Since 2016, China has placed approximately 2 million Uyghurs in detention centers for political reeducation, according to conservative estimates. The Uyghurs, who number around 10 million, are a Turkic minority living primarily in southwestern China. The official justification for their detention: fighting “Islamic extremism.”

The detention centers are driven, at their heart, by the political needs of the China’s ruling class. But they are framed within a set of counter-terrorism policies, known as Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), liberal Western governments and intergovernmental institutions have advocated since 9/11.

Though its precise contours vary by country and organization, CVE aims to prevent individuals from engaging in “terrorist” violence by addressing its purported ideological drivers. Like China’s detention centers, CVE is based on the notion that “extreme” beliefs, specifically Islamically inspired ones, are likely to lead to violence and threaten national security. Its goal is to counteract and ultimately eradicate those belief systems. CVE is, in essence, reeducation without the camps.