Social Policies and Ethnic Conflict in China

Lessons from Xinjiang

S. Zhang, D. McGhee

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137436658
• eBook ISBN: 9781137436665
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica asiatica

This study addresses how China's policy response to problems in Xinjiang is interpreted and implemented by officials, who are both governing agents and governed subjects by interviewing Chinese officials working in both Central government and Local governments.

1

The Partner Assistance Programme: The Examination of Policies and Unintended Consequences

Those who participated in the 7/5 riots may have done so for a number of reasons: to gain publicity for their causes; to embarrass the Chinese government in the run-up to China’s 60th anniversary; to induce Han re-migration out of Xinjiang; to segregate neighbourhoods and workplaces in the regional capital; or to create irremediable hostility between Uygurs and Han (Sautman 2010: 109). In response to the 7/5 riots, the Chinese government held a meeting¹ in the middle of May 2010 dedicated to discussing the situation in Xinjiang. This was the first time the central government had convened this kind of meeting. A new round of the Partner Assistance Programme (PAP) was then launched as a consequence of this meeting. In this chapter, we will examine in detail the policies contained in the PAP, which include a package of policies in relation to the region’s economic development, education, labour transmission, the Han officials exchange programme and policies dedicated to increasing security in the region following the period of political unrest.

As will be revealed below, various scholars’ proposals for revising the Chinese government’s rationalities in governing Uygurs are problematic, mainly because of their lack of consideration of the various power relations within the Communist Party. We argue that although the relationship between particular “minority policies” and Uygur dissidence is significant, the implementation and evolution of these policies at the local level should also be closely examined. The unintended consequences, or the resistance found among Uygur people, may be partly caused by policy design, but the instruments of these policies, namely communist officials, are also important factors. Although an institution may be considered “powerful”, as with the case of the Communist Party, this does not mean that we should inculcate these institutions as subjects with a “powerful will” (Ferguson 1990: 18). In a country like China, where the governing mechanism of the Communist Party itself is indispensable to the success or failure of government practice, an examination of communist multilayered officialdom is essential. Therefore, in this chapter, we will review relevant policies adopted in Xinjiang to examine how discourses in various areas are constructed by the Chinese government. The review of policies will also identify the difficulties made by scholars in attributing unintended consequences to state policies. We will then argue that scholarship must move beyond reliance on official policy texts and the linear relationship between unintended consequences and state polices, to locate the “real problems” related to communist officials.

1.1 Economic policies in the PAP

1.1.1 Increased monetary investment in the PAP

The primary aim of the PAP is to give “Xinjiang comprehensive personnel, technological, managerial and financial support from 19 provinces and municipalities designated as partners”.² Zhou Yongkang, a former member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, urged officials “to attach equal importance to economic development and social stability, and intensify vigilance against, and crack down on, the “three evil forces“ of terrorism, separatism and extremism”.³ Indeed, the PAP could be regarded as a complex combination of the more costly and sophisticated aspects of the Great Western Development Programme (GWDP)⁴ and the successful assistance experiences gained in the reconstruction of Sichuan Province after the devastating earthquake in 2008.⁵ As Vice-Premier Minister Li Keqiang advocated, “the region’s development and stability is at a critical moment, the PAP is a result of a year of research, planning and personnel training, and is expected to achieve significant results in five years”.⁶

From Li’s speech it is clear that, like the GWDP, “the rationale of economic development as a cure-all in the context of China’s “ethnic problem” and the precipitous historical moment for the implementation” (Clarke 2007: 329) is still the mainstream discourse of the PAP. The scale of investment in the PAP has increased and expanded since 2011. According to the meeting:

In 2011, Xinjiang will receive more than 10 billion yuan ($1.47 billion) in economic aid; the number of cities and towns in Xinjiang that will benefit from this programme has increased from 56 to 82. All aid providers will be required to invest a certain percentage of annual income in their partner areas in Xinjiang.⁷

Moreover, in the PAP, the economic assistance was designed as “match-maker” aid, by which “provinces and municipalities in inland with greater financial muscle will help the least developed areas”. Matching regions was done according to a number of criteria including climate; for example, “the provinces in Northeast China – Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning – will partner with Tacheng and Altay in the northern part of Xinjiang because they have similar climatic conditions”.⁸ Another difference between the PAP and GWDP, according to the report, is a shift from increasing gross domestic product (GDP) to increasing family incomes. The PAP was not designed as a “money-giver” programme, but designed to build Xinjiang as a “money-producer” region. In this regard, some insights can be taken from Gladney, as he finds that many of the reforms in China, whether they are related to the market economy or religious and political freedom, were first adopted in minority areas as “test” initiatives (1994: 94). The economic policies contained in the PAP may not only be the “test case” of China’s integral theories in peripheral regions (Clarke 2007: 324); it may also be the case for China’s efforts in economic distribution, which aims to narrow the gap between rich and poor, and the gap between majority and minority.

