It's hard not to get that impression with cage-camps at the borders, asking foreign travelers for all their social media details and locking out nationalities like Iranians and Chinese from certain ventures.
Yet, here you are claiming it's "all just Chinese propaganda", apparently completely unaware about the fact that a statement like that is pretty much it's very own propaganda by deflecting everything that could be wrong as a mere invention by the "enemy from outside".
But when outrageous claims are made about China [0], the vast majority of people just gobble them up like it's manifest truth itself, without even thinking about questioning the methodology or the involved parties motives.
[0] https://www.aspi.org.au/report/mapping-xinjiangs-re-educatio...