China Governance of Multi-Ethnic Frontiers - Book Report/Review Example

Order 162337 Silk Roads Introduction This paper is on some aspects of China's governance of its multi-ethnic frontiers based on the book on the subject edited by Morris Rossabi. In this book, entitled Governing China's Multiethnic Frontiers, leading scholars examine the Chinese government's administration of its ethnic minority regions, particularly border areas where ethnicity is at times a volatile issue and where separatist movements have been feared. Seven essays focus on the Muslim Hui, multiethnic southwest China, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet. These studies provide an overview of government relations with the minority populations, against which it is possible to assess the current policies and disputes. Since the mid-1990s, both domestic and foreign developments have made the government to bestow greater attention on the people of China's minority regions, their relationship to the Chinese state, and their foreign ties. Some of these developments include the economic development of, and Han settlement in China's remote minority regions threatening to displace indigenous populations, post-Soviet establishment of independent countries consisting mainly of Muslim and Turkic-speaking peoples across china's north-western frontier presenting problems for related groups in China, and freedom of Mongolia from Soviet control raising the specter of a pan-Mongolian movement inclusive of Chinese Mongols. However, our immediate interest in this paper is centered on the chapters entitled Heteronomy and Its Discontents: "Minzu Regional Autonomy" in Xinjiang, by Gardner Bovingdon, and Making Xinjiang Safe for the Han Contradictions and Ironies of Chinese Governance in China's Northwest by David Bachman in Rossabi's book. The writers have extensive fieldwork experience in these regions, and therefore, are able to illuminate their analysis with interview material and other fieldwork notes. The current phase of modernization in China has officially been described as being beneficial for minorities; however, the authors present a picture where ethnic minorities are increasingly marginalized in their home regions, because of ethnic discrimination, massive surge of Han-Chinese migrants, and distorted economic policies. This marginalization has increased dissatisfaction among ethnic minorities, sometimes even leading to violent conflicts. This has been so more in the Xinjiang region in recent years than in the Tibetan region. The Silk Road region The Xinjiang region has been 'the heartland' of the ancient Silk Road. Kingdoms have risen and fallen in that region for the past 2000 years. In the early 20th century, foreign archaeologists found Muslim communities built upon Tang dynasty ruins. It is an important part of the region through which the ancient Silk Road passed. The Silk Road was once unsurpassed in the trade it took across Asia to Europe and back and along with it, also the cultures of the East. This region is an inhospitable area with very little vegetation, and almost no rainfall; and constantly visited by sandstorms which have claimed many lives. On the eastern and western sides of the region, the civilizations of China and the West developed. In the west the Persian Empire was in control of an area extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the borders of India. The Chinese exploration of the west began when in 138 BC, Zhang Qian was sent by the Han emperor on a mission to form an alliance with the Yuezhi tribe in the west. He could return only 13 years later, but brought with him important information about a new breed of horse and hitherto unknown tribes in the west. More expeditions were sent west to get horses and objects of beauty for the emperor. By this process, the route to the west was opened up. The Silk Road was not one single route, but many routes and roads; and some routes were not well protected and suffered from plunder by bandits. As a measure of protection the Han rulers constructed forts and defensive walls along part of the route which were later combined to form the 'Great Wall' which still stands today as a testimony to human achievement and suffering at the hands of strong-minded emperors. Silk was not the only commodity sold through the Silk Road but was only one of many items that were traded. The most significant commodity carried along this route was not silk, but religion. Buddhism came to China from India this way as early as the first century AD, and later Islam made it into the heart of China much the same way as Buddhism did before. The Silk Road brought both Islam and Buddhism, together, and the two struggled with each other for hundreds of years - Buddhists reigning supreme up until the Tang Dynasty, and Islam wresting away control after the Mongol period. Eventually, Islam came to dominate the western half of this region and reached past Dunhuang in Gansu Province, for long China's gate to the west - while Buddhism retreated back into India, Tibet, and China's heartland. The people of the region retain the traces of the past in their buildings, mode of life, and faces - local Uighur populations range from dark and heavily bearded to green-eyed and pale. Kazakhs, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Han, Hui, and Mongolians have carved out niches and held on to cultural