Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

When it comes to digitized records and digital government, some countries are further along

than others. Britain's National Health Service still buys fax machines every year, but

one upside of the pandemic is that it's speeding up digital shifts.

And the remote hamlet of Heider in Alaska was so linked with nearby Stewart that you barely know

it was across the Canadian border. COVID-19 has broken those links and border controls are stopping

much needed provisioning for the winter. But first, a backlash is growing against China's

abuse of Uyghurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority group in the province of Xinjiang.

The Chinese Communist Party is detaining and abusing more than one million Uyghur Muslims

and internment camps in Xinjiang. We met one former detainee who described being placed in chains

and a full metal jacket as he was interrogated. This week, Disney came under fire for filming

its new movie Mulan in Xinjiang and for thanking the region's government in the closing credits.

Calls for people to boycott the film returned once again this week.

At the same time, came news that the Trump administration is considering a ban on importing

products containing cotton from the province. It's responding to concerns that some Chinese companies

rely on forced labor by Uyghurs. The evidence of China's persecution of the minority group has been

piling up and for multinational companies that depend on Chinese suppliers, it's a thorny issue.

Xinjiang is a very important production base for certain agricultural products in China

and it's also a place which is attracted a tremendous amount of scrutiny for human rights issues.

The U.S. State Department and the human rights groups think you basically have a state-sponsored

system in which the Uyghurs who have been detained in re-education camps are, for example,

...