Unregistered
16-01-06, 02:51
Source: http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/com73e.htm
COMMENTARY No. 73
a CANADIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE publication
ISLAMIC UNREST IN THE XINJIANG UIGHUR AUTONOMOUS REGION
Dr. Paul George
Spring 1998
Unclassified
Editors Note:
The author, Dr. Paul George, is an independent analyst in the Ottawa area, specializing in issues of international security and development policy. He has broad experience of international research monitoring trends in world military spending through economic, political and strategic analysis of countries and regions.
Disclaimer: Publication of an article in the COMMENTARY series does not imply CSIS authentication of the information nor CSIS endorsement of the author's views.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction
Beijing's central authority has been under increasing challenge from Muslim separatists in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of western China in recent years. Although less well known than the anti-Chinese struggle in Tibet, the low-key conflict which has been simmering in Xinjiang since the late 1980s has resulted in significant loss of life and reliably documented human rights violations. In April 1990, for example, Chinese government forces reportedly killed some 50 protestors in putting down a five-day uprising by religious extremists in the Baren district south of Kashgar. The Baren incident was followed by several other outbreaks of unrest throughout Xinjiang and the authorities, for the first time, admitted that independence activists were responsible. Since then, there have been steady reports of bombings and assassinations in urban centres in Xinjiang, as well as three separate bomb attacks in Beijing in the spring of 1997 which were attributed to Muslim separatists. The Beijing bombings are significant in that they marked an expansion of the violent campaign for independence in Xinjiang into the Han Chinese heartland. Attacks against Chinese soldiers and officials, as well as against perceived pro-Beijing Muslim sympathizers, continued in Xinjiang throughout 1997 amidst reports of widespread street fighting and the mass arrest of suspected separatists.
Thus far, the independence movement in Xinjiang has failed to generate widespread support and remains too fractured to present a meaningful threat to Beijing's rule. There are indications, however, that the increasingly savage suppression of Muslim protests is generating unprecedented unity within the various separatist groups in Xinjiang and greater coordination is quickly developing. The stakes are potentially high and Beijing is undoubtedly concerned that separatist activities hold the prospect of becoming a significant threat to China's long-term political stability. The ethnic problems the central government faces in China's peripheral regions are widespread, serious and growing. In particular, separatism in Xinjiang lends support to the active independence movement in Tibet and influences nascent ethnic unrest closer to Beijing in Inner Mongolia. Moreover, economic factors are of equal significance. Hopes are that Xinjiang contains major oil deposits which, if proven, will be of enormous benefit to China's economic development prospects. It has been estimated that China will need to import 21 million tons of oil by 2010 if it is to maintain its present economic growth rate, and energy security is a major consideration in Beijing's policy towards the region.
The importance the Chinese leadership gives to developments in Xinjiang is evidenced by the increasingly hard-line response to any sign of unrest. Although it is impossible to come up with precise numbers, Amnesty International has reported an unusually high proportion of executions in Xinjiang in response to separatist activities. These executions have reportedly triggered further anti-régime violence, heightening the prospect that the Xinjiang crisis will continue to grow in a vicious circle of repression and violent resistance.
Whereas the domestic implications of the crisis in Xinjiang are clearly serious for China, Beijing's management of the situation could have more profound ramifications for regional and international security in the future. Xinjiang is the nexus between China, the Middle East and Russia; it also lies at the cultural crossroads between the Islamic world and the Han Chinese heartland. More importantly, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the vast energy supplies of the former Soviet Central Asian republics are becoming a focus of geopolitical attention as regional and extra-regional states seek to secure access to new sources of oil. These factors combine to make the outcome of the separatist struggle in Xinjiang of growing international strategic importance and will influence developments in the region. This paper considers the origins and extent of the Muslim separatist movement in Xinjiang and assesses its potential impact from the perspective of Canada's wider economic and security interests in the region.
