I lived in Urumqi for a few months (also met some Ugyhurs when I was living in Kazakhstan).

So try to dispel some of my opinions on the Ugyhur situation.

I can't dispel them if I don't know the specifics, but in general, what you hear in western media is either made up or taken wildly out of context.

Until the 2010s, there were significant issues with terrorism, with riots happening in Urumqi. There's still a few glass panels you can see where it doesn't quite match the rest of the underpass entrance or whatever. The government responded by 1. absolutely massive economic development projects, from wind farms to greenbelts and infrastructure, 2. Increased affirmative action, so a lot more Uhygurs were going to college in Beijing and Shanghai, and 3. sending basically anyone convicted of any crime to a job-training facility, the idea being that people who have jobs would be less disenfranchised and harder to radicalize. It was generally successful in that there's been fewer terrorist attacks and a lot more economic development among the Ugyhur population, but 3 was unpopular enough they wound that down in the late 2010/early 2020s. Other measures to stop the terrorist attacks include hiring a shitton of police and security guards. Every mall, apartment building, and hotel has at least 1, sometimes 2 60 year old guards on their phones. They often can't read or speak mandarin fluently.

Orthogonal to this there's a sort of racist/patriarchal attitude you see from some Han people the government tries to address somewhat with anti-discrimination laws.

There's a struggle in Xinjiang (and much of China) about how to bring intangible aspects of cultures into modernity, often it's resolved through creating a commercialized version of the thing that can sustain itself in a market economy. I have mixed feelings here.