China was always going to have a problem in Xinjiang as it is culturally and ethnically different than the Han population in the east. They have had several terrorist attacks where Uighur muslim extremists attacked and killed people in the east. The one that really focused the minds of the CCP was one really close to home in Tiananmen Square (
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/25/islamist-china-tiananmen-beijing-attack)
The CCP saw the islamic extremist threat growing and had a few options they actually decided to "emulate aspects of America’s “war on terror” after the Sept. 11 attacks" (
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html) but with additional measures such as labor camps where they are attempting to brainwash or "reeducate" the muslim identity out of the Uighurs and make them loyal to the government instead of their faith.
One of the reasons why stability is so important in Xinjiang is it is a major thoroughfare for the Belt and Road Initiative. If there was an Islamic separatist uprising that would hinder plans to develop infrastructure links to Eurasia and a heavy military presence would have to be brought in to quell an uprising.
Beijing is trying to preempt these problems with draconian measures to try to stamp out these issues before they turn into an all out guerilla war within China.
Also a large amount of oil and gas are in Xinjiang and if China ever had issues getting oil delivered through the first island chain (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_island_chain) due to military conflict in the region they would need a stable environment to quickly develop those energy resources.
A way I imagined this was what if Washington state was predominantly Muslim while the rest of the US was not, and these Washington staters wanted independence and had orchestrated terrorist attacks on Capitol Hill. Add in that there was a lot of oil and gas under this state. Would the US do something like the Japanese internment camps again or just spy on everyone's phones and put video cameras on every block. Whatever the response would be I have an inkling human rights groups wouldn't be fans.
None of this excuses the horrible first hand accounts of forced sterilizations, torture, rape and murder. (
https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-a-million-people-are-jailed-at-china-s-gulags-i-escaped-here-s-what-goes-on-inside-1.7994216) I'm just trying to provide the forces and pressures pushing what is happening and why the government has decided down this dark path.
Is what they are doing terrible? In my view absolutely. If they didn't do this would there have been more terrorist attacks, probably. Would there have been a Chechnya like war that killed many thousands of people, I don't know, counterfactuals are very hard to evaluate. What is apparent is Beijing felt it worth abusing a million of its own citizens and being an international pariah so clearly they thought the other path of letting this fester would deal worse results.
What are your thoughts? Do you think I've made a mistake in my evaluation? All criticism is welcome.