What is crime though? Do you want to live somewhere where spitting on a random sidewalk in front of the wrong camera means you're banned from flying for a year? Is the fear of criminal violence greater than the fear of state violence?

> an action or omission that constitutes an offense that may be prosecuted by the state and is punishable by law.

He who holds the biggest stick writes the book of law

Depends on the country. Among my Danish countrymen I am pretty certain most is more afraid of criminal violence.

The purpose is not to control 'crime', per se, the purpose is to repress the population. Uighers in China are effectively under permanent military occupation; it would be like asking whether the U.S. occupation of Baghdad 'actually did against crime': totally orthogonal to the actual purpose of these policies.

It won't be crime free. These types of authoritarian systems also tend to have deep corruption. In other words, there will be plenty of people "with the right connections" to evade the system.

> The side effects of there not being any undetected and unprosecuted crime would be fascinating.

The book "Liars and Outliers" addresses this question some, at least in broad hypothetical terms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liars_and_Outliers

Depends how you define crime. A system like this creates lots of opportunities for abuse by the police.

It might be hard to study as I'm not sure how accurate crime stats are in China at all, let alone that region before the crackdown.