Inside Xinjiang

Space, Place and Power in China's Muslim Far Northwest

Anna Hayes, Michael Clarke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317672494
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is China's largest province, shares borders with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and Mongolia, and possesses a variety of natural resources, including oil. The tensions between ethnic Muslim Uyghurs and the growing number of Han Chinese in Xinjiang have recently increased, occasionally breaking out into violence. At the same time as being a potential troublespot for China, the province is of increasing strategic significance as China's gateway to Central Asia whose natural resources are of increasing importance to China. This book focuses in particular on what life is like in Xinjiang for the diverse population that lives there. It offers important insights into the social, economic and political terrains of Xinjiang, concentrating especially on how current trends in Xinjiang are likely to develop in the future. In doing so it provides a broader understanding of the region and its peoples.

Part 1Identity formation and sense of belonging

1 The burden of the past

Uyghur peasants remember collectivisation in southern Xinjiang

Ildikó Bellér-Hann

DOI: 10.4324/9781315770475-2

Introduction

Much has been written about how people’s perceptions of the present are inevitably shaped by their memories of the past and, in turn, how such memories inform individuals’ sense of belonging. In recent decades this unabated interest in the intricate relationship between history, memory and identity has produced numerous studies across a wide spectrum of disciplines. This upsurge in memory studies more or less coincided with the end of the Cold War. Socialism emerged as a useful laboratory where relevant theories could be applied and tested, as all of a sudden scholars were able to carry out unimpeded fieldwork and have greatly improved access to the archives. ¹ Researchers focusing on China have followed suit, which was made possible by the end of the Maoist era and the far-reaching reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s, reforms which retained socialist principles but allowed for important changes in all areas of life. ² While Mao Zedong’s reputation as a great leader has been upheld, the grave mistakes of the collectivised period came under scrutiny. In view of this upsurge in interest in the history of Chinese state socialism, it is all the more remarkable that such issues to date have rarely been discussed in the context of Xinjiang, especially with reference to its minority populations, either by local or by foreign scholars. This is presumably due to ongoing political tensions between Uyghurs and the Chinese state. ³ In an attempt at least partially to fill this gap, this chapter is a preliminary enquiry into Uyghur villagers’ memories of and reflections on the collectivised period.

Following a brief description of fieldwork conditions, I shall summarise the written account of a local cadre. This will be augmented with data which I gathered among Uyghur villagers in 1996, during monitored interviews. ⁴ Finally, the strategies employed by local actors to make sense of their past will be analysed in the light of some influential theories on memory and history.

Fieldwork

This chapter is based on my notes taken during fieldwork carried out in southern Xinjiang in 1996 in two villages situated near Kashgar. This research has already resulted in various articles, but I was unwilling to publish some of my other findings for fear that such a publication could have severe consequences for my interlocutors. Now, almost 20 years later, this concern has abated. ⁵ Yet, in view of the continuing paucity of publications on rural Uyghur communities and the almost complete absence of studies addressing Uyghurs’ experiences during collectivisation, the topic has not lost its actuality.

Most of the fieldwork was carried out in two Uyghur villages selected by my Han research partners in the vicinity of Kashgar in southern Xinjiang, in the course of four months in 1996. Most of the time I was accompanied by my Han research partner, who was fluent in Uyghur, the language we both used throughout the research. Another Han researcher, who was instrumental in obtaining a research permit, visited us briefly during fieldwork. They together drew the parameters of the interview conditions: we could pay one visit only to each household in the neighbourhood specified by them, and sensitive topics such as religion or politics were to be avoided. The official focus of the research was changes in Muslim women’s life following the introduction of reforms, but I was interested in all facets of rural Uyghurs’ experiences. My research partner wished to carry out a basic survey on the households we visited, a plan that could not be realised because people were too suspicious of our motives. They found it hard to believe that we were working for our respective universities only. Therefore, they often refused to reveal precise or even approximate figures of their household’s economy, claiming ignorance or inability to understand what we wanted, or to remember details. This is indicative of the constraints under which data was collected. I only partially succeeded in my efforts to collect life histories, since we were unable to build up closer, more trusting relationships. People were much more obliging when the conversation turned to farming, rituals and personal matters; topics which appeared to be free of political sensitivities. I started asking more questions about individual life experiences (weddings, the birth of children, the acquisition of skills) and local traditions (gender relations, rituals and production). Instead of uninterrupted narratives to questions of ‘when did you get married’ and ‘how was the celebration’, people responded by giving brief flashbacks and fragments, describing the context of the event. They also used the collectivised past as a suitable reference point to explain and praise improvements in the reform era. My interlocutors typically included rank-and-file farmers as well as village- and township-level cadres, old and young, men and women, people of different class origins. Monitored interviews were conducted in about a hundred households, but additional data was also gathered during informal encounters. ⁶