Background
Xinjiang is a vast, largely desert area which contains many valuable resources including oil, lead, zinc and gold. The central Tarim basin is believed to hold enormous oil deposits but, despite intensive exploration efforts, this potential has yet to be realised. However, even if current exploration efforts fail to discover the hoped-for oil in the Tarim basin, Xinjiang will remain vital to China's long-term energy requirements because of its location next to the proven oil reservoirs in the neighbouring Central Asian republics. A logical exploitation of the energy resources of Kazakhstan would include construction of a pipeline to carry the region's oil to the major industrial markets in China and Japan. Such a transportation system would require a stable and cooperative Xinjiang.
The Xinjiang region is remote from Beijing but centrally located in one of the most important areas of the world in terms of China's traditional security concerns. The steppes of its westernmost province were China's bulwark against the military threat it perceived from the Soviet Union for most of the last 40 years. In the post-Soviet era, Xinjiang remains an indispensable strategic outpost if Beijing is to be able to monitor the potentially turbulent economic and political development of the Central Asian republics to its west. Although there is now little prospect of confrontation with Russia, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) still maintains large ground and air forces and most of its nuclear ballistic missiles in Xinjiang. China's nuclear weapons tests are also conducted at Lop Nor in Xinjiang's Taklamakan desert. China conducted some 45 nuclear test explosions at Lop Nor starting in 1964; the last two occurred in 1996. The environmental devastation, atmospheric pollution and groundwater contamination caused by these tests is a major factor contributing to local hostility to the Chinese presence.
Current Muslim extremism in Xinjiang has clearly been inspired by the enormous changes that have reshaped Central Asia in the last decade. The independence of neighbouring Muslim republics in Central Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union has undoubtedly raised the aspirations of Xinjiang's would-be separatists that they too can achieve autonomy. At the same time, the ignominious withdrawal of Soviet occupying forces from Afghanistan demonstrated that armed struggle against even the strongest and most ruthless opponent was a viable option. These factors, whilst clearly relevant to the contemporary situation in Xinjiang, are only part of a more complex conjunction of economic, geopolitical and strategic developments which have given impetus to the separatist movement. Underlying all of these issues, however, are the cultural, ethnic and religious characteristics of Xinjiang and its historical place in the greater Chinese "nation".
Xinjiang is situated in northwest China, some 4000 km from Beijing, and represents the eastern extremity of the larger Turkic cultural community, which extends from Turkey in the west through post-Soviet Central Asia and Afghanistan. The region is known locally as East Turkestan, signifying its historical and cultural distinctiveness from China. The indigenous population of Xinjiang is predominantly Turkic or Indo-European in origin and the main languages have Turkic or Mongolian roots. The most important Turkic groups are the Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Uzbecks. The Tajiks, the other significant Muslim minority, are linked linguistically to modern Iran through their Indo-Persian language. All of these ethnic groups have much in common with their brethren in the newly independent Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The Sunni branch of Islam has been the dominant cultural and religious force in Xinjiang since the 10th century.
History records many unsuccessful attempts by the Chinese to conquer East Turkestan since at least the second century B.C. It was not until the Manchu dynasty invaded in 1759 that the Chinese finally gained control of the territory, ruling it until 1862 despite more than forty major revolts. A major Turkic uprising then drove the Chinese out and the region briefly enjoyed independence. This, however, was the period during which Tsarist Russian expansion into Central Asia was perceived as threatening to British colonial interests in India. In what is known as "The Great Game", the British sought to check Russian ambitions through a series of alliances and military assistance to friendly powers. Because they were concerned that Russia would move into East Turkestan, the British financed the Manchu dynasty's reconquest of East Turkestan in 1876. East Turkestan was renamed Xinjiang and formally annexed to the Manchu Empire in 1884. Relations with Beijing have been fractious ever since. The reason is simple: the native population of Xinjiang has no cultural, ethnic, linguistic or religious connection to China, which, in essence, is a "foreign" occupying power. In fact, the very name "Xinjiang", which means "New Frontier" in Mandarin, emphasizes the region's place at the periphery of the Han Chinese empire.
