American children were brought inside the Chinese Communist Party’s paramilitary system in Xinjiang—then encouraged to carry its propaganda back home.
New Chinese-language records reveal that the Atlanta-based Chinese American Youth Association, or CAYA, participated in an August summer camp administered by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.
The XPCC is not an innocent cultural organization.
It is a sprawling CCP-controlled paramilitary entity that the U.S. Treasury sanctioned over serious human-rights abuses targeting Uyghurs and other minorities.
Treasury says the organization helped implement a “surveillance, detention, and indoctrination program” targeting Uyghurs. It cited reported mass arbitrary detention and severe physical abuse in imposing sanctions.
Yet the version presented to children from America was radically different.
The youths were taught “Corps spirit,” taken to an XPCC border regiment, and told to become overseas messengers who would “tell the Corps story.”
American Children Enter The XPCC
The August 3–12 program brought together 50 overseas Chinese youths from the United States, Germany, and Belgium.
An official XPCC announcement states that the camp was administered by the XPCC’s Returned Overseas Chinese Federation and co-organized by the XPCC Education Bureau and an XPCC school.
The announcement explicitly says “兵团精神”—“Corps spirit”—was incorporated into classroom instruction and field visits.
CAYA was directly involved.
Chinese state media identified CAYA’s Ran Qimei as the American delegation leader. CAYA students performed alongside students from an XPCC school during the opening ceremony.
An XPCC official then encouraged the visiting youths to become messengers who would promote Chinese culture and “讲好兵团故事”—“tell the Corps story,” according to China News Service.
This was not simply a heritage tour.
It was an effort to teach foreign children the CCP’s preferred story about one of the most notorious organizations operating in Xinjiang—and send that message back overseas.
From America To A Chinese Border Regiment
The program eventually took the children to XPCC Regiment 185, which Chinese propaganda celebrates as the “first regiment on the northwest border.”
There, the youths toured a sentry post overlooking the Chinese-Kazakh border and listened to stories glorifying the defense of Chinese territory.
“One does only one thing in a lifetime: I stand guard for the motherland,” a guide reportedly told them.
The children were shown a monument bearing slogans about an “unbreakable border-defense line” and an “indestructible military-reclamation spirit.”
The official report published photographs of the youths—many wearing matching red shirts—posing beneath Chinese flags at the border monument.
They also toured the XPCC Military Reclamation Museum, where they heard celebratory stories about former soldiers “putting down their guns and picking up hoes” to build Xinjiang.
There was apparently no discussion of the reason Washington sanctioned the XPCC: its role in the CCP’s repression of Uyghurs.
Instead, the children were being prepared to counter that image.
An official closing account said the youths had collected “vivid material” for “spreading the real Xinjiang overseas.”
CAYA Admits Chinese Government Funds Its Work
CAYA says it is headquartered in Atlanta and works with more than 4,500 students, Chinese clubs, and Chinese schools across the United States.
It also openly acknowledges that Chinese government offices help finance its activities.
“What we do is made possible by funding from various cultural outreach offices in several provincial and local governments in China,” its website states.
CAYA does not identify those governments, how much they provided, or which programs they funded.
No public record reviewed for this story establishes who paid for the 2026 XPCC trip.
But materials for a separate 2025 CAYA program said the “Chinese side” would cover lodging, meals, cultural activities, and sightseeing while families paid for airfare, visas, and insurance.
The CCP did not conceal what it was doing.
It published the photographs, the itinerary, and the instructions itself—apparently assuming nobody in America would bother to read them.
