LAST WEEK, Chinese officials were asked at a news conference about the continuing reports that China has locked in concentration camps more than 1 million ethnic Muslim Uighurs, Kazakhs and others in Xinjiang province. A spokesman for the regional government responded that it was “outright nonsense” and that the facilities — which China has called vocational education schools — prevent extremism and are “no different in nature” from those in the United States, Britain or France. Asked about reports of large-scale forced labor imposed on the Uighur minority, another Xinjiang official said it was “outright nonsense fabricated out of thin air.”