Islam In China
According to the 1990 census, China has more than 17 million Muslims but this figure is believed to understate the actual numbers by as much as 50 percent. Even with uncertain population data, there is no doubt that China is a major Islamic state. The Hui are the largest officially recognised Muslim group at about 8.6 million and are ethnically and linguistically Chinese. Hui minority populations are found throughout China and they do not have a traditional territorial homeland. There are, however, significant concentrations of Hui in their own autonomous region, Ningxia, as well as in Gansu and Qinghai provinces, which lie to the east of Xinjiang in central China. Conversely, Turkic Islam in China is clearly associated with the territory of Xinjiang.
The Uighurs are the most important Muslims of Turkic origin and are the dominant ethnic group in Xinjiang, numbering about 7.2 million out of a total population of some 15 million. The Hui and the Turkic Muslims have different relationships with the Han Chinese and the two groups are not natural allies. The former are frequently referred to as "Chinese Muslims" and are culturally closer to the mainstream Chinese community. The Hui have no inherent connection with the Turkic-origin Islamic groups but have often served as a bridge between them and Beijing. Even so, the Hui have also suffered discrimination at the hands of the Chinese and have demonstrated their desire for greater cultural and religious freedom on numerous occasions. They lack, however, the sense of group identity that sustains the Uighur separatist movement. The Hui have not been implicated in the anti-Chinese violence in Xinjiang.
Beijing has systematically sought to manage and control religious activities throughout China, allegedly to safeguard national unity and stability. In Xinjiang, because Islam is essentially indistinguishable from local cultural and national identity, Beijing perceives a particular threat to its rule. As a result, mosques and religious schools in Xinjiang, which are regarded as hot-beds of anti-régime sentiment, have periodically been closed and religious activists arrested and harassed.
Xinjiang's Colonial Legacy
Beijing's crackdown on Muslim unrest in Xinjiang is ostensibly a response to a perceived threat to the stability of a region deemed to be of vital strategic significance. Xinjiang is an important strategic region both in its location and in its resource potential; it is also an area where the native population's desire for cultural, linguistic and religious autonomy is stymied by a rigid colonial tradition.
A small part of northern Xinjiang enjoyed a brief period of independence in 1944 when a Muslim republic of East Turkestan was proclaimed out of the chaos of China's war with Japan. Following Mao Tse Tung's victory over the Nationalist forces in 1949, Xinjiang was brought back into the Chinese fold through a combination of political duplicity and military force. Despite the position of the Chinese communist party during the civil war that ethnic groups in regions such as Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang would be free to choose their own future, Mao Tse Tung repudiated self-determination as an option when he took power and rejected any prospect of dividing China into federated republics. Instead, Mao created the concept of "autonomous regions, provinces and districts" within which the various ethnic groups were promised "equality" with the Chinese majority. Most of Xinjiang's inhabitants were thus persuaded to rejoin greater China, and the People's Liberation Army quickly crushed any opposition. The Uighur Autonomous Region was proclaimed in 1955. In fact, as the most westerly outpost of the Chinese empire, Xinjiang has always been treated in a typical colonial fashion by whichever faction ruled in Beijing—Feudalists, Nationalists and Communists—since the Manchu dynasty.
Most of the senior administrators, and all of the military commanders in Xinjiang, are Han Chinese appointed by Beijing. Typically, Han Chinese control the major industries in Xinjiang, and its economic production is expressly geared to the requirements of the centre. The Muslims largely remain in traditional agricultural and livestock occupations and have few opportunities for advancement in other sectors. Most of the region's resources are exported unprocessed to China proper and are reimported as manufactured goods at high prices. Furthermore, Xinjiang has become a dumping ground for Beijing's social and internal security problems with thousands of criminal and political prison camps giving justification to the region's reputation as China's Siberia.
The Turkic Muslims obviously represent only a fraction of China's overall population of more than a billion people but given their concentration in a remote border area of vital strategic concern, their power to threaten Beijing's interests is disproportionate to their numbers. The importance of the region to Beijing in terms of its economic and strategic potential perhaps explains the harshness of the government's response to any unrest in Xinjiang. However, frequent reports of religious nationalists being executed by the authorities in Xinjiang suggests a deeper concern for the potential impact that the Islamic resurgence might have for China's long-term stability. To counter this threat, the Chinese authorities have pursued a deliberate strategy designed to change the demographics of Xinjiang, the effect of which will be to create a Muslim minority population.
