Dissecting China's far west
Xinjiang, China's Muslim Borderland - Studies of Central Asia and the Caucasus, edited by S Frederick Starr
Reviewed by Colin Mackerras
BRISBANE - Xinjiang, China's Muslim Borderland is not the first book to focus on Xinjiang. One thinks, among quite a few others, of Donald H McMillen's study on Chinese Communist Power and Policy in Xinjiang, 1949-1977, published by Westview in Boulder in 1979. However, it is the first to take an all-round view on Xinjiang and Xinjiang alone. There are sections on an astonishingly wide variety of topics, including history, the economy, politics, Islam, education, demography, health care and water management. And given that Xinjiang is rightly called a "borderland", it comes as no surprise to find quite a bit of analysis of foreign affairs and how Xinjiang affects the interrelationships of its region, especially through the way it spans China and Central Asia.
This is a timely book, given that there has been a great deal of debate and concern about Xinjiang recently. The Chinese have come under a fair bit of criticism for their human-rights abuses. But correspondingly, both the United States and the United Nations have taken the side of the Chinese government in condemning one of the alleged separatist groups as a terrorist organization. The fact that the minorities of Xinjiang are mostly Muslims and that one of the minorities, the Uighurs, has secessionist tendencies, has brought fire to the controversy over whether there is really a terrorist problem, or whether the Chinese are simply distorting it for political purposes.
The authors who contributed to this book, especially Dru Gladney, claim there is no organized terrorism, but at the same time acknowledge terrorist incidents. Gladney claims (p 381) that very few incidents of bombing, civil unrest and assassinations since 1990 can definitely be traced to Uighur separatist groups or events. It follows that he does not think the Chinese need to be quite as proactive as they are to suppress terrorism in Xinjiang. He has made his case well, and on the basis of very extensive field work and research that few foreign scholars can match. I personally share his view on the basis of my own experiences and research in Xinjiang.
The historical sections are fairly clear that Xinjiang's relationship with China is a very complicated one and that Chinese control over the area has been anything but consistent over the centuries. It follows the claim that Chinese have held sovereignty "since ancient times" (zigu yilai) is somewhat simplistic. However, there seems little doubt that the Chinese have exercised control since 759, even though uprisings have been frequent, especially in the second half of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries.
Chinese rule in the present comes under heavy criticism, especially for its treatment of the Turkic Uighurs, but the authors are at pains to be fair and the overall record comes over as anything but uniformly bleak. For instance, there has been great economic progress and outside of China's eastern seaboard, Xinjiang's economy has developed faster than any other province's. However, the fact of ethnic inequality and ethnic tensions is consistent throughout the book. I might add in this context that the authors are not simply concerned with attacking the Han Chinese, and there is also criticism of excessive Uighur nationalism in this book.
Editor S Frederick Starr says in the introduction that the chief factor making the book worth writing was that Xinjiang "is also the one province of China with a substantial population that is both Turkic and Muslim" (p 3). What emerges here is that it is Islam and the Turkic ethnicity of most of the population that gives Xinjiang a special edge, making it worth studying among China's province-level units. As a specialist in Chinese ethnic minorities and the Islam that some of them believe in, I heartily endorse Starr's view.
There is no doubt that the list of authors Starr collected for the project is a highly impressive one. Most of the people are known names and a few, like Dru Gladney, James Millward and Linda Benson, rank at or near the top in their disciplines with respect to a study like the present one. Given the wealth of expertise, even including an Israeli specialist (Yitzhak Shichor from the University of Haifa in Israel), it might seem churlish to point out the American focus of the book. For me, sorely missed are the perspectives of the Han Chinese and the Uighurs themselves. On p 23, the editor has given a justification for omitting any Chinese contributor, using words like sensitivity and the "delicacy of the task". I can see the force of this argument, but still find it a great shame. The fact is that Chinese views are so important and they so often come over to us in the form of propaganda statements that are not very helpful and often serve to obscure dialogue rather than clarify it. The book has one Uighur participant who has contributed to two chapters. But it is not clear precisely what his ideas are and what are the other authors'. The fact that this is essentially an American work of scholarship is not so much to criticize it, as to say that it could have been more.
One point struck me as interesting in the chapter on the economy: the lack of material on cotton. This bulks very large in some accounts, notably that of Nicolas Becquelin, "Xinjiang in the Nineties", The China Journal, No 44 (July 2000), where it comes over as an additional way the Chinese are oppressing the Uighurs, because it is mostly Han Chinese who get what wealth and employment the cotton brings. Yet Calla Weimer hardly mentions this factor, dwelling much more on oil production and the development of the infrastructure in Xinjiang. There is mention of cotton on p 272 in the chapter on water, but it is comparatively sparse in its content.
And what of Xinjiang's future? Most of the chapters take up this issue from the point of view of their particular topic. Of course, nobody knows the future and most confine themselves to a statement of pessimistic or optimistic scenarios. Full Uighur independence may be sought by some Uighur groups, but is not touted as particularly likely by the authors of these articles. It is striking that the greatest threat to Xinjiang's future discussed in this book is HIV/AIDS, which is infecting and will continue to infect both Han and Uighurs (pp 318-19). It is ironic that the Chinese authorities are so concerned about separatism and terrorism, when their top priority ought really to be the prevention of this disease.
This book has a profusion of maps, illustrations and tables. That is one of its strengths. So many tables and maps lend a scholarly credibility and also make a book easier to follow. The pictures are chosen for their historical value and for the ways they show the differing interpretations that different ethnic groups can place on historical events.
On the back cover Professor David Lampton of Johns Hopkins University is quoted as saying that "the day it is published is the day it will become the standard work on the subject". I actually think Lampton is right about this. I think this is already the standard work on the subject and I expect it to remain so for a long time to come. I admire it especially for its scholarly and hard-hitting yet balanced approach, the broad range of its coverage, the high standard of its expertise and the depth of research each scholar has carried out. I would have liked it to be less America-centered, but concede that it was an American foundation (The Henry Luce Foundation of New York) that provided the money making the book possible. Certainly, I recommend this book to all those with specialist or general interest in a highly interesting and important region of the world and in China; this book has the potential to become even more important in the coming years.
Xinjiang, China's Muslim Borderland, edited by S Frederick Starr. M E Sharpe, 2004. ISBN 0-7656-1317-4 (hard cover) US$89.95. ISBN 0-7656-1318-2 (paperback) $32.95. Tables, maps, illustrations, 494 pages.
Colin Mackerras is Foundation Professor in the Department of International Business and Asian Studies at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. He has visited Xinjiang four times, most recently in October and November 2003. He has written extensively on ethnic issues in China, including Xinjiang, his most recent book being China's Ethnic Minorities and Globalisation, RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
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