Adrian Zenz
Dr. Adrian Zenz is Senior Fellow and Director in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Washington, D.C. (non-resident). His research focus is on China’s ethnic policy, public recruitment and coercive poverty alleviation and labor programs in Tibet and Xinjiang, Beijing’s internment campaign in Xinjiang, and China’s domestic security budgets. Dr. Zenz is the author of Tibetanness under Threat, co-editor of Mapping Amdo: Dynamics of Change. He has published multiple peer-reviewed papers in leading academic China journals and has served as peer reviewer for over ten journals. He has played a leading role in the analysis of leaked Chinese government documents, to include the “China Cables,” the “Karakax List,” the “Xinjiang Papers,” and the “Xinjiang Police Files.” Dr. Zenz is an advisor to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, and a frequent contributor to the international media. He is not affiliated with the Jamestown Foundation.
Contact Adrian Zenz
Articles by Adrian Zenz
An Assessment of the Audit of Volkswagen’s Controversial Factory in Xinjiang
Executive Summary: A recently leaked copy of the audit of Volkswagen’s much-criticized joint-venture factory in Xinjiang indicates that claims made by Volkswagen inside the report are misleading or false. These
Updated ILO Forced Labor Guidelines Directly Target Uyghur Forced Labor
Executive Summary: For first time since establishing its forced labor taskforce in 2001, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has issued authoritative and comprehensive guidance on operationalizing the research and measurement
Forced Labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region: Assessing the Continuation of Coercive Labor Transfers in 2023 and Early 2024
Executive Summary: Higher-level policy and state planning documents indicate that coercive Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) employment and poverty alleviation policies are to continue at least through 2025. XUAR state
Unemployment Monitoring and Early Warning: New Trends in Xinjiang’s Coercive Labor Placement Systems
Introduction In mid-2019, the first efforts to systematically research and conceptualize state-sponsored forced labor systems in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) took place (Journal of Political Risk, December 2019).
Evidence of the Chinese Central Government’s Knowledge of and Involvement in Xinjiang’s Re-Education Internment Campaign
Introduction Documents leaked to the New York Times (also known as the Xinjiang Papers) in November 2019 revealed how Chinese President Xi Jinping laid the groundwork for the Chinese government’s
Coercive Labor and Forced Displacement in Xinjiang’s Cross-Regional Labor Transfer Program
Dr. Adrian Zenz is one of the world’s leading scholars on People’s Republic of China (PRC) government policies towards the country’s western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. In 2017-2018, Dr.
Xinjiang’s System of Militarized Vocational Training Comes to Tibet
Introduction and Summary In 2019 and 2020, the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) introduced new policies to promote the systematic, centralized, and large-scale training and transfer of “rural surplus laborers” to
Sterilizations, IUDs, and Coercive Birth Prevention: The CCP’s Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birth Rates in Xinjiang
ARTICLE UPDATED October 2, 2021 Editor’s Note: This article is an abridged version of a longer and more detailed report by Dr. Zenz, which was published by the Jamestown Foundation
Sterilizations, IUDs, and Mandatory Birth Control: The CCP’s Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birthrates in Xinjiang
Dr. Adrian Zenz is one of the world’s leading scholars on People’s Republic of China (PRC) government policies towards the country’s western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. Research performed by
Xinjiang’s Re-Education and Securitization Campaign: Evidence from Domestic Security Budgets
In August 2018, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed its concern at reports the PRC had detained as many as a million members of Muslim ethnic
New Evidence for China’s Political Re-Education Campaign in Xinjiang
This article is condensed from a longer paper, available for download here. (Editor's note: longer paper was updated with corrections September 2018) Since summer of 2017, troubling reports in Western
Corralling the People’s Armed Police: Centralizing Control to Reflect Centralized Budgets
On March 21, the Chinese government announced a major restructuring of the People's Armed Police (PAP) that will relegate all but one of its current units to other ministries, meaning
China’s Domestic Security Spending: An Analysis of Available Data
On February 1, 2018, China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) revealed a stunning 92.8 percent increase in its domestic security spending: from 30.05 billion RMB in 2016 to 57.95 billion
“Full Employment” in Tibet: The Beginning and End of Chen Quanguo’s Neo-Socialist Experiment
Introduction On November 8th, 2017, the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) published its second and final public job intake for the year, completing its annual process of announcing open public and
Chen Quanguo: The Strongman Behind Beijing’s Securitization Strategy in Tibet and Xinjiang
Over the last year, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) Party Secretary Chen Quanguo (陈全国) has dramatically increased the police presence in Xinjiang by advertising over 90,000 new police and security-related
Jamestown Analysts Cited by The Economist
China Brief contributors Dr. James Leibold and Dr. Adrian Zenz were cited in an article in The Economist on May 4 entitled "The extraordinary ways in which China humiliates Muslims".
Xinjiang’s Rapidly Evolving Security State
The Chinese government has held several shows of force in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), with machine-gun toting police and armored personnel carriers parading through the streets of the