When Mao Tse Tung seized power in China, the Uighurs constituted some 80 percent of the population of Xinjiang. In the 50 years since then, the Han Chinese population in the province has grown from about 10 percent to perhaps 50 percent today. The Han are heavily concentrated in the northern part of Xinjiang, in and around the capital Urumqui. The southern, less habitable, part of Xinjiang remains dominated by native groups with the Uighurs being the most important of these. The growth of the Han Chinese population of Xinjiang has been achieved by flooding the region with massive numbers of Chinese immigrants. Initially, from the 1950s, Han Chinese migration to Xinjiang was officially encouraged to support agricultural development and to promote security with respect to the putative Soviet threat to the lightly populated territory. Since the 1980s, official support for migration has been toned down, possibly in response to increasing tensions with the local populace, but immigration to Xinjiang has proceeded apace. In part, this reflects the same kinds of pressures being experienced elsewhere in China as millions of people flood out of the rural areas to seek work in the growing manufacturing economy. This trend is mirrored in the case of the flow of Chinese to Xinjiang by the demand for skilled workers to fill positions in resource-based extractive industries to supply the raw materials to support China's booming economic expansion.
Han Chinese colonization of Xinjiang has been forcefully led by the pseudo-military Bin Tuan organization, formally known as the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC). The Bin Tuan was formed in the 1950s when some of the troops used to suppress Muslim resistance to Chinese rule were relieved of combat duties and drafted into agricultural development projects. It was disbanded in 1975 but reestablished in 1981 and retains a sham military designation as the Xth Agricultural Division. The XPCC numbers about 2.28 million people, including about 1 million workers. Despite its alleged non-combat status, the XPCC has served as an effective arm of the PLA in suppressing Muslim unrest in Xinjiang over the years and played a key role in ending the 1990 Baren uprising. One of its major functions is to manage the "Chinese Gulag" and the XPCC has overall responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of criminal and political prisoners deported to Xinjiang. Many of these exiles subsequently become permanent residents, working on land run by the XPCC from which Uighurs and other native groups have been displaced.
The World Bank became embroiled in a major controversy over the XPCC in 1996 when the leading Chinese dissident, Harry Wu, testified before the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the organization was running 14 forced labour camps, or Laogai, in Xinjiang under Bank supported development projects. The World Bank loans had been aimed at helping the Uighurs but, according to testimony from two Uighur former officials from the XPCC, had actually strengthened government control over the region and facilitated a crackdown against anti-Chinese dissidents. As a result of these revelations, the US Treasury withdrew its support for World Bank projects with the XPCC until a clearer line could be drawn between the organization's civilian and military functions.
Discriminatory policies favouring the Han Chinese over the locals in access to jobs, education, health care and other services, combined with Beijing's insensitivity to traditional cultural and religious mores in Xinjiang, have compounded Muslim resentment at being treated as second-class citizens in their homeland. For example, the Communists banned the traditional Arabic script that had been used in the region for more than a thousand years and destroyed thousands of historical books. In order to take advantage of any economic opportunities, the native population is obliged to learn Chinese. Meanwhile, very few Chinese bother to learn the local languages. The cultural, linguistic and religious distance between the two peoples is not closing and social interaction remains negligible.
China's assimilation policies are particularly offensive to traditional values. For example, financial rewards are given to Han Chinese who intermarry with Muslim ethnics but any offspring are registered only as Chinese. In what is perhaps the ultimate attempt at ethnic dilution, China's strict one-child policy has been waived for Han Chinese willing to move to Xinjiang; they are allowed to have two children, a fringe benefit which encourages further immigration. In effect, there has been a systematic policy to reduce the Muslim heritage of Xinjiang.
Anti-Chinese unrest in Xinjiang therefore stems from the twin assaults of cultural/ religious repression and demographic manipulation. Beijing's rigorous attempts to assimilate the Uighurs through the repression of religion, assembly and language, as well as through the systematic introduction of Han Chinese immigrants into the region, have fomented deep-rooted anti-régime sentiment. It is of little surprise that there have been periodical uprisings against Chinese domination.
