November by the New York Times called the Xinjiang Papers — which included internal speeches and documents confirming the central authorities endorsed the mass repression — had immediate impact. Google searches for “Xinjiang” surged by 236 percent between September and December of 2019, according to Švec.
“The leaked documents and the imposition of sanctions significantly heightened the public attention on Xinjiang in late 2019,” he wrote.
According to Švec, Chinese officials reacted to the leaks as forcefully as they did to Western sanctions. State media launched aggressive attacks on critical media reports, while diplomats scrambled to counter the damage.
“In one response, the official media deemed it necessary to say that Western media ‘cannot have any actual influence’ and ‘just cannot do anything about it’. An officially published letter by a former ‘student’ of one of the camps urged Americans to ‘shut up,’ ” Švec writes.
Yet just days after the China Cables were published, authorities announced that all camp “trainees” had “graduated,” signaling an abrupt policy shift.
Švec’s analysis finds that this was not an isolated move. As international pressure mounted — from United Nations reviews, media exposés and NGO reports — he says China transitioned through distinct phases: denial, partial acknowledgment, formal legalization, downsizing and eventual abandonment of the camps as a visible policy. He says detention facilities were physically dismantled or repurposed, and references to the camps vanished from official discourse after 2020.
Crucially, he says, these changes began before major sanctions were imposed, suggesting that exposure and “naming and shaming” were more influential than economic penalties alone. “China explicitly reacted to investigative findings,” Švec wrote, adjusting its approach even as it publicly insisted it had done nothing wrong.
Švec adds, “Nevertheless, although the first sanctions were adopted only in October 2019, the threat of their imposition had existed since at least 2018, and their influence on the decision making of the authorities cannot be excluded as well.” He states that China’s decision to retreat from the policy of mass internment in Xinjiang was most likely shaped by a combination of international pressure and the perceived reduction of security threats.
Švec argues that his findings challenge the widespread belief that China is immune to international criticism on sensitive domestic issues like Xinjiang. Instead, it suggests that Beijing is deeply concerned about its global image — particularly when human rights abuses threaten diplomatic ties, economic ambitions, and flagship projects like the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s massive global infrastructure and investment strategy.
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According to human rights activists and Uyghur groups, Uyghurs continue to face imprisonment, forced labor, surveillance and cultural erasure. Human Rights Watch and independent journalists have found that some political reeducation camps have been closed. As o f mid-2022, Human Rights Watch estimated that close to half a million Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples remained in prison.
In August 2024, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights reported many problematic laws and policies remain in place in Xinjiang.
But Švec’s research indicates that without sustained international scrutiny — and without reporting efforts like those led by ICIJ — the camp system in its original form might have continued well beyond 2020.
Echoing ICIJ’s later China Targets investigation, Švec’s paper notes that China also employs transnational repression and a range of sham “NGOs” to mitigate the negative impacts of international pressure regarding its domestic human rights situation.