BEIJING IS PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1939: China’s Xinjiang Crackdown Reaps Millions of Dollars in Assets for the State.
Chinese authorities have seized and sold at auction tens of millions of dollars in assets owned by jailed Uyghur business owners amid a broad government campaign to assimilate ethnic minorities in the country’s northwest Xinjiang region.
Since 2019, Xinjiang courts have put at least 150 assets—ranging from home appliances to real estate and company shares—belonging to at least 21 people and valued at a total $84.8 million up for auction on e-commerce sites.
The listings were compiled by the Uyghur Human Rights Project, an advocacy group partially funded by the U.S. government, and were corroborated by The Wall Street Journal, which reviewed court documents and corporate records. The Xinjiang government didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Flashback: Xinjiang Shows We Haven’t Learnt a Thing from Auschwitz.
Related: Final Sale in Berlin—Database of Jewish-Owned Businesses in Berlin Now Part of LBI Collections.
Since 2005, I have been studying how the National Socialist regime systematically destroyed and looted businesses owned by Jews in Berlin, as well as the ways that Jews responded to this persecution. Despite the enormous concentration of “Jewish businesses” in Berlin, no comprehensive study on the topic existed before my team and I published our study in 2012. In particular, the small- and medium-sized companies that formed the backbone of Jewish commercial life had been neglected in the research.
I wonder if Xi ever asks, “Are we the baddies?”