(to be continued)
COMMENTARY No. 73
a CANADIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE publication
ISLAMIC UNREST IN THE XINJIANG UIGHUR AUTONOMOUS REGION
Dr. Paul George
Spring 1998
Unclassified
Editors Note:
The author, Dr. Paul George, is an independent analyst in the Ottawa area, specializing in issues of international security and development policy. He has broad experience of international research monitoring trends in world military spending through economic, political and strategic analysis of countries and regions.
Disclaimer: Publication of an article in the COMMENTARY series does not imply CSIS authentication of the information nor CSIS endorsement of the author's views.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction
Beijing's central authority has been under increasing challenge from Muslim separatists in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of western China in recent years. Although less well known than the anti-Chinese struggle in Tibet, the low-key conflict which has been simmering in Xinjiang since the late 1980s has resulted in significant loss of life and reliably documented human rights violations. In April 1990, for example, Chinese government forces reportedly killed some 50 protestors in putting down a five-day uprising by religious extremists in the Baren district south of Kashgar. The Baren incident was followed by several other outbreaks of unrest throughout Xinjiang and the authorities, for the first time, admitted that independence activists were responsible. Since then, there have been steady reports of bombings and assassinations in urban centres in Xinjiang, as well as three separate bomb attacks in Beijing in the spring of 1997 which were attributed to Muslim separatists. The Beijing bombings are significant in that they marked an expansion of the violent campaign for independence in Xinjiang into the Han Chinese heartland. Attacks against Chinese soldiers and officials, as well as against perceived pro-Beijing Muslim sympathizers, continued in Xinjiang throughout 1997 amidst reports of widespread street fighting and the mass arrest of suspected separatists.
Thus far, the independence movement in Xinjiang has failed to generate widespread support and remains too fractured to present a meaningful threat to Beijing's rule. There are indications, however, that the increasingly savage suppression of Muslim protests is generating unprecedented unity within the various separatist groups in Xinjiang and greater coordination is quickly developing. The stakes are potentially high and Beijing is undoubtedly concerned that separatist activities hold the prospect of becoming a significant threat to China's long-term political stability. The ethnic problems the central government faces in China's peripheral regions are widespread, serious and growing. In particular, separatism in Xinjiang lends support to the active independence movement in Tibet and influences nascent ethnic unrest closer to Beijing in Inner Mongolia. Moreover, economic factors are of equal significance. Hopes are that Xinjiang contains major oil deposits which, if proven, will be of enormous benefit to China's economic development prospects. It has been estimated that China will need to import 21 million tons of oil by 2010 if it is to maintain its present economic growth rate, and energy security is a major consideration in Beijing's policy towards the region.
The importance the Chinese leadership gives to developments in Xinjiang is evidenced by the increasingly hard-line response to any sign of unrest. Although it is impossible to come up with precise numbers, Amnesty International has reported an unusually high proportion of executions in Xinjiang in response to separatist activities. These executions have reportedly triggered further anti-régime violence, heightening the prospect that the Xinjiang crisis will continue to grow in a vicious circle of repression and violent resistance.
Whereas the domestic implications of the crisis in Xinjiang are clearly serious for China, Beijing's management of the situation could have more profound ramifications for regional and international security in the future. Xinjiang is the nexus between China, the Middle East and Russia; it also lies at the cultural crossroads between the Islamic world and the Han Chinese heartland. More importantly, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the vast energy supplies of the former Soviet Central Asian republics are becoming a focus of geopolitical attention as regional and extra-regional states seek to secure access to new sources of oil. These factors combine to make the outcome of the separatist struggle in Xinjiang of growing international strategic importance and will influence developments in the region. This paper considers the origins and extent of the Muslim separatist movement in Xinjiang and assesses its potential impact from the perspective of Canada's wider economic and security interests in the region.
