Page 109 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

6 Uyghur separatism and

nationalism in Xinjiang 1

Michael Dillon

Introduction
Xinjiang is the contested region of north western China that borders on
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. With an area of
over 1,600,000 square kilometres, almost three times the size of France, it is the
largest administrative area in China. It is administered by the People’s Republic
of China (PRC) as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Xinjiang Weiwuer
zizhiqu. But this is considered to be illegitimate to many of the Uyghur and other
non-Han (that is non-Chinese) population, who refer to it as Eastern Turkistan, or
Sharqi Türkistan in the Uyghur language. The Uyghurs, after whom the region is
named, are the single largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, although their dominance
has been threatened by the growing migration of Han Chinese from the east of the
PRC since the 1950s. The Uyghurs are a Turkic people who have been Muslims
since at least the fifteenth century, and their language is closely related to that of
the Uzbeks and distantly to other Turkish languages including Kazakh and
Kyrgyz and remotely to the Turkish of Turkey.
Historically, Xinjiang has been the region of Central Asia closest to China but
that does not mean, as the Chinese authorities often claim, that it has always been
part of China. It had a diplomatic relationship with the Chinese empire for cen-
turies through the ‘tribute system’, the arrangement under which smaller and
weaker states sent regular missions to the Chinese capital, bearing gifts of ‘trib-
ute’ and nominally subordinating themselves to the emperor of China while for
all practical purposes remaining independent. The last imperial dynasty of China,
the Qing (1644–1911), which was Manchu rather than Chinese, was one of the
most aggressively expansionist ruling houses in China’s history and in the late
eighteenth century it began a process of consolidating its control over its frontier
regions. The Turkic-speaking Western Regions, Xiyu, were integrated into the
Qing empire and given the name of Xinjiang (new frontier). Xinjiang became a
regular province of China in 1884 after the Manchus defeated Yakub Beg, a mil-
itary leader from Khokand who had established an independent Turkic regime at
Kashghar in the far south-west of the region. Since 1884 there has been tension
between control by China and local, mainly Turkic, resistance. Independent
governments were installed in Kashghar in the 1930s and in Yining (Ghulja) in