New regional party leadership named in Urumqi, Thailand readies deportation of two pardoned Uyghurs, 17.9 billion yuan in deals signed in Maralbishi

October 23, 2026 Közet Staff

Közet’s daily roundup of news on Uyghurs, their homeland, and the world around them. Friday, October 23, 2026.

Updated 10:20 a.m. Eastern with Thailand’s pardon of two Uyghur men and their pending deportation.

TOP LINE

The new regional party committee elected Chen Xiaojiang as its secretary and named a 14-member standing committee at its first plenum in Urumqi on Friday, according to a communiqué published by Xinjiang Daily, the regional party committee’s newspaper, at 8:42 p.m. Beijing time (8:42 a.m. Eastern). The five-yearly meeting of the Chinese Communist Party’s delegates for the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region had closed that morning after 723 delegates elected the 11th regional party committee — 82 full and 17 alternate members — and a 55-member discipline inspection commission, the newspaper reported; Chen announced the result at 12:15 p.m. The plenum named four deputy secretaries: Erkin Tuniyaz, chairman of the regional government; He Zhongyou, who is also party secretary of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC); Zhang Yingchun, the regional government’s executive vice chair; and Wang Lin, Urumqi’s party secretary. The nine other members include Nie Zhuang, Kashgar prefecture’s party secretary and a regional vice chair, and Li Guoliang, party secretary of the regional education department. The biographies published with the list give four members as Uyghur — Erkin Tuniyaz, Yusupjan Memet, Ilzat Ehmetjan and Qeyser Abdukerim — and one, Qadan Käbenuly, as Kazakh. The plenum also approved Liu Chunlei, a standing committee member, as head of the discipline inspection commission, with four deputies including Reyhangul Asim, a Uyghur, and Roza Nuksenbek, a Kazakh. The 2021 first plenum seated 15 standing committee members, The Paper, a Shanghai state-owned outlet, reported at the time. Közet has not confirmed which members are new to the standing committee. (Xinjiang Daily, the regional party committee’s newspaper; The Paper, a Shanghai state-owned outlet)

HOMELAND

Maralbishi gathering yields 17.9 billion yuan in signed agreements and a new textile cluster list. Twenty industrial-transfer cooperation projects worth 17.918 billion yuan were signed on October 22 at the “2026 China industrial transfer development matchmaking event” in Maralbishi (Bachu), Kashgar prefecture, Xinjiang Daily, the regional party committee’s newspaper, reported Friday. The event also published the regional government’s second batch of four textile-and-garment clusters marked for priority support, of which the report names three: chemical-fiber blending in Kucha (Kuqa), cotton spinning and weaving in Ghulja County (Yining County) and long-staple cotton textiles in Awat (Awati). Named projects include an integrated weaving, printing and dyeing plant in Maralbishi and a high-performance polyester industrial-yarn and canvas project in Aksu prefecture. The 17.918 billion yuan is the face value of signed agreements, not completed investment, and the report does not say how many of the 20 projects are textile. It also carries aggregate official figures — larger textile firms’ added value up 24.8% in January–September, and “more than a million” jobs across the chain — that Közet has not checked against statistical releases. The China Home Textile Association’s notice for the same gathering listed a scheduled presentation on a cotton traceability system; the Xinjiang Daily report does not mention it, and Közet could not establish whether it took place. (Xinjiang Daily, the regional party committee’s newspaper; China Home Textile Association notice, via Sohu)

Cotton quality subsidy to be tied to chip tracing by 2028. A 2026–2028 implementation plan links the region’s cotton quality subsidy to a traceability system that connects data from planting through harvest, purchase, ginning, storage and inspection, according to an October 16 Xinjiang Daily report reproduced on the regional government’s website. Growers choose between a unique identification code, available in every cotton-growing county and XPCC division, and a chip, piloted in six counties including Jing (Jinghe) and Shawan and in the XPCC’s 5th, 7th, 8th and 12th divisions, with full chip coverage targeted for 2028. The subsidy goes to the “actual grower” of cotton meeting a “double 29 B2” fiber standard, draws on about 10% of the annual target-price subsidy pool, applies one policy to XPCC and non-XPCC land, and pays 0.03 yuan per kilogram more for chip-traced cotton; ginners must keep traceability ledgers and video records. The scheme tracks the fiber’s quality and origin; the report says nothing about who picks the cotton or on what terms, and Közet has not obtained the implementation document itself. (Xinjiang Daily, via the regional government website)

First scheduled cotton train from the region to Sichuan. A train carrying 1,720 tonnes of cotton left Kuytun on October 21 for Qinglongchang station in Meishan, Sichuan, the first timetabled cotton freight service between the region and Sichuan, Xinjiang Daily reported. The operator, China Railway Urumqi Group, said it set up the service with the regional and XPCC supply-and-marketing cooperatives and the national cotton exchange, cutting transit from 10–15 days to about three, that it now runs nine scheduled cotton and textile routes to six eastern rail bureaus, and that it has moved 1.957 million tonnes of cotton and textiles this year, up 80.2%. These are the operator’s figures as relayed by the newspaper; the report names neither shipper nor buyer. (Xinjiang Daily, the regional party committee’s newspaper)

Snow reaches Urumqi. Snow fell in Urumqi early Friday, leaving roads slippery and visibility reduced during the morning rush, Xinjiang Daily reported in a photo report from the West Grand Bridge (Xidaqiao) area showing traffic police directing vehicles. The report records conditions on one stretch of road; it does not establish closures, injuries or losses anywhere in the region following Thursday’s Central Meteorological Observatory warning, and Közet has seen no regional damage report. (Xinjiang Daily, the regional party committee’s newspaper)

