Over-inflated in this context is local governments would be incentivized to report that more workers were recruited under poverty alleviation scheme, so the actual number of workers would be lower i.e. local officials are inflating stats to meet quotas. The researchers associates the ILO list, 1 article of transfer from 1 actual reeducation camp, uses the testimonial of a few workers (from Bitter Winter no less) and tries to conflate this to all 80k workers. They have no idea how much is migrant labor vs forced labor. Again, only the most biased and agenda-ed reading would conclude it was all forced labor. Just like the original XJ camp estimates by Zenz based off bidding information, geospatial analysis extrapolated from 50k to 4million to whatever fits the needs of western propaganda. The Chinese system is opaque, the data can be massaged to fit any narrative, which is why the agendas of those that make these claims need to be considered. The fact that the researchers collated all this data (which ASPI is very good at) but still had to massage the narrative through dubious associations (which ASPI has been frequently criticized over), and still only found 80k workers is indicative that that the XJ campaign has scaled down - the original XJ poverty alleviation program called for 400k workers if memory serves. But ASPI isn't going to announce that data indicates China has actually reduced the scale of repression. ASPI is characteristic of the sensationalist extreme analysis for anyone who follow reporting on Chinese issues over the last decade. You need to understand the researcher's bias to contextualize the research.