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.
100% - but such a sentence also needs to come with a disclaimer explaining that it doesn't mean the CCP regime isn't guilty of killing millions of its own people over the years and that any ideology or technology they export needs to be viewed as such.
Yesterday: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/22/hong-kong-pi...
They're currently removing the Tianamen commemoration statue.
https://hongkongfp.com/2021/12/23/breaking-fears-for-condemn...
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/3160744/universi...
And it's not just an US thing, btw. Many nations perceive dealing with China as walking on eggshells.
Since you've formed the opinion that Chinese government policy hasn't become more repressive, and that opinion is clearly educated, surely you have plenty of links to give us to back up your position.
In comparison, in China if the state media decides to lie for its partisan reasons then there is no where you can go to hear the truth so you never can distinguish the truth and we have a thousand different examples of that happening.
And if all these media outlets say Russia/China/Iraq/Iran is evil at the same time, then it must be true, right?
* lying in official diplomatic relationships between countries is rather rare
* within countries, democratic leaders are much more likely to lie to their population than autocrats
* countries with imperial ambitions and long-distance ventures lie more often than others
* within great powers, the depiction of the rival great powers is especially lie-ridden
In other words, for a person living in the US - it's likely that whatever US news sources tell you about China (or Russia) is mostly lies or exaggerations
There are many repressive aspects to the Chinese regime (and government specifically I suppose); but this is probably less the case today then, say, 30 years ago. Certainly I doubt very much repression has been tightened over the past few years.
If I'm mistaken - please provide references, preferably to non-US-aligned media sources.
*Edit:* Hong-Kong situation notwithstanding.