All Reading
This section contains a curated list of useful articles, investigations, books and other reading materials. The list is updated on a weekly basis and suggestions for additions are welcome.
Starting Points:
Matchmaking App Raises Concerns of Han-Uyghur Assimilation
Experts say the government-backed project is part of Beijing’s assimilation strategy.
Forced Marriage of Uyghur Women: State Policies for Interethnic Marriage
This report examines the state-sponsored campaign of forcefully assimilating Uyghurs through coerced inter-ethnic marriages between Han men and Uyghur women.
Securing China's Northwest Frontier: Identity and Insecurity in Xinjiang
In the first study to incorporate majority Han and minority Uyghur perspectives on ethnic relations in Xinjiang following mass violence during July 2009, David Tobin analyses how official policy shapes identity and security dynamics on China's northwest frontier. He explores how the 2009 violence unfolded and how the party-state responded to ask how official identity narratives and security policies shape practices on the ground.
Why many in China support Beijing's policies in Xinjiang and Hong Kong
Over an uncountable number of official statements and state media news reports, Beijing has described both Uyghurs and the demonstrators in Hong Kong as "separatists", who are seeking to "undermine China's sovereignty". This has created a huge stir in mainland China, where people take the subject of the country's sovereignty very seriously. Many in China support human rights and democracy, however support for Beijing's often contradictory actions remains vast — so why is that the case?
China Cables: Who Are the Uighurs and Why Mass Detention?
China’s mass detention of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities living in its western region of Xinjiang has sparked alarm and condemnation across the world. The China Cables investigation reveals classified Chinese government directives that provided operational plans for the internment camps and orders for carrying out mass detentions guided by sweeping data collection and artificial intelligence.
To better explain China’s actions in Xinjiang and the findings of the China Cables, this report answers some key questions about who is involved, the crackdown’s origins, and the significance of the secret documents.
Securitizing Xinjiang: Police Recruitment, Informal Policing and Ethnic Minority Co-optation
Following a series of high-profile attacks in Beijing, Kunming and Urumqi by Uyghur militants, the Chinese party-state declared a war on terror in 2014. Since then, China's Xinjiang region has witnessed an unprecedented build-up of what we describe as a multi-tiered police force, turning it into one of the most heavily policed regions in the world. This article investigates the securitization of Xinjiang through an analysis of official police recruitment documents.
China’s Government Has Ordered a Million Citizens to Occupy Uighur Homes. Here’s What They Think They’re Doing.
Little attention has been paid to the mobilization of more than a million Chinese civilians to aid the military and police in their repressive campaign by occupying the homes of Xinjiang’s Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.
Visiting Officials Occupy Homes in Muslim Region - ‘Becoming Family’ Campaign Intensifies Repression in Xinjiang
Since 2016, Xinjiang authorities have sent hundreds of thousands of CCP cadres from government agencies, state-owned enterprises, and public institutions to regularly visit and surveil citizens. Every two months, about 110,000 officials visit homes with a view toward “fostering ethnic harmony”. This “Becoming Family” campaign has been greatly expanded in recent months. In December 2017, Xinjiang authorities mobilized more than a million cadres to spend a week living in homes primarily in Xinjiang’s countryside.
Why Didn’t Chinese Investment Ease Ethnic Tensions in Xinjiang?
The assumption that economic investment aimed at increasing modernization and raising standards of living will weaken ethnic identity and strengthen a minority’s sense of belonging has been disproven in the case of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region (XUAR) in western China. Uyghur nationalism is increasing despite significant economic investment by the Chinese government, raising questions about the effectiveness of economic development programs designed to close gaps and diminish polarization between different groups.
China is touting its protection of human rights in a Muslim-majority region riven by violence
China put out a policy paper today on human rights in the Muslim-heavy Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where the Chinese government has been cracking down extensively in recent years. The report, titled “Human Rights in Xinjiang—Development and Progress” declares that “Before 1949, when People’s Republic of China was founded, people in Xinjiang had been suffering from foreign invasions’ influences, ripped by the feudal society and suppressed by privileged religious stratum.” Since then, it goes on to say, China has provided the foundations for “people with different ethnicities in Xinjiang to truly enjoy human rights.”
China believes domestic tourism can promote “ethnic unity” - In Tibet and Xinjiang, its hopes are being dashed
Yaks graze on grassland near the turquoise waters of Karakul, a lake in the far western region of Xinjiang. Further south, towards the border with Pakistan, the imposing walls of a ruined hilltop fort at Tashkurgan mark a stop on the ancient Silk Road. With such a rich landscape and history this region should be a magnet for Chinese tourists. Instead the area that accounts for more than one-sixth of China’s land mass is better known for violent unrest. The picturesque charms of the lake and fort can be enjoyed in near solitude.