Ibrahim's journal

In August 1996, following the arrival of my second Han research partner from Ürümchi, we were offered the unique opportunity to visit an elderly Uyghur cadre with a reputation of possessing much knowledge about history and local tradition, in a village situated in the vicinity of Kashgar but outside our regular field locations. We visited Ibrahim U. in his village home and conducted a long, three-hour interview with him. Ibrahim was born in 1930, his father was a poor farmhand (yallanma kämbäghäl), and his mother worked as a servant in the house of a local official (bäg). Recognising the boy’s talent, the somewhat eccentric official had him educated in the School of Fine Arts (Güzäl Sanatlar Mektiwi) in Kashgar, where he studied painting and calligraphy. Following his graduation, first he was employed by the bäg as a scribe, and later for a very short time he was in the service of the Guomindang. It was thanks to this education that, following the ‘Liberation’ of Xinjiang in 1949, he was immediately recruited by the new power-holders as a cadre, a position he held for 43 years, retiring in 1993. He had been a member of the Communist Party for 40 years. His wife remained a peasant throughout their marriage. Ibrahim retained a strong sense of peasant identity, but he regretted that none of his children became a cadre. A kind and willing interview partner, he was very outspoken about his own troubles and confrontations with the local administration of which he had long been a member. He was proud of his poetry, some of which he had published, and he also showed us his handwritten historical notes in which he recorded the important events of his township during his years as a township cadre. ⁷ The following account is based on my own notes from Ibrahim’s summary of important events (chong ishlär) titled Memoirs (Khatirä), augmented by additional information which Ibrahim divulged during our conversations.

Ibrahim characterised the pre-socialist period as an era of stagnation when local officials ruled, aided by the official responsible for communal water management (mirab) and religious dignitaries. On the eve of the communist victory the ethnic composition of the population in the locality was homogenous, with Uyghurs making up the overwhelming majority. Other groups were represented in very small numbers; in Ibrahim’s township of more than ten thousand people, there were only two Han, six Kyrgyz and four Uzbek families. Ethnic homogeneity was paralleled by a hierarchical, feudal social structure. Seventy percent of arable land was in the hands of rich landlords (zimindar, pomshchik), 20 percent belonged to rich middle (halliq ottura) and middle peasants (ottura dikhan) and 10 percent was cultivated by the largest group comprising poor (kämbäghäl) farmers. Landless peasants were in effect bonded labourers (qul), being completely dependent on their landlord: for example, a certain Sawut Haji had as many as a hundred such dependents. Rich landlords’ land was cultivated by poor peasants, who were either tenant farmers or sharecroppers. All means of production (land, draught animals and agricultural tools) were owned by the landlords. Poor peasants were not much better off than the landless labourers employed for a year, seasonal labourers and hired farmhands. The ideology of exploitation was provided by the religious elite, who maintained that he ‘who has to endure hardship in this world will have comfort in the other world’ (bu dunyada japa tartsa, o dunyada rahät bar). Conditions were so hard for the poor that many young men could not even afford to get married, while the rich could take as many as three or four wives. ⁸

