Thread by @lymanstoneky

So one of the lines that the PRC gives about Xinjiang is that what is REALLY happening is exceptionally rapid modernization of the economy, and that the internment camps are actually EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES.

A cool thing about this story is that if it is true that China is making massive investments in education in Xinjiang from 2010-2020, then it should show up as a very large increase in educational attainment in Xinjiang between the 2010 and 2020 censuses.

So, here's the change in average years of education in the population aged 15+ according to the official press release for the 2020 census.

I have highlighted the ethnic autonomous regions.

Source: stats.gov.cn/english/PressR…

What you can see is that the rate of increase in educational attainment is about identical to the national average, and actually *lower* than what we observe for many other of the autonomous ethnic regions.

This suggests that China's claim that they are making uniquely intense educational investments in Xinjiang is false. (cc @Nrg8000 for your interest, see above)

Nor was the portrayal of Xinjiang as educationally backward and needing additional development ever very plausible. Here I show the years of schooling in 2010 and 2020, organized by 2010 educational attainment levels.

Xinjiang had above-average educational attainment in 2010!

So portraying Xinjiang's "high" fertility rate (actually not high, probably near replacement rate) pre-new-security-measures as due to backwardness or lack of educational is pretty clearly absurd.

So @alon_levy points out there may be big attainment gaps between Uyghurs and Han. Data from the 2000 Census (last I have on hand) confirms this.

So what would happen if we assume that Han Chinese in Xinjiang had the ***lowest rate of increase in attainment of any province*** (0.56 years), and account for their share of the population?

The implied change "among non-Han" is the yellow Xinjiang bar PLUS the pink bit.

However, I don't think this is a plausible assumption. Given the ramp-up in manufacturing investment and government employment in Xinjiang and shift away from agriculture, it's implausible that the Han in Xinjiang had a super-low increase in attainment.

If we assume that Han Chinese had a totally average increase in education, then the "just among Uyghurs" change is indistinguishable from the province-level change:

So ***to the extent that*** you think the province level change is disguising a more-rapid increase among Uyghurs, you must also believe that it is disguising a *dramatic underperformance* among Han in Xinjiang.