Keeping pure and true - Regulating halal food is creating headaches for the government
China's cities abound with restaurants and food stalls catering to Muslims as well as to the many other Chinese who relish the distinctive cuisines for which the country’s Muslims are renowned. So popular are kebabs cooked by Muslim Uighurs on the streets of Beijing that the city banned outdoor grills in 2014 in order to reduce smoke, which officials said was exacerbating the capital’s notorious smog (the air today is hardly less noxious).
China’s other Muslims - By choosing assimilation, China’s Hui have become one of the world’s most successful Muslim minorities
China has a richly deserved reputation for religious intolerance. Buddhists in Tibet, Muslims in the far western region of Xinjiang and Christians in Zhejiang province on the coast have all been harassed or arrested and their places of worship vandalised. In Xinjiang the government seems to equate Islam with terrorism. Women there have been ordered not to wear veils on their faces. Muslims in official positions have been forced to break the Ramadan fast. But there is a remarkable exception to this grim picture of repression: the Hui.
Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang
With Oil and Water, anthropologist Tom Cliff offers the first ethnographic study of Han in Xinjiang, using in-depth vignettes, oral histories, and more than fifty original photographs to explore how and why they became the people they are now. By shifting focus to the lived experience of ordinary Han settlers, Oil and Water provides an entirely new perspective on Chinese nation building in the twenty-first century and demonstrates the vital role that Xinjiang Han play in national politics—not simply as Beijing’s pawns, but as individuals pursuing their own survival and dreams on the frontier.
Xinjiang Unsettled
When you travel in Xinjiang, you see two communities living side-by-side but rarely interacting. Relations between Uighurs and Han Chinese have soured to the point where little dialogue seems possible. The 2009 Urumqi riots, in which a Uighur mob went on a killing spree that ultimately resulted in at least 194, mainly Han, deaths, was a turning point. Beijng’s “strike hard” policy in the aftermath of the riots, which continues to this day, has only created more resentment, hatred, and misunderstanding. On top of economic alienation, Uighurs feel culturally threatened. The shutdown of Uighur language schools and websites and the new rules curtailing the practice of Islam have only reinforced the sense of a Uighur identity, which wasn’t as strong a few decades ago.
Beyond the Dalai Lama: An Interview with Woeser and Wang Lixiong
An interview with Tsering Woeser and Wang Lixiong, an activist couple who have devoted themselves to chronicling ethnic unrest in China, and to finding solutions to it. Woeser, a Tibetan poet, was widely read in China until her books were banned in 2003 and her Chinese blog shut down in 2006.
Wang Lixiong and Woeser: A Way Out of China’s Ethnic Unrest?
Why has the Chinese government relied so much on suppression in Tibet and Xinjiang? “Simply put, it’s due to their politics, but they can’t say that. They say it’s due to hostile forces.”
Are Ethnic Tensions on the Rise in China?
On December 31, President Xi Jinping appeared on CCTV and extended his “New Year’s wishes to Chinese of all ethnic groups.” On January 15, Beijing officials detained Ilham Tohti, a leading Uighur economist and subsequently accused him of “separtist offenses”; a fresh report shows arrests of Uighurs for “endangering state security” in Xinjiang rose sharply last year; and the number of Tibetans who have taken their own lives in public protest against Chinese rule has recently surpassed 120 since February 2009.
The Strangers: Blood and Fear in Xinjiang
In the winter of 2009, I was spending my weekends in the northeast Chinese city of Tangshan, and eating most of my food from the far-western province of Xinjiang. There was something unfamiliar about the place I usually ate at in Tangshan; the waiters were young children. Two solemn little girls of about eight, wearing Muslim headscarves, would take my order and relay it to the kitchen, occasionally joined by their plump-cheeked older brother. After we had gotten on familiar terms—I let them play on my laptop—I asked the girls when they started working as waitresses. “In July,” they said. It wasn’t surprising that the restaurant might have wanted a friendlier face at that point. That was the time that a Uighur mob had tried to murder one of my friends.
Ethnic Policy in China: Is Reform Inevitable
Following significant interethnic violence beginning in 2008, Chinese intellectuals and policymakers are now engaged in unprecedented debate over the future direction of their country's ethnic policies. This study attempts to gauge current Chinese opinion on this once-secretive and still highly sensitive area of national policy. Leading public intellectuals, as well as some party officials, now openly call for new measures strengthening national integration at the expense of minority rights and autonomy. Adjustments in rhetoric and policy emphasis are expected as the party-state attempts to strengthen interethnic cohesiveness as a part of its larger agenda of stability maintenance.