traditions strong enough to withstand any onslaught. Xinjiang Province of China China's governance of Xinjiang province exemplifies the administrative stance of the government in Beijing towards the county's frontier provinces inhabited mostly by ethnic minorities. Kashgar is China's westernmost city and gateway to the historic Silk Road in Xinjiang Province. Xinjiang, a sprawling land mass of peaks and desert, and covers one-sixth of China's landmass but holds less than 2 percent of its population. It is home to a dozen ethnic groups linked by centuries of gritty struggle for survival and Muslim faith. The largest of these are the Uighur (wee-gur). Though still just a tiny minority on China's population figures, they comprise the majority of the population of this province. They have been waging a separatist campaign since long before Mao's day - making this remote region on the border between the Far East and the Middle East China's most turbulent. In recent years, reports of increased repression and even executions of Uighur activists have brought Xinjiang global attention. Since September 11, Beijing has been capitalizing on the West's campaign against terrorism, adopting similar rhetoric and branding local Muslims part of the "bin Laden clique." Government incentives have encouraged massive immigration into Xinjiang: Han Chinese now comprise about half of the province's population, a tenfold increase since 1949. Xinjiang is an area rich in natural resources. This may be the main reason that China seeks to hold on to it with such tight reins. The Hans of the region, however, have taken most of these resources for their own gain. Xinjiang contains one-third of China's total oil reserves. In September 1995, there were talks concerning the laying of oil pipelines which would run through Xinjiang. The local government was given only a minuscule amount of revenue from the oil. Nearly 70 percent of Xinjiang's cotton crop is exported to Chinese areas outside of Xingjian. Hundreds of goods are exported from the region, yet, 'the region remains poor because the rightful owners are being exploited and degraded'. Every Uighur has tales of discrimination. They are regularly banned from hotels across China and forced to stay in special guesthouses, where it's easier for authorities to monitor them. Uighurs complain that that the immigrant Han Chinese have taken their land and jobs, and 'try to enslave their faith'. In Kashgar, they have their own neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, and restaurants. Few Uighurs learn the national language, Mandarin, and Han Chinese are baffled by the local Turkic scripts. Han Chinese and Uighurs rarely intermarry. They even run on different time: because Beijing insists on a single time zone for all of China, Kashgar's government offices open in early dawn, even though unofficial Uighur time is two hours behind Beijing. Some Uighurs yearn for a revival of the independent state of East Turkistan, which existed briefly after World War II. In the Xinjiang province since 1949, resistance has periodically flared up, and there have been riots and bombings. The boiling point was reached in 1996 and 1997, when violence between demonstrators and police erupted in several cities, and bombs exploded in Beijing and in Xinjiang's capital, rmqi. Two years later, Chinese prime minister Zhu Rongji urged local officials to use an "iron fist" against Uighurs and other separatists. Strike Hard, an ongoing, nationwide anti-crime campaign, was re-launched in April 2001.From September through December 2001, many people were executed in Xinjiang alone, "on politically driven charges," according to a March 2002 Amnesty International report. Also in the spring of 2001, Beijing mounted a "re-education campaign" for the 'imams' who run state-controlled mosques across China, forcing more than 8,000 Muslim clerics through the propaganda program by the end of the year. Amnesty International has also made the charge that the "subjective yardstick of 'terrorism' " was used to detain some who may have done "little more than practice their religion or defend their culture." Beijing increasingly invokes Islamic fundamentalism to justify its continuing repression of Uighurs to the international community.In January 2002, China released a report claiming that the "East Turkistan terrorist organization based in South Asia had the unstinting support of Osama bin Laden, and was an important part of his terrorist forces." It expressed fear of a "holy war with the aim of setting up a theocratic 'Islamic state' in Xinjiang".Experts discount this possibility. Though several Uighurs were reportedly among the Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan, Islamic fundamentalism has never taken root among the relatively moderate Uighurs, whose movement is largely nationalist, not Islamist, in nature. The Muslim minority groups survived the desert for centuries and gave the Silk Road its special qualities, but now one is left to ponder whether they will survive the settlement plans of the Chinese government. For all its tough talk, however, China is mindful that the eyes of the world will be watching even more closely as the 2008 Olympic Games approach Reference Morris Rossabi (Editor) Governing China's Multiethnic Frontiers (Studies on Ethnic Groups in China): University of Washington Press, March 2004 Read More