DIASPORA

Gheni says The Hague’s mayor received him over a City Hall assault. Abdurehim Gheni, a Netherlands-based Uyghur activist, wrote in a first-person account published Friday by Bitter Winter, a magazine published by CESNUR, the Turin-based Center for Studies on New Religions, that Mayor Jan van Zanen received him at City Hall on October 8, joined by the city’s senior security adviser. Gheni writes that he asked the municipality to inquire through the Chinese embassy or the Dutch foreign ministry about 19 relatives with whom he says he has had no contact since May 2017, and to consider security measures against transnational threats. He says the meeting followed his May 20 testimony to the city council about February 14, when, he writes, people attending a Lunar New Year celebration in City Hall’s atrium grabbed him and tore up his placards during a solo protest, and that the city has since stopped hosting the celebration there. These are Gheni’s own accounts; Közet has not seen a municipal record of the meeting, the council testimony or the February incident, and has not established who was involved or whether police recorded it. (Bitter Winter, published by CESNUR)

INTERNATIONAL

Thailand pardons two Uyghur men and prepares to deport them. Two Uyghur men held in Thailand since 2014 have received royal pardons and were moved on Wednesday to Bangkok’s immigration detention center to await deportation “to China or another country,” Thanit Thaiwatcharamat, deputy commander of Thailand’s immigration bureau, told AFP on Thursday. The men were among five detainees who tried to escape immigration detention in 2020, and the resulting convictions kept them out of earlier deportations, Kannavee Suebsang, a former Thai lawmaker who worked for the UN refugee agency in 2014 and now runs a nongovernmental group, told the agency; he said Thailand’s National Security Council will decide where they go. They are among the last of more than 300 Uyghurs detained in Thailand in 2014, according to Kannavee; Thailand sent about 170 women and children to Turkey in 2015 and deported groups to China in 2015 and in February 2025, AFP reported. The agency did not name the men. Közet has not seen the pardon, any Thai government statement on the destination, or any Chinese statement, and has no independent information on the men’s identities or on the whereabouts of the 40 deported in 2025. (AFP, via New Straits Times)

Congressional commission says Beijing’s new rules collide with the UFLPA. The Congressional-Executive Commission on China, a body of members of Congress and administration officials, said in its China Monitor issue published Thursday that two State Council regulations issued in April 2026 — on industrial and supply-chain security and on “countering unjustified extraterritorial jurisdiction” — can put multinationals in breach of Chinese rules when they conduct the origin tracing and audits the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act requires. The issue recounts that China’s Commerce Ministry added six U.S. entities, including supply-chain tracing firm Altana Technologies, the auditor Verité and the Responsible Business Alliance, to its countermeasures list after the Department of Homeland Security added 43 companies to the UFLPA Entity List on August 3, bringing that list to 187. Those August figures are repeated from earlier announcements; the issue reports no new designations by either government, and Közet found no DHS entity-list notice since August 3. (Congressional-Executive Commission on China; Department of Homeland Security)

MEDIA WATCH

Xinjiang Daily fronts a Russian regional ombudsman: “not Western standards.” Hours after the new leadership was announced, Xinjiang Daily, the regional party committee’s newspaper, published an interview with the human rights commissioner of Russia’s Sverdlovsk region, identified by surname as Merzlyakova, under the headline that China’s human rights “cannot be measured by Western standards.” The paper says she visited the region October 19–22, touring an exhibition hall in Urumqi, the Six Star Street museum in Ghulja (Yining) and a neighborhood service center in Urumqi’s Tianshan district, and quotes her saying the United States and the West are “used to fixating on” multi-ethnic, multi-faith regions. The article does not say who organized or paid for the visit, and Közet has not checked the commissioner’s own account of it. It appeared the same evening Chen Xiaojiang’s closing speech called for more “inviting in and going out” to show the world “the real Xinjiang.” (Xinjiang Daily, the regional party committee’s newspaper)

ON THE RADAR

Regional leadership: The new standing committee’s first regular meetings, and any central-level announcement on the members who left the 10th committee’s leadership. The Friday communiqué names who was elected, not who departed.
October 23, London: King’s College London listed a roundtable on colonialism, multipolarity and solidarity, including Uyghur scholar Ablimit Baki Elterish, for 3:30–5 p.m. London time (10:30 a.m.–noon Eastern). Közet has not reviewed a recording.
October 24, Paris: Abduweli Ayup is expected to present research on language loss and family separation; the World Uyghur Congress, an advocacy group, places it at the Sorbonne. Közet has not confirmed the organizer, venue or program.
Through Saturday: Snow and wind across the north under the Central Meteorological Observatory’s October 22–24 warning; no regional damage report has been published.
Maralbishi (Bachu): The China Home Textile Association’s program ran through October 23; whether the National Cotton and Cotton Yarn Trading Center’s traceability presentation took place remains unconfirmed.

Radar is compiled by Közet’s editors from Közet’s own reporting, public documents and other outlets’ work, attributed in each item. Where Közet has read the underlying record, the item says so; where it could not verify a claim, the item says that too. Statements by governments and companies are reported as statements, not facts. Uyghur place names appear first, with the official Chinese name in parentheses. Published weekdays at 10:00 a.m. Eastern. Editorial standards and corrections: kozet.org/editorial-standards.