China Is Turning a Crushed East Turkistan Into a Tourist Trap

After years of human rights abuses, Beijing wants Han visitors in the region.

In a county in China’s northwest Xinjiang region where authorities ran multiple internment camps for local ethnic minorities, the local government has commissioned a new set of buildings for a very different demographic: tourists.

These sites and services, which were commissioned, opened, or expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic, are all part of the Xinjiang government’s efforts to promote tourism across the region. Last year, the government completed a stretch of more than 1,600 miles of railroad tracks encircling the Taklamakan Desert, a circuit aimed at improving the local economy, including by offering special rail services that target tourists.