Background
Xinjiang is a vast, largely desert area which contains many valuable resources including oil, lead, zinc and gold. The central Tarim basin is believed to hold enormous oil deposits but, despite intensive exploration efforts, this potential has yet to be realised. However, even if current exploration efforts fail to discover the hoped-for oil in the Tarim basin, Xinjiang will remain vital to China's long-term energy requirements because of its location next to the proven oil reservoirs in the neighbouring Central Asian republics. A logical exploitation of the energy resources of Kazakhstan would include construction of a pipeline to carry the region's oil to the major industrial markets in China and Japan. Such a transportation system would require a stable and cooperative Xinjiang.
The Xinjiang region is remote from Beijing but centrally located in one of the most important areas of the world in terms of China's traditional security concerns. The steppes of its westernmost province were China's bulwark against the military threat it perceived from the Soviet Union for most of the last 40 years. In the post-Soviet era, Xinjiang remains an indispensable strategic outpost if Beijing is to be able to monitor the potentially turbulent economic and political development of the Central Asian republics to its west. Although there is now little prospect of confrontation with Russia, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) still maintains large ground and air forces and most of its nuclear ballistic missiles in Xinjiang. China's nuclear weapons tests are also conducted at Lop Nor in Xinjiang's Taklamakan desert. China conducted some 45 nuclear test explosions at Lop Nor starting in 1964; the last two occurred in 1996. The environmental devastation, atmospheric pollution and groundwater contamination caused by these tests is a major factor contributing to local hostility to the Chinese presence.
Current Muslim extremism in Xinjiang has clearly been inspired by the enormous changes that have reshaped Central Asia in the last decade. The independence of neighbouring Muslim republics in Central Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union has undoubtedly raised the aspirations of Xinjiang's would-be separatists that they too can achieve autonomy. At the same time, the ignominious withdrawal of Soviet occupying forces from Afghanistan demonstrated that armed struggle against even the strongest and most ruthless opponent was a viable option. These factors, whilst clearly relevant to the contemporary situation in Xinjiang, are only part of a more complex conjunction of economic, geopolitical and strategic developments which have given impetus to the separatist movement. Underlying all of these issues, however, are the cultural, ethnic and religious characteristics of Xinjiang and its historical place in the greater Chinese "nation".
Xinjiang is situated in northwest China, some 4000 km from Beijing, and represents the eastern extremity of the larger Turkic cultural community, which extends from Turkey in the west through post-Soviet Central Asia and Afghanistan. The region is known locally as East Turkestan, signifying its historical and cultural distinctiveness from China. The indigenous population of Xinjiang is predominantly Turkic or Indo-European in origin and the main languages have Turkic or Mongolian roots. The most important Turkic groups are the Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Uzbecks. The Tajiks, the other significant Muslim minority, are linked linguistically to modern Iran through their Indo-Persian language. All of these ethnic groups have much in common with their brethren in the newly independent Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The Sunni branch of Islam has been the dominant cultural and religious force in Xinjiang since the 10th century.
History records many unsuccessful attempts by the Chinese to conquer East Turkestan since at least the second century B.C. It was not until the Manchu dynasty invaded in 1759 that the Chinese finally gained control of the territory, ruling it until 1862 despite more than forty major revolts. A major Turkic uprising then drove the Chinese out and the region briefly enjoyed independence. This, however, was the period during which Tsarist Russian expansion into Central Asia was perceived as threatening to British colonial interests in India. In what is known as "The Great Game", the British sought to check Russian ambitions through a series of alliances and military assistance to friendly powers. Because they were concerned that Russia would move into East Turkestan, the British financed the Manchu dynasty's reconquest of East Turkestan in 1876. East Turkestan was renamed Xinjiang and formally annexed to the Manchu Empire in 1884. Relations with Beijing have been fractious ever since. The reason is simple: the native population of Xinjiang has no cultural, ethnic, linguistic or religious connection to China, which, in essence, is a "foreign" occupying power. In fact, the very name "Xinjiang", which means "New Frontier" in Mandarin, emphasizes the region's place at the periphery of the Han Chinese empire.
