China's spending on security-related construction in Xinjiang jumped in 2017 even as funds put towards vocational training declined amid claims the country is holding as many as one million ethnic Uighur in internment camps.
An analysis of official government spending by the Jamestown Foundation, a US think-tank, found that security-related spending rose nearly $2.9bn last year. Meanwhile, spending on vocational training declined by 7 percent.
"Xinjiang's budget figures do not reflect increased spending on vocational education in [Xinjiang] as the region ramped up camp construction," said Adrian Zenz, a researcher at the European School of Culture and Theology in Korntal, Germany, who wrote the report.
"Nor do they reflect an increase in criminal cases handled by courts and prosecutors. Rather, they reflect patterns of spending consistent with the construction and operation of highly secure political re-education camps designed to imprison hundreds of thousands of Uighurs with minimal due process."
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