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:
The Crisis in Xinjiang: What’s Happening Now and What Does it Mean?
Policies implemented by the CCP in Xinjiang since 2016 have become a central issue in PRC international relations. This talk reviews the Xinjiang crisis to date and suggests how we should understand these events and trends.
Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang
(Originally published November 2006, revised February 2021) Eurasian Crossroads is an essential resource for anyone seeking to learn about the complex historical context of the genocide taking place in Xinjiang today. James Millward, who is widely regarded as the leading historian of Chinese Central Asia, provides an accessible-yet-thorough examination of the various peoples and empires that have called the region home.
Land of Strangers: The Civilizing Project in Qing Central Asia
At a time when understanding the roots of the modern relationship between Uyghurs and China has taken on new urgency, Land of Strangers illuminates a crucial moment of social and cultural change in this dark period of Xinjiang’s past.
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.
A Uighurs’ History of China
It is impossible to make sense of the current crisis in Xinjiang without an understanding of the distinctive trajectory of Uighur history, which is intertwined with that of the regional great power, China.
“United Front.” Afterlives of Chinese Communism: Political Concepts from Mao to Xi
The notion of 'united front' was first adopted by the Chinese Communist Party in the early 1920s, and was originally connected to the tactic of cross-class mobilisation. In time, the original concept took on a broader meaning, coming to refer to the CCP's ability to work with, unite under its guidance, and manipulate other political parties and social forces, eliminating possible sources of opposition by means of cooptation and control.
China’s Uyghur Repression
In the name of combating Islamic extremism, the Chinese Communist Party has embarked on a massive campaign of harassment and detention of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang province.
The Historical Foundations of Religious Restrictions in Contemporary China
The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) abolished its total ban on religious activities in 1982. However, the distrust that the CCP feels for religions remains obvious today, and the religious restrictions in contemporary China remain tight. Conventional wisdom tells us that the official atheist ideology of Marxism-Leninism is the main reason behind the CCP’s distrust for, and restriction of, religion. However, taking a historical institutionalist perspective, this paper argues that the religious restrictions in contemporary China are in fact rooted in the fierce political struggles of the country’s two major revolutions in the first half of the twentieth century.
Uyghur Nation - Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier
The meeting of the Russian and Qing empires in the nineteenth century had dramatic consequences for Central Asia’s Muslim communities. Along this frontier, a new political space emerged, shaped by competing imperial and spiritual loyalties, cross-border economic and social ties, and the revolutions that engulfed Russia and China in the early twentieth century. David Brophy explores how a community of Central Asian Muslims responded to these historic changes by reinventing themselves as the modern Uyghur nation.
Community Matters in Xinjiang: 1880-1949
Based on a wide range of Western and local materials, this book offers an introduction to the historical anthropology of the Muslim Uyghur of Xinjiang from the late 19th century to 1949.
Religious minorities and China
The treatment of religious minorities lies behind many of the headlines from China in recent years. China’s treatment of the Falungong and its policies in Tibet receive regular comment in the West, but rarely is this commentary informed by an understanding of how China’s policies towards religious minorities as a whole have developed. This report fills that gap and provides an authoritative overview of the major world religions in a country that is as diverse as it is vast.
Religious policy in China and its implementation in the light of document no. 19
The key to understanding CCP religious policy is a clear understanding of CCP "united front" work, as well as Document 19, an internal CCP document that provides the ideological foundation for current CCP religious policy as well as detailed instructions for its implementation.