McKinsey Holds Lavish Corporate Retreat in Kashgar Four Miles from Uyghur Concentration Camps

McKinsey & Company holds a lavish corporate retreat themed ‘Connecting Together’ in Kashgar, Xinjiang from September 6-9, 2018, where hundreds of consultants ‘frolicked in the desert, riding camels over sand dunes and mingling in tents linked by red carpets.’ The retreat location is especially remarkable: Kashgar, the ancient Silk Road city experiencing a major humanitarian crisis where China is imprisoning up to one million ethnic Uyghurs in internment camps. About four miles from where McKinsey consultants discussed their work advising China’s state-owned companies, a sprawling concentration camp holds thousands of ethnic Uyghurs as part of what the UN and others later characterize as genocide. One week before the McKinsey event, a United Nations committee had denounced the mass detentions and urged China to stop. The political backdrop does not appear to bother the McKinsey consultants, who post pictures on Instagram chronicling their ‘Disney-like adventures.’ A dinner is held at the gate to the old city in close proximity to the camps. The retreat occurs as McKinsey advises at least 22 of China’s 100 biggest state-owned enterprises, with 30% of McKinsey Greater China’s clients being SOEs operating in sectors ‘ranging from oil and gas, to technology and telecommunications, to banking and insurance.’ The Kashgar retreat symbolizes McKinsey’s moral blindness to human rights atrocities committed by authoritarian clients and the firm’s prioritization of business relationships over ethical concerns about genocide.