1.1.2 Labour exchange programme: economic development or demographic change?

Apart from a huge amount of monetary investment, decreasing the unemployment rate is another major concern for the Chinese government. The increased number unemployed in urban and rural Xinjiang and the distribution inequity between Uygur and Hans have seriously undermined the ability of the government to sustain local stability (Beller-Hann 1997; Cao 2010; Mackerras 2001). Since officials have claimed that most of the participants in the 7/5 riots were local unemployed Uygurs,⁹ they have in turn urged the government to solve minority employment problems in the region. Thus, there are programmes that facilitate the out-migration of Uygur people from Xinjiang to seek employment in more developed eastern regions. However, some scholars view the underlying aims of this labour export programme as “cultural erosion” (Becquelin 2004b; Clarke 2007). As the following discussion shows, it could be argued that the aims of the labour export programme may be more to provide job opportunities than to defuse minority ethnic tensions.

An official states that “the labour export programme of south-western Xinjiang is simply aimed at assisting rural Uygur workers in the natural process of finding higher-paying factory jobs outside of the province that they would otherwise have difficulty in locating themselves” (cited in Hess 2009: 406). This can be examined in a more “concrete” case; for example, a representative from the local government of Shule County in Xinjiang, which is partnered with Shandong, province states:

We think that promoting the redundant rural labour exchange programme is an important means of improving rural economic revenue; the County organized technical trainings for those labourers; we require that every rural Family must “have one person with one skill per year”. We also sent liaison officials to the eastern provinces in order to better organize our labour exchanges and get more money back at the end of year.¹⁰

But some scholars argue that higher wages are not enough to attract willing participants for labour exchanges, thus presuming that the government coerces young Uygurs to leave their homes and take up work on the east coast (Hess 2009: 405). However, the aim of this programme in the PAP can be considered more as a supplementary method for decreasing “local” unemployment. This is supported by the preference expressed in the programme that “rural people should be employed by companies as close to their home towns as possible”.¹¹ Yet, since there are also increasing numbers of Han workers moving to Xinjiang, some scholars see the labour exchange programme as possessing an underlying political agenda rather than being designed for the improvement of Uygurs’ economic well-being. For example, Cao contends that in encouraging Han Chinese to migrate to and settle down in Xinjiang for business or economic-development purposes, China is attempting to change the demographic figures of the area (2010: 969). Fuller and Lipman identified the demographic shift as one of the two greatest perceived threats to Uygur culture and society, and that the arrival and presence of significant numbers of Han in Xinjiang has resulted in the intensification of Uygur nationalist identity (2004: 333).

Despite the labour exchange becoming a key Uygur concern in the region (Clarke 2007; Millward 2009; Yee 2003), it is perhaps too simplistic to claim that this programme is a method of assimilation (Yee 2003: 451). The primary reason for concluding this is the existence of China’s deliberate policy of segregation.¹² In a survey, Yee notes: “in any event, even if Han people keep coming to Xinjiang, it does not necessarily mean a policy of assimilation as long as a segregative policy is adopted between Han and Uygurs” (2003: 451). No matter what the rationalities are that lie behind this policy, it is clear that it is a rather limited exercise either criticizing or defending official discourses in terms of their assumed moral values when all we have to go on is the analysis of official “texts”. As will also be shown in what follows, these arguments actually result in the championing of the oppositional political needs of ethnic minorities based on the values of “cosmopolitan universalism” (Stenson 2008a: 43). Scholars who are part of this trend are limited by their own political awareness and relevance (Williams and Lippert 2006: 714). This is to say that, as introduced in the previous chapter, this approach can end up producing, for example, endless debates on the human rights differences between China and the West. Thus, instead of engaging only with those official “texts” to examine the government rationalities, we will examine China’s educational policies more in terms of the effects they have produced.

