Even for the Chinese Communist Party, its Uighur cotton slave trade is truly shocking. We’ve learned that “upwards of half a million” Uighur Muslims are forced into annual low-wage servitude as cotton pickers in Xinjiang province. Sometimes relocated hundreds of kilometers away from their families, these peoples and their rich culture have been subjugated. These innocents now exist only as drones for the Chinese economy.

It’s just the latest discovery from the world in which China’s Uighur population lives. Beijing has created this world to ensure the Communist Party’s dominion over Uighur lives and Uighur minds. Establishing a vast network of concentration camps that have imprisoned approximately 2 million people, China has enforced relentless reeducation programs and even sterilization against the Uighur people. These innocents are witnesses to the dystopian reality of what Xi Jinping calls his “Chinese dream.” As it was for those cotton-picking slaves of early America, this life is now a nightmare.