Here's an official Chinese government source defending the use of labour/"re-education" camps in Xinjiang: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201903/19/WS5c9033f0a3106c65c... . In past the Chinese government didn't send large numbers of people to camps based on their ethnicity.
Before 2003 the Chinese government just randomly pull people off street and if they can't prove (i.e. by showing an ID card) they live in this city they go to a camp [1], and this happened everywhere.
Heck, even less than 20 years ago.
China has had a system of labor/re-education camps in the past, named laojiao:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/02/ch...
These were supposedly abolished in 2013, but in fact many of them may have been rebranded using other titles, see:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2013/12/china-s-re-ed...
and this is why I was making the point that such policies are not new.
That being said - the article you linked to really sends chills down one's spines, and just reading the Chinese government's self-justification for forced interment of people not convicted nor charged with any crime indeed serves to emphasize the repressive nature of this practice.
In past the Chinese government did send large numbers of people to camps based on their ethnicity.
Tibetans - since 1957
Mongols - since its first years
Miao/Yao - 1982
Koreans - Koreans Chinese were routinely rounded up every time NK-China affairs were flaring up since seventies
And Uighurs were in, and out of concentration/extermination camps many times already in the past. In 1949, 1967, 1976, 1991, 1998
No they just occupied whole of Tibet and converted the whole area into a re-education camp while working to wipe out local culture.