Islam In China
According to the 1990 census, China has more than 17 million Muslims but this figure is believed to understate the actual numbers by as much as 50 percent. Even with uncertain population data, there is no doubt that China is a major Islamic state. The Hui are the largest officially recognised Muslim group at about 8.6 million and are ethnically and linguistically Chinese. Hui minority populations are found throughout China and they do not have a traditional territorial homeland. There are, however, significant concentrations of Hui in their own autonomous region, Ningxia, as well as in Gansu and Qinghai provinces, which lie to the east of Xinjiang in central China. Conversely, Turkic Islam in China is clearly associated with the territory of Xinjiang.
The Uighurs are the most important Muslims of Turkic origin and are the dominant ethnic group in Xinjiang, numbering about 7.2 million out of a total population of some 15 million. The Hui and the Turkic Muslims have different relationships with the Han Chinese and the two groups are not natural allies. The former are frequently referred to as "Chinese Muslims" and are culturally closer to the mainstream Chinese community. The Hui have no inherent connection with the Turkic-origin Islamic groups but have often served as a bridge between them and Beijing. Even so, the Hui have also suffered discrimination at the hands of the Chinese and have demonstrated their desire for greater cultural and religious freedom on numerous occasions. They lack, however, the sense of group identity that sustains the Uighur separatist movement. The Hui have not been implicated in the anti-Chinese violence in Xinjiang.
Beijing has systematically sought to manage and control religious activities throughout China, allegedly to safeguard national unity and stability. In Xinjiang, because Islam is essentially indistinguishable from local cultural and national identity, Beijing perceives a particular threat to its rule. As a result, mosques and religious schools in Xinjiang, which are regarded as hot-beds of anti-régime sentiment, have periodically been closed and religious activists arrested and harassed.
Xinjiang's Colonial Legacy
Beijing's crackdown on Muslim unrest in Xinjiang is ostensibly a response to a perceived threat to the stability of a region deemed to be of vital strategic significance. Xinjiang is an important strategic region both in its location and in its resource potential; it is also an area where the native population's desire for cultural, linguistic and religious autonomy is stymied by a rigid colonial tradition.
A small part of northern Xinjiang enjoyed a brief period of independence in 1944 when a Muslim republic of East Turkestan was proclaimed out of the chaos of China's war with Japan. Following Mao Tse Tung's victory over the Nationalist forces in 1949, Xinjiang was brought back into the Chinese fold through a combination of political duplicity and military force. Despite the position of the Chinese communist party during the civil war that ethnic groups in regions such as Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang would be free to choose their own future, Mao Tse Tung repudiated self-determination as an option when he took power and rejected any prospect of dividing China into federated republics. Instead, Mao created the concept of "autonomous regions, provinces and districts" within which the various ethnic groups were promised "equality" with the Chinese majority. Most of Xinjiang's inhabitants were thus persuaded to rejoin greater China, and the People's Liberation Army quickly crushed any opposition. The Uighur Autonomous Region was proclaimed in 1955. In fact, as the most westerly outpost of the Chinese empire, Xinjiang has always been treated in a typical colonial fashion by whichever faction ruled in Beijing—Feudalists, Nationalists and Communists—since the Manchu dynasty.
Most of the senior administrators, and all of the military commanders in Xinjiang, are Han Chinese appointed by Beijing. Typically, Han Chinese control the major industries in Xinjiang, and its economic production is expressly geared to the requirements of the centre. The Muslims largely remain in traditional agricultural and livestock occupations and have few opportunities for advancement in other sectors. Most of the region's resources are exported unprocessed to China proper and are reimported as manufactured goods at high prices. Furthermore, Xinjiang has become a dumping ground for Beijing's social and internal security problems with thousands of criminal and political prison camps giving justification to the region's reputation as China's Siberia.
The Turkic Muslims obviously represent only a fraction of China's overall population of more than a billion people but given their concentration in a remote border area of vital strategic concern, their power to threaten Beijing's interests is disproportionate to their numbers. The importance of the region to Beijing in terms of its economic and strategic potential perhaps explains the harshness of the government's response to any unrest in Xinjiang. However, frequent reports of religious nationalists being executed by the authorities in Xinjiang suggests a deeper concern for the potential impact that the Islamic resurgence might have for China's long-term stability. To counter this threat, the Chinese authorities have pursued a deliberate strategy designed to change the demographics of Xinjiang, the effect of which will be to create a Muslim minority population.
When Mao Tse Tung seized power in China, the Uighurs constituted some 80 percent of the population of Xinjiang. In the 50 years since then, the Han Chinese population in the province has grown from about 10 percent to perhaps 50 percent today. The Han are heavily concentrated in the northern part of Xinjiang, in and around the capital Urumqui. The southern, less habitable, part of Xinjiang remains dominated by native groups with the Uighurs being the most important of these. The growth of the Han Chinese population of Xinjiang has been achieved by flooding the region with massive numbers of Chinese immigrants. Initially, from the 1950s, Han Chinese migration to Xinjiang was officially encouraged to support agricultural development and to promote security with respect to the putative Soviet threat to the lightly populated territory. Since the 1980s, official support for migration has been toned down, possibly in response to increasing tensions with the local populace, but immigration to Xinjiang has proceeded apace. In part, this reflects the same kinds of pressures being experienced elsewhere in China as millions of people flood out of the rural areas to seek work in the growing manufacturing economy. This trend is mirrored in the case of the flow of Chinese to Xinjiang by the demand for skilled workers to fill positions in resource-based extractive industries to supply the raw materials to support China's booming economic expansion.
Han Chinese colonization of Xinjiang has been forcefully led by the pseudo-military Bin Tuan organization, formally known as the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC). The Bin Tuan was formed in the 1950s when some of the troops used to suppress Muslim resistance to Chinese rule were relieved of combat duties and drafted into agricultural development projects. It was disbanded in 1975 but reestablished in 1981 and retains a sham military designation as the Xth Agricultural Division. The XPCC numbers about 2.28 million people, including about 1 million workers. Despite its alleged non-combat status, the XPCC has served as an effective arm of the PLA in suppressing Muslim unrest in Xinjiang over the years and played a key role in ending the 1990 Baren uprising. One of its major functions is to manage the "Chinese Gulag" and the XPCC has overall responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of criminal and political prisoners deported to Xinjiang. Many of these exiles subsequently become permanent residents, working on land run by the XPCC from which Uighurs and other native groups have been displaced.
The World Bank became embroiled in a major controversy over the XPCC in 1996 when the leading Chinese dissident, Harry Wu, testified before the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the organization was running 14 forced labour camps, or Laogai, in Xinjiang under Bank supported development projects. The World Bank loans had been aimed at helping the Uighurs but, according to testimony from two Uighur former officials from the XPCC, had actually strengthened government control over the region and facilitated a crackdown against anti-Chinese dissidents. As a result of these revelations, the US Treasury withdrew its support for World Bank projects with the XPCC until a clearer line could be drawn between the organization's civilian and military functions.
Discriminatory policies favouring the Han Chinese over the locals in access to jobs, education, health care and other services, combined with Beijing's insensitivity to traditional cultural and religious mores in Xinjiang, have compounded Muslim resentment at being treated as second-class citizens in their homeland. For example, the Communists banned the traditional Arabic script that had been used in the region for more than a thousand years and destroyed thousands of historical books. In order to take advantage of any economic opportunities, the native population is obliged to learn Chinese. Meanwhile, very few Chinese bother to learn the local languages. The cultural, linguistic and religious distance between the two peoples is not closing and social interaction remains negligible.
China's assimilation policies are particularly offensive to traditional values. For example, financial rewards are given to Han Chinese who intermarry with Muslim ethnics but any offspring are registered only as Chinese. In what is perhaps the ultimate attempt at ethnic dilution, China's strict one-child policy has been waived for Han Chinese willing to move to Xinjiang; they are allowed to have two children, a fringe benefit which encourages further immigration. In effect, there has been a systematic policy to reduce the Muslim heritage of Xinjiang.
Anti-Chinese unrest in Xinjiang therefore stems from the twin assaults of cultural/ religious repression and demographic manipulation. Beijing's rigorous attempts to assimilate the Uighurs through the repression of religion, assembly and language, as well as through the systematic introduction of Han Chinese immigrants into the region, have fomented deep-rooted anti-régime sentiment. It is of little surprise that there have been periodical uprisings against Chinese domination.
(to be continued)