Organizer: Gardner Bovingdon, Cornell University
Chair and Discussant: Michael S. Dillon, University of Durham
Over the past several years, demonstrations, bombings, executions, and an air of general menace have filled reports on Xinjiang in the popular media. Most recent scholarly monographs treating contemporary politics in the region have depended on these popular media, as well as official publications, limiting their scope and timeliness. Field research conducted in the last several years both within Xinjiang and abroad afford fresh information and more accurate evaluations of political possibilities there. On the one hand, activities seem to have stepped up recently, indicating deeper and broader commitment among the population and their compatriots abroad. On the other, a spate of treaties signed by the PRC with the several Central Asian Republics have drastically curtailed the ambit of separatist organizations in regions bordering on Xinjiang. What we need at this point are balanced estimates of the effects of these contrary factors.
The papers for this panel consider the issue of resistance from two different angles. Kostrzewa and Hui King Fai present work on separatist organizations inside and outside of Xinjiang. Fai concentrates on organizations in Xinjiang, Central Asia, and Turkey. Kostrzewa analyzes the aims and activities of separatist organizations in Central Asia and the United States, demonstrating shifts in strategy with the changing international situation. Bovingdon evaluates episodes of everyday resistance by Uyghurs in Xinjiang, arguing that the actions of ordinary individuals are as important an indicator of political possibilities as those of committed groups abroad.
Together these three papers should significantly enhance our understanding of the different forms of political resistance practiced by Uyghurs today.
Not Following a Leader: The Uyghur Separatist Movement in International Context
Hui King Fai, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
This paper examines the activities of Uyghur separatists in Xinjiang in the 1990s. The series of riots in Xinjiang and Beijing last year, as well changing separatist strategies, suggest dramatic new possibilities for the future of nationalism in Xinjiang.
Xinjiang has a long history of separatist activity; however, it has become more violent in recent years. Key reasons include the demonstration effect of the independence of the Central Asian states, increased links between separatist organizations on both sides of the border, and the perception among separatists that the policy of peaceful resistance advocated by the Dalai Lama has achieved much less than have the armed struggles of the PLO and IRA.
The Dalai Lama has won international attention for the Tibetan independence movement, but he has also kept the movement under control by advocating peaceful struggle. Uyghur separatists, by contrast, have no spiritual leader, no fixed strategy, and no central organization. They have little international visibility or support; yet precisely because of the lack of central coordination, the Chinese government cannot adopt a single stance toward the separatists, nor can it anticipate where terrorist activities will occur.
The paper draws on oral interviews with former political prisoners in Xinjiang, separatist leaders, Uyghurs and Hans in Xinjiang, officials in China and Turkey, assistants to the Dalai Lama, scholars, human rights groups, and Chinese dissidents. It also draws on an analysis of relations between China and Turkey, a key factor in the future of nationalism in Xinjiang.
Globalization and Xinjiang Separatism
Thomas Kostrzewa, Western Michigan University
Xinjiang separatist movements in the 1990s are characterized by complex features of history, geography, culture, socioeconomic distinctions, identity issues, international relations, and globalization. This paper focuses on the unity and discord found within Xinjiang separatism as it is associated with the nexus of local-global conditions in Xinjiang. The conditions of rapid change associated with globalization and the Chinese drive for modernization have created new opportunities and new dilemmas for national separatism and autonomy. While analysis of the evidence supports the previous understanding of national separatist movements as essentially fractious, developments associated with globalization and modernization result in a new set of nationalist dynamics that coexist and compete with the old.
The Not-So-Silent Majority: Everyday Resistance among the Uyghurs
Gardner Bovingdon, Cornell University
Events in Xinjiang since 1949 indicate a continuing struggle between the CCP, still seeking to consolidate and naturalize its political control in the region, and a substantial population of Uyghurs hoping either for more substantive autonomy or for the establishment of an independent state there. We can best understand the political history of modern Xinjiang through the twin lenses of state- and nation-building. These processes have elsewhere in the world elicited opposition movements by peoples which reject state efforts to rule them or stamp them with a homogenizing cultural identity; so in Xinjiang, where Uyghurs have resisted both the apparatus of Chinese rule and its cultural content.
Drawing on the work of political theorists such as James Scott, this paper narrates and analyzes such phenomena as verbal taunts, tactics of intimidation, creative disruption of work, subversive stories, songs permeated with political allegory, religious activity, and social practices which evade the sanctions against free association. It argues that these activities constitute a significant form of everyday resistance that exemplifies the breadth of popular sentiment against Chinese rule in the region. Both the threat of punishment by the state and the new economic compulsions introduced by Chinese market reforms make engaging in overt political opposition appear too dangerous (and, up to the present, ineffectual) to most ordinary citizens. The paper asserts that where power differentials or threats of massive retaliatory violence make organized collective action risky or impossible, individual strategies of resistance nevertheless pose a real political challenge to the regime.