1.2 Education policies

Apart from the challenges presented by the organized labour programme, education policies related to Xinjiang also remain a work in progress (Postiglione 2009: 502). There are a number of education policies that address problems relating to minority students, such as multicultural education, bilingual education and affirmative education (Yangbin 2006: 21). On 19 July 2010 Yuan Guiren, the Minister of Education, said that the education policies in Xinjiang will fulfil five tasks under the PAP as follows:

First, the government will speed up bilingual education steps in Xinjiang, which popularize bilingual education at kindergarden level; second, the government will also help the region to train bilingual teachers; third, the government will increase the number of Xinjiang Classes in China’s inland provinces; fourth, the government will also increase the number of elementary and middle boarding schools in the region; fifth, the government will develop middle technical education colleagues to foster professional skills of minority people and fit local economy development characters.¹³

As will be discussed in the next section, China’s educational policies towards its minority people are an obvious reflection of the “despotic nature” of an authoritarian governmentality. The authority always legitimizes its interventionist practices by dividing people into “eligible” and “less eligible” citizens, through which the “sovereignty” is justified to act upon those who are deemed not able to avail themselves of the opportunity for improvement (Dean 2009: 158). In this case, Uygurs are deemed as “low quality” who cannot be “self-responsible” for improving their own “living standards”. As discussed in the previous section, since economic development is seen as “cure-all” strategy, as a consequence Uygurs must undergo systematic “education” to improve their competency in improving their economic “well-being”. However, this method cannot be used to distinguish “authoritarianism” and “liberalism”, since both rationalities “require despotic practices for those populations who do not have, or do not yet possess, the capacities and attributes of responsibility and freedom” (Dean 2009: 266). Thus, authoritarianism and liberalism would be better seen as different government practices rather than a normative notion (Rose-Redwood 2006: 474). In the following sections, we will focus on the interventions introduced by the Communist Party to foster economic development and integration in Xinjiang, namely Uygur bilingual education and Xinjiang Classes in inland China.

1.2.1 Bilingual education and unintended consequences

Language unification is a centuries-old custom in China. The first two points of the minister’s speech above demonstrates how the government will promote bilingual education in Xinjiang. This is primarily because minority or non-standard languages are deemed inappropriate for economic development (Schluessel 2007: 254). According to Dwyer, many Chinese policy-makers believe that a policy of cultural improvement coupled with economic development was beneficial to minorities with distinct linguistic systems, who are regarded as less civilized (2005: 8–9). “Standard Chinese” (Mandarin) is viewed as a significant conduit for doing business with the rest of the country (Adamson and Feng 2009: 323). This has also been confirmed by Hasmath’s interview with educational officials, where he finds

in interviews with public stakeholders the consensus was that all ethnic minority students should learn Mandarin and understand Han culture in order to succeed in primary and secondary schooling and, later on, in the workplace. The reasoning for this stance ranges from the simple notion that Mandarin is the common language used in all aspects of life in China, to the idea that a compulsory Chinese education for ethnic minority children provides the means and “tools” that allow for integration into Chinese mainstream culture and its values. (2011: 10)

Although the Chinese government views language policies in Xinjiang as a facilitator of economic development, this assumption is challenged by many scholars. For them, the Chinese language education system is used as the primary vehicle for the development of higher status languages and the propagation of a particular worldview (Rassool 1998: 91). It has been considered by the Chinese government as one of the best ways to intensify ethnic minority identification with the Chinese nation (Zhu 2007, cited in Gross 2010). Erkin interprets China’s intention behind these policies as the promotion of mainstream Han Chinese culture to its minority groups through education in Mandarin Chinese (2009: 418). Thus, the ultimate goal of bilingual education in Xinjiang is in fact aimed at raising the “cultural quality” of Xinjiang people (Schluessel 2009: 395). Therefore, they view the “economic” justifications for the language policies as being in fact an excuse for cultural assimilation.

However, an official report suggests that the goal of the Xinjiang education reform was not to eliminate the Uygur language, as some dissidents claim, but to turn the system of Uygur-language primary school instruction into a bilingual education system through the increased use of Chinese from earlier grades (Millward 2007: 346). The proposed policy amendments in the PAP seem to emphasize this. The first task of the new education policy according to the minister is to popularize bilingual education at the kindergarten level throughout the region. Moreover, considering the lack of minority Uygur teachers able to speak Mandarin, the government also considers the second task, to train more bilingual teachers in other parts of China who can be sent to teach in Xinjiang, as being an important complementary step.

One example is the Beijing Municipal Government’s “Child Bilingual Education Promotion Programme in Kindergartens of Khotan District”. Here the government employed various methods to ensure the implementation of the education policy, such as having pedagogy experts evaluate the efficacy of the education, training 50 minority teachers in Beijing and producing a series of textbooks for minority children.¹⁴ Moreover, since the 7/5 riots in Xinjiang a growing perception, especially w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  The Partner Assistance Programme: The Examination of Policies and Unintended Consequences
• 2  Fieldwork in China
• 3  The Configuration of Xinjiangs Problems
• 4  Multilayered Unification: The Examination of Government Practices in the PAP
• 5  Infrastructures of the Communist Party in Discourse Making and Resistances of Han Officials in Governing Uygur People
• 6  Discussion
• 7  Conclusion
• Appendix: Major Violent Attacks in Xinjiang between 2002 and 2013
• Notes
• References
• Index