Between 1949 and 1953 the Chinese Communist Party consolidated its power. ⁹ Dramatic political events at the time included the fleeing of Guomindang soldiers in the wake of the arrival of the People’s Liberation Army in 1949 and the establishment of a military committee (härbiy häy’ät) in a school building. This happened with the cooperation of members of the old local leadership. The main historical periods outlined by Ibrahim correspond closely to the rest of China. They include the defeat of the nationalists and the communist victory dubbed as ‘Liberation’ (azatliq), the first land reform (birinji yär islahati), the setting up of the communes (ali kopiratsiyä), the Great Leap Forward (chong qazan), the years of the Cultural Revolution (zor mädäniyät inqilawi) and the second land reform (ikinji yär islahati) in the early 1980s, which marked the beginning of de-collectivisation. The replacement of Islamic courts by regional courts marked a shift of juridical power from the religious to the secular realm. New administrative units (shang) were set up staffed by a party secretary (shuji), a head (shangjan) and a scribe/clerk (katip). From each neighbourhood, one representative was elected who had to attend a month-long training course. The peasants’ association (dikhanlar uyushmisi) was founded at this time and the old system of public grain tax was abolished. Rich peasants’ land, animals and agricultural implements were confiscated and redistributed among the landless. The ‘anti-three campaign’ (üchgä qarshi härkät) was the local realisation of the national campaign launched in the years 1951 and 1952 against corruption, waste and bureaucracy: in 1951 the three richest tyrants (zomigär) were publicly executed. Participation in the country-wide anti-imperialist campaign was ensured by the locally organised rally to support North Korea against the USA. ¹⁰

The years 1952 and 1953 saw the organisation of mutual aid teams (hämkarliq guruppisi) and the introduction of state monopoly over grain. Collectivisation started in earnest in 1954 with the setting up of the first small cooperatives. In 1956, large-scale collectivisation was introduced and manufacturing and commercial units were transferred from private into public ownership. As collectivisation was gaining momentum in 1957, a political campaign aimed at breaking the resistance to accelerated collectivisation was launched against rightist elements (ongarluqqa qarshi härkät bashlandi). The year 1958 witnessed the continuation of the anti-rightist campaign, the organising of the people’s communes (khälq kommunisi/gongshe quruldi), the setting up of communal eating halls (jama‘ät ashkhanisi quruldi) and the launching of the backyard steel-production campaign (tömür-polat tawlash).

According to Ibrahim, in 1959 the central commune comprised 370 cooperatives which elected 177 representatives. Among the elected commune leaders, there were two Han and two Uyghur. As property relations were transformed, only houses and the small gardens attached to them, a maximum of three sheep per household and some trees were left in private property. The anti-capitalist campaign continued in the form of attacks on rich peasants’ capitalist tendencies (halliq ottura dikhanlar kapitalistik khahishlarini zärbä berish). Large-scale mobilisation of labour was undertaken, which resulted in the construction of long stretches of new irrigation canals, the repair of old ones, as well as land reclamation. Following the People’s Congress in 1961, the communal kitchens were abolished and some local communes underwent administrative reorganisation, while ownership of collectivised trees in villages was transferred to their previous owners. The ‘anti-three campaign’ was re-launched in 1963, this time directed at those cadres who abused their position and sought to gain profit at the expense of others. In an effort to correct previous mistakes, cadres had to apologise publicly for their alleged or real excesses.

In November 1966, the Cultural Revolution (zor mädäniyät inqilawi) was launched. Ibrahim characterised the period briefly by making references to frequent beatings (zärbä), the anti-three campaigns, Lin Biao’s assassination, attempts to increase production (dolqunni kötürüsh), political education (lushiän tärbiyisi) and the persecution of rightists. ¹¹ Ibrahim’s account almost abruptly stops with the brief listing of the end of the Cultural Revolution, the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the fall of the Gang of Four and the introduction of the reforms.

Narrating the everyday ¹²

Based on my interviews with Uyghur villagers, this section allows some insight into the quotidian, entirely absent from Ibrahim’s memoirs. As memory ‘needs spaces and tends toward spatialization’ (Assmann 2012, p. 24), it comes as no surprise that reminisces of ordinary farmers were organised around spatial as well as temporal axes. Uyghur villagers’ temporal parameters are no different from those drawn up by Ibrahim or mainstream historians. They also saw the ‘liberation’ of Xinjiang in 1949 as a major rupture, which marked the end of the old social order and the beginning o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Other Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures, maps and tables
• List of acronyms
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction: Inside Xinjiang
• Part 1 Identity formation and sense of belonging
• Part 2 Inter-ethnic relations in Xinjiang
• Part 3 Government policies in the region and beyond
• Index