China's Spatial (Dis)integration

Political Economy of the Interethnic Unrest in Xinjiang

Rongxing Guo

• Publisher: Chandos Publishing
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780081003879
• eBook ISBN: 9780081004036
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Psychology

This book is intended to provide the narratives and analytics of China's spatial (dis)integration. Indeed, the Chinese nation is far too large and spatially complicated and diversified to be misinterpreted. The only feasible approach to analyzing it is, therefore, to divide it into smaller geographical elements through which one can have a better insight into the spatial mechanisms and regional characteristics. - Provides a combination of narratives and analytical narratives - Includes annexes which evaluate provincial and interprovincial panel data and information collected and compiled by the author - Offers specialized mathematics and statistical techniques

1

A brief history of Xinjiang

Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region is a large, sparsely populated area that takes up about one sixth of China’s territory. With a history of at least 2,500 years, a succession of peoples and empires has vied for control over all or parts of Xinjiang’s territory. At present, Xinjiang is home to a number of ethnic groups (including the Uyghur, Han, Kazakh, Hui, Kyrgyz, and Mongol) that follow various religious traditions. However, the majority of present-day Xinjiang’s population is the Uyghur, a Caucasoid physical type group that adheres to Islam and has nothing to do with the Han-Chinese majority. As the result of these ethnic, linguistic, and religious differences, the Xinjiang question has never been easily resolved from the Chinese perspective.

Keywords

Xinjiang; Xiongnu; Yuezhi; Uyghur khanate; Zhang Qian; Sima Qian; Han dynasty; Islam; East Turkistan Republic (ETR); Chinese border

Xinjiang: New frontier

I now refer to the records of the far west—a vast area covering both the southwest and the northwest…. Mt. Qiong lies north of the territory of Xuanyuan [name of Emperor Huang]. On the mountain, nobody dared to shoot the west where Emperor Huang’s residence was located at the top of a hillock. The hillock is surrounded and protected by four snakes…. And at the north is a place where fish dragons lived…. Beyond its far northern edge there is a place in which there were white people with lightish hair….

—Shanhaijing (2001, 2: 2)¹

Located in the northwestern part of China, Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region is a large, sparsely populated area (comparable in size to Iran) that takes up about one sixth of the country’s territory. Domestically, it borders Tibet autonomous region to the south and Qinghai and Gansu provinces to the southeast. Internationally, Xinjiang shares a 5,000-km land border with eight countries (including Mongolia to the northeast, Russia to the north; and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India to the west). The Tian Shan mountain range marks the Xinjiang–Kyrgyzstan border at the Torugart Pass. The Karakorum Highway links Islamabad in Pakistan with Kashgar over the Khunjerab Pass. The name “Xinjiang,” which was first given to it during the Qing dynasty (AD 1644–1911), literally means “a new frontier/territory.”

At present, Xinjiang is home to a number of ethnic groups, including the Uyghur, Han, Kazakh, Hui, Kyrgyz, and Mongol. These groups follow various religious traditions, with the majority of the population adhering to Islam. Afaq Khoja Mausoleum and Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar are among the most important Islamic sites in Xinjiang. Emin Minaret is another key Islamic site, in Turfan. In addition to Islam, Lamaism (Tibetan Buddhism), Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Shamanism all thrive side by side in the country’s foremost multicultural melting pot.

Early encounters

Ancient Xinjiang was described in the Shanhaijing (The Classic of Mountains and Seas), an ancient Chinese book written during the Eastern Zhou dynasty (771–221 BC) and compiled by Liu Xin (c. 53–23 BC), as a place where there were “white people with lightish hair,” or the Bai people, who lived beyond their northwestern border. Such a description could accord well with a Caucasoid population beyond the frontiers of ancient China, and some scholars have identified these whites as Yuezhi (Mallory & Mair, 2000, p. 55). The well-preserved Tarim mummies with a Caucasoid physical type, often with reddish or blond hair, today displayed at the Urumqi Museum and dated to the 3rd century BC, have been found in precisely the same area of the Tarim basin (Saiget, April 19, 2005). Various nomadic tribes, including the Yuezhi (officially called Rouzhi in China), were part of the large migration of Indo-European–speaking peoples who were settled in today’s Xinjiang and the western part of Gansu.

