It turned into an interesting discussion actually, thank you!
> To practice things that can be extended to the wider population maybe?
I didn't read the full article you referenced, but from what I know it is true that surveillance has tighten up in Xinjiang. Why do you think that happened? Why does Chinese government needs to "control" Uighurs, and not other minorities that are living peacefully in other regions of China.
I don't know what exactly is happening out there, but naturally you'd need more security when the there's danger to public safety. I wouldn't say there's no wrong-doing of the government, but bottom line is, I don't really doubt the primary goal is just anti-terrorism and make that region safe.
> How come people just disappear and nobody knows what happens to them?
Well I don't know how could people just disappear in Xinjiang.
But it reminds me that, recently a friend of mine asked me "How could a person just disappear? How scary is that" after she read this article.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/world/asia/china-fan-bing...
Apparently it sounds like the Chinese government "made" her disappear. Well, I only found it funny and I told her "It's fine, she just disappeared from media. Her agent probably knows her whereabout but won't tell the media as she's being investigated and there's no official result." Fan Bingbing reappeared just a few days later when the investigation ended, as most of us expected, and she made an official announcement about her tax evasion. Throughout the entire time I didn't feel anything scary at all, but that's not the impression if you only read the NYTimes report.
> But saying it's all biased and therefore made up
I wouldn't say they all made up facts, but simply selecting the truth to report and finding a way to report it that supports their existing belief can also make a huge impact on people's perception.
I also don't believe most professional news reporters would just make up facts. (The "Self-individual media" in China is way too different, plenty of them do make up facts;) So, a much more likely scenario in my mind, is that they interviewed unreliable sources. To depict that in a more extreme but easy to understand way, just imaging if reports interviewed a terrorist in middle east, and ask them about America. Plenty of people left China in the past century (very small in percentage but still a big number because of the large population base) because either they really hate Chinese government or they're trying to get refugee visa. They also have much closer relations with western media. But anyway, it's just my guess.