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:
Terror threats transform China's Uighur heartland into security state
Three times a day, alarms ring out through the streets of China’s ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, and shopkeepers rush out of their stores swinging government-issued wooden clubs. In mandatory anti-terror drills conducted under police supervision and witnessed by Reuters on a recent visit, they fight off imaginary knife-wielding assailants. Armored paramilitary and police vehicles circle with sirens blaring.
Xinjiang’s Rapidly Evolving Security State
Since the July 5, 2009 riots in the regional capital of Urumqi, thousands have died in violent clashes between the Muslim Uyghur minority and the Han-dominated Party-state. In response, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has built a multi-tiered security state with, among other components, the recruitment of nearly 90,000 new police officers and a 356 percent increase in the public security budget. According to Chinese President Xi Jinping, Xinjiang is now the “frontline” in China’s battle against “terrorism,” and consequently a testing ground for new policing and surveillance methods.
China’s Communist Party hardens rhetoric on Islam
China’s ruling Communist Party has hardened its rhetoric on Islam, with top officials making repeated warnings about the spectre of global religious “extremism” seeping into the country, and the need to protect traditional Chinese identity. Sharhat Ahan, a top party official in Xinjiang, on Sunday became the latest official from a predominantly Muslim region to warn political leaders gathered in Beijing that the “international anti-terror situation” is destabilising China.
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.
Beijing’s Eyes and Ears Grow Sharper in Xinjiang - The 24-7 Patrols of China’s “Convenience Police”
The troubled region of Xinjiang, in China’s northwest, has undergone a dramatic transformation over the last couple of months. Thousands of local police stations have cropped up across the region and tens of thousands of policemen have been recruited to man them around the clock.
Uyghur Farmers Sent to School in China ‘Anti-Extremism’ Drive
Uyghur farmers in northwestern China’s troubled Xinjiang region are being forced to attend evening classes in a new drive aimed at bringing them in line with official views on religion and government policy, sources in the mostly-Muslim ethnic area say.
Party boss Chen Quanguo replicating his Tibet policy in Xinjiang
Party boss Chen Quanguo has been reported to be implementing in Xinjiang (East Turkestan) the policy of ironclad control with elements of economic rewards and an attitude of greater friendliness through a series of measures that he had introduced in Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) during his previous posting there. He is said to be seen as a success in the TAR, with his Xinjiang posting being considered a promotion, given the fact that it usually entails elevation to the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
Passports Arbitrarily Recalled in Xinjiang - Heightened Control Over Travel for Residents of Uighur Muslim Region
The Chinese government’s new policy of recalling passports restricts foreign travel for many residents of Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch said today. The policy, applicable to residents of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region since at least October, gives police wide power to scrutinize residents’ proposed visits abroad.
The ‘Hashar’ Continues in China’s Xinjiang
In an effort to exert more control in China’s troubled Xinjiang region, Beijing is forcing the Uyghur people to work for free on various public works projects, according to a World Uyghur Congress (WUC) report issued this month. Called the “hashar” by the Uyghurs, the WUC contends that the Chinese government is using the system of forced labor as another way to repress the local people in the region.
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.
Politics this week - September 3rd 2016
A suicide-bomber attacked the Chinese embassy in Kyrgyzstan, injuring three locals. Suspicion immediately fell on the restive Uighur minority in the neighbouring Chinese province of Xinjiang. The Communist Party chief of Xinjiang, Zhang Chunxian, was replaced by the boss of Tibet, Chen Quanguo. Under Mr Zhang, ethnic Uighurs had to carry special ID cards if they travelled, to help officials track troublemakers. See article.
The race card - The leader of a troubled western province has been replaced. He will not be missed by its ethnic Uighurs
When he took over in 2010 as the Communist Party chief of the western province of Xinjiang, Zhang Chunxian was portrayed by state media as a young, media-savvy official with a mission: to crack down hard on its separatists but also to foster “brotherly affection” between ethnic groups in the poor, violence-torn region. On August 29th Mr Zhang was moved to a new, as yet undisclosed, job, having claimed some success in his fight against Islamist “extremism”. The region’s ethnic divide, however, remains bitter.
The Communist Party cracks down on political activists, even as it eases up on some less sensitive legal cases
A human-rights lawyer and three activists have been found guilty of “subverting state power” in a series of trials in the northern city of Tianjin. With resonances of the show trials of China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, they are the latest part of a crackdown on Western ideas and social and political activism that began in earnest after Xi Jinping became Communist Party chief in 2012.
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.
Is China changing its policy towards Uighur Muslims?
Has China just issued its first conciliatory statement towards the Uighur Muslim ethnic group, which has been persecuted for years? Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, speaking to the Communist Party chief and party delegates of Xinjiang province, appeared to be acknowledging for the first time the deep frustration felt by young Uighurs, the eradication of Uighur culture and, most seriously, the lack of jobs in the province.
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.
China premier urges more efforts in restive Uighur heartland
China’s violence-prone western region of Xinjiang needs to make more efforts at development in its ethnic Uighur heartland to ensure young people there have “something to do and money to earn”, Premier Li Keqiang told its top officials.
China Cuts Mobile Service of Xinjiang Residents Evading Internet Filters
The Chinese government is shutting down the mobile service of residents in Xinjiang who use software that lets them circumvent Internet filters, escalating an already aggressive electronic surveillance strategy in the country’s fractious western territory.
China: No end in sight – Torture and forced confessions in China
This report examines what real impact the Chinese government’s efforts have had in stopping the use of torture over the past five years, in particular the use of torture and other ill-treatment to extract forced “confessions”.