I think there's great concern that China is creating a real precedent. Of course, we know that all of China has significantly stepped up the persecution of religion, especially in 2018 with the new laws on religion. China is very likely to learn from the methods in Xinjiang how far they can go.
I have argued in my research that this represents an entire level up from the police state that has been created in Tibetan areas, for example, and then in Xinjiang. A re-education drive of this extent has not been seen since the 1950s and 1960s, although back then it was not as systematic, it did not have high tech, and it did not have the same economic resources to power the political indoctrination campaign that we see now.
The Chinese authorities are likely to learn from these methods and then apply them elsewhere. I've argued in an article of mine that we might see different and adaptive forms of indoctrination and re-education camps in other places, or even that these methods may be exported to other authoritarian nations.
Second, and this may relate a bit to what you said before, if what is occurring in Xinjiang today, on this scale, is not challenged in strong ways by the international community in other nations, then my question would be, what would be? How bad would it have to get? The Chinese will, if this is not sufficiently challenged, be emboldened to do anything. That is very much how China has operated in the past, seeing what it can get away with.
We already have seen in the past 10 days a response to the international media coverage and to what international institutions and nations are saying. The Chinese are now coming forward with what you could call a propaganda or marketing campaign in response. If we had said nothing, even that would not have been necessary. They would have remained at a denial stage.
Now, then, we have moved from a denial stage to acknowledgement and justification. But that is not enough. It has to go one step further.