Describes Xinjiang and its native indigenous people under the Chinese rule since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949. The highlights of this book are the author's analyses on the modern Chinese policies towards its minority nationals. It is a useful handbook for those interested in China's ethnic problems, and Central Asian studies.
WINNER OF THE 2009 JAMES BEARD FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL COOKBOOK AWARD WINNER OF THE 2009 IACP BEST INTERNATIONAL COOKBOOK AWARD A bold and eye-opening new cookbook with magnificent photos and unforgettable stories. In the West, when we think about food in China, what usually comes to mind are the signature dishes of Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai. But beyond the urbanized eastern third of China lie the high open spaces and sacred places of Tibet, the Silk Road oases of Xinjiang, the steppelands of Inner Mongolia, and the steeply terraced hills of Yunnan and Guizhou. The peoples who live in these regions are culturally distinct, with their own history and their own unique culinary traditions. In Beyond the Great Wall, the inimitable duo of Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid—who first met as young travelers in Tibet—bring home the enticing flavors of this other China. For more than twenty-five years, both separately and together, Duguid and Alford have journeyed all over the outlying regions of China, sampling local home cooking and street food, making friends and taking lustrous photographs. Beyond the Great Wall shares the experience in a rich mosaic of recipes—from Central Asian cumin-scented kebabs and flatbreads to Tibetan stews and Mongolian hot pots—photos, and stories. A must-have for every food lover, and an inspiration for cooks and armchair travelers alike.
There has been a significant increase in the twenty-first century in the frequency and intensity of violent incidents in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the far northwest province of China, where the Uyghurs, the Turkic-speaking Muslim people who historically constituted the majority population, feel themselves displaced and discriminated against by the growing in-migration of Han Chinese. The book explores the continuing unrest in Xinjiang. It focuses in particular on the major violence of July 2009 in the city of Urumqi, on repression and the practice of Islam in southern Xinjiang, and on the policy of the Chinese Communist Party which has used the rhetoric of the "War on Terror" to justify its repression in terms which it hopes will gain sympathy from the international community. The book relates these particular points to the development of China-Uyghur relations more broadly in the longer historical perspective, and concludes by discussing how the situation is likely to unfold in future.
While, not discounting the potency of the radical Islamic religious discourse in fuelling the contemporary wave of terrorism, this book makes an attempt to explