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:
Why the Carrot isn’t Working, Either
The Chinese government thinks it can thwart unrest among ethnic minorities by raising their incomes. But prosperity doesn't buy loyalty.
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.
China’s Wild West: A Cautionary Tale of Ethnic Conflict and Development
While the international media has extensively analyzed the demonstrations and street clashes in Turkey, Brazil and Egypt over the last several weeks, what is happening in China’s Xinjiang may be no less significant to future geopolitics.
Chinese Police Shoot Dead Seven Uyghurs in Kashgar
Seven ethnic minority Uyghurs have been shot dead by police in separate clashes in China's restive northwestern region of Xinjiang and nine others detained for protesting against some of the killings, an exile Uyghur group said on Monday. The shootings underscore a trend of increasing violence in Xinjiang, where the Muslim Uyghurs complain of discrimination and religious controls under Beijing’s rule.
Ministry of Truth: Xinjiang Violence
The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. Chinese journalists and bloggers often refer to these instructions as “Directives from the Ministry of Truth.”
Behind Cry for Help From China Labor Camp
The cry for help, a neatly folded letter stuffed inside a package of Halloween decorations sold at Kmart, traveled 5,000 miles from China into the hands of a mother of two in Oregon. Scrawling in wobbly English on a sheet of onionskin paper, the writer said he was imprisoned at a labor camp in this northeastern Chinese town, where he said inmates toiled seven days a week, their 15-hour days haunted by sadistic guards.
Present-Day Ethnic Problems in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region: Overview and Recommendations
Written by now-imprisoned Uyghur economist Ilham Tohti, this article analyzes the underlying causes of ethnic tensions in Xinjiang, and offers recommendations for protecting the basic rights of Xinjiang’s citizens.
China’s Sufis: The Shrines Behind the Dunes
Lisa Ross’s photographs are not our usual images of Xinjiang. In 2008, 2009, and 2012, Xinjiang was the site of bloody protests. Instead of representing these political conflicts, however, Ross’s photographs are unassuming and quiet; people are never present and the objects she captures—stone on sand, cloth on stone, the skeleton of a dried animal—have an incandescent glow, as if lit by another sun. In fact, these images reveal a little-known religious tradition in Xinjiang—its desert shrines to Sufi saints. Taken in Xinjiang’s Taklamakan Desert, they are collected in Ross’s addictive new book, Living Shrines of Uyghur China, and are now on view at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York.
Living Shrines of Uyghur China
Lisa Ross’s ethereal photographs of Islamic holy sites were created over the course of a decade on journeys to China’s Xinjiang region in Central Asia, historically a cultural crossroads but an area to which artists and researchers have generally been denied access since its annexation in 1949. These monumental images show shrines created during pilgrimages, many of which have been maintained continuously over several centuries; visitation to the tombs of saints is a central aspect of daily life in Uyghur Islam. Many of the sites in Ross’s work are threatened by political and economic pressures—her images are valuable, therefore, not only for their intrinsic beauty, but as an important record of a rich and vibrant culture.
China's 'Re-Education Through Labor' System: The View From Within
An inside look at the country's notorious prison camps.
China surveillance targets crime – and dissent
Video surveillance is a multibillion-dollar industry in China, bankrolled by an authoritarian Communist Party that has overseen more spending on domestic security in recent years than national defense.