The Yuezhi continued to be one of the strongest tribes in the northwest of China until the early Han dynasty. Because of conflicts with another, more aggressive nomadic tribe, the Xiongnu, the Yuezhi migrated to the west in the following century. The nomadic tribes of the Yuezhi are documented in detail in Chinese historical accounts, in particular Shiji (Records of the Great Historian) by Sima Qian (145–87 BC), which states that they “were flourishing” but regularly in conflict with the neighboring tribe of the Xiongnu to the northeast. According to Shiji (vol. 123, Account of Dayuan):

The Yuezhi originally lived in the area between the Qilian and Tian Mountains and Dunhuang, but after they were defeated by the Xiongnu they moved far away to the west, beyond Dayuan, where they attacked and conquered the people of Daxia and set up the court of their king on the northern bank of the Gui [Oxus] River. A small number of their people who were unable to make the journey west sought refuge among the Qiang barbarians in the Southern Mountains, where they are known as the Lesser Yuezhi.²

Rise and fall of Xinjiang

Quest for a Uyghur khanate

In 138 BC, Emperor Wu (reign 140–87 BC) of the Han dynasty sent Zhang Qian as an envoy to the states in the present-day Xinjiang region. The following decades saw struggles between the Xiongnu and Han China over dominance of the region, which eventually ended in Chinese success. In 60 BC, the Han established the Protectorate of the Western Regions to oversee the entire region as far west as the Pamir. Tarim basin was under the influence and control of the Han dynasty. After the fall of the Han dynasty, the Western Regions continued to be maintained by various short-lived kingdoms (both Han and non-Han) that ruled northwestern China one after the other, with varying extents and degrees of success.

Established in AD 618, the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) proved to be one of the most expansionist dynasties in Chinese history. During the early Tang period, China conducted a series of expeditions against the Tujue, eventually forcing the surrender of the western Tujue in AD 657. As a result, Xinjiang was placed under the Anxi Protectorate (“Anxi” means “pacifying the West”). The protectorate did not outlast the decline of the Tang dynasty in the 8th century. In AD 763, Tibet invaded Tang China on a wide front from Xinjiang to Yunnan. As a result, the Tang lost its control of southern Xinjiang by the end of the century. At the same time, the Uyghur khanate took control of northern Xinjiang, as well as much of the rest of Central Asia, including the western part of Mongolia.

In the mid-9th century, the Uyghur khanate began to decline. As a result, the Kara-Khanid khanate, which arose from a confederation of Turkic tribes scattered, took control of western Xinjiang in the 10th and 11th centuries. Meanwhile, after the Uyghur khanate in modern-day Mongolia had been smashed by the Kirghiz in AD 840, branches of the Uyghurs established themselves a new Uyghur state in the area around today’s Turpan and Urumqi. This state remained in eastern Xinjiang until the 13th century.

Decline of the khanate

After Genghis Khan unified China and began his advance west, the Uyghur state in the Turpan-Urumqi area offered its allegiance to the Mongols in AD 1209, contributing taxes and troops to the Mongol empire. After the break-up of the Chagatai khanate into smaller khanates in the mid-14th century, the region fractured and was ruled by various Mongol Khans simultaneously. These leaders engaged in numerous wars with each other and both the Timurids of Transoxania to the west and the Western Mongols to the east.

During the Ming dynasty (AD 1368–1644) and the following decades, Xinjiang was independent from China proper. In the 17th century, the Mongolian Zungars established an empire over much of the today’s Xinjiang region. The Mongolian Zungar (also Dzungar, Jungar, or Zunghar) is the collective identity of several Oirat tribes that formed and maintained one of the last nomadic empires. The Zungar khanate covered the area called Zungaria and stretched from the west end of the Great Wall of China to present-day eastern Kazakhstan and from present-day northern Kyrgyzstan to southern Siberia (most of this area is renamed to Xinjiang after the fall of the Zungar Empire). It existed from the early 17th century to the mid-18th century.

After the Qing dynasty (AD 1644–1911) consolidated its rule of the Han-Chinese areas, it gained control over eastern Xinjiang. As a result of a long struggle with the Zungars, the Qing troops attacked Ghulja (Yining in Chinese) and captured the Zungar khan. After the defeat of the Zungars, the Qing court established state farms, especially in the vicinity of Urumqi, which had fertile, well-watered land and few people. From AD 1760 to 1830, as the result of a series of the successful Chinese Campaign against rebels in Xinjiang (Figure 1.1), more state farms were opened, and the Chinese population in Xinjiang grew rapidly. At the start of the 19th century, 40 years after the Qing reconquest, approximately 155,000 Han and Hui Chinese lived in northern Xinjiang, and about 320,000 Uyghurs lived in southern Xinjiang (Millward, 2007, p. 306).³ The Han Chinese of Xinjiang arrived from different directions and social backgrounds: they were descendants of criminals and officials who had been exiled from China proper during the second half of the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries; descendants of families of military and civil officers from Hunan, Yunnan, Gansu, and Manchuria; descendants of merchants from Shanxi, Tianjin, Hubei, and Hunan; and descendants of peasants who started immigrating into the region in 1776...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• List of abbreviations
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Tips for readers
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue. A long journey
• 1. A brief history of Xinjiang
• 2. Chinese-style development in Xinjiang: Narrative
• 3. Uyghur unrest and Xinjiang: Narrative
• 4. Determinants of spatial (dis)integration: A model
• 5. Going back to Xinjiang: Analytic narrative
• 6. Spatial efficiency and Xinjiang: Policy options
• References
• Index