China: Contemporary Political, Economic, and International Affairs

9. Rumblings from the Uyghur

9. Rumblings from the Uyghur September 1997 dru c. gladney T hree years ago the first rumblings of discontent in northwestern China could be heard in the voices of ethnic and religious separatists in the bazaars of Kashgar and Turfan. Today bombs detonating throughout the region as well as in Beijing have begun to drown out these voices. On February 25, a bombing in the northwestern border city of Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, left nine people dead. Bombs exploded on two Beijing buses on March 7, killing two people ; on May 13 another bomb exploded in a city park in Beijing, killing one person. These bombings, like the more than 30 that occurred last year, are believed to be related to demands by Muslim and Tibetan separatists. On July 27 the government executed nine members of the Uyghur Muslim minority. The executions followed those of eight Uyghur on May 29 and three other Uyghur in April; all were executed for allegedly carrying out bombings in northwest China. The government has also arrested hundreds of people on suspicion of participating in ethnic riots and separatist activities. At a time when China is still celebrating its recovery of Hong Kong on July 1, many wonder if it can hold on to the rebellious parts of its restive west. While most analysts agree that China is not vulnerable to the ethnic separatism that split the former Soviet Union, few doubt that should China fall apart, it would divide, like the Soviet Union, along centuries’ old ethnic , linguistic, regional, and cultural fault lines. These divisions showed themselves after the collapse of China’s last empire in 1911, when its territory was split for more than 20 years by regional warlords with bases in the north and south, and by Muslim warlords in the west. 106 But China is not about to fall apart—not yet, anyway. The initial rumblings of discontent centered on a desire to see the benefits of the northwestern region’s oil and mineral wealth begin to flow back into the region. This desire suggests that if economic and political concerns are addressed by Beijing—along with historical and strategic issues—China can begin to resolve its ethnic dilemma. A Contested History First, China must reconsider its long-term historical relations with the people now known as the Uyghur. An understanding of the history of the Xinjiang region is critical to evaluating separatist claims on it, especially since all Chinese histories (as well as many Western histories of China) assume that the region has always been part of China, with the Uyghur a subject people. Chinese histories notwithstanding, every Uyghur firmly believes that his or her ancestors were the indigenous people of the Tarim Basin, which did not become known in Chinese as Xinjiang (new dominion ) until the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, the current understanding of the indigeneity of the present people classified as Uyghur by the Chinese state is a recent phenomenon, one related to Great Game rivalries, Sino-Soviet geopolitical maneuverings, and Chinese nation-building. According to the historian Morris Rossabi, it was not until 1760 that the Manchu Qing dynasty exerted full and formal control over northwestern China, establishing it as Xinjiang; this administration lasted barely 100 years, falling to a combination of the Yakub Beg rebellion (1864–1877) and expanding Russian influence. The end of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and the rise of Great Game rivalries between China, Russia, and Britain saw the region torn by competing loyalties and marked by two drastically different attempts at independence: the short-lived proclamation of an East Turkestan Republic in Kashgar in 1933 and of another in the northwestern city of Yining (also called Ghulje) in 1944. As Andrew Forbes has noted in Warlords and Muslims in Chinese Central Asia, these rebellions and attempts at self-rule did little to unite the politically, religiously , and regionally divided Turkic people who became known officially as the Uyghur after 1934 under successive Chinese Nationalist warlord administrations. Rumblings from the Uyghur 107 The Communist government’s establishment of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on October 1, 1955, perpetuated the Nationalist policy of recognizing the Uyghur as a minority nationality under Chinese rule. This nationality designation, however, masks tremendous regional and linguistic diversity and includes groups such as the Loplyk and Dolans that had little historical connection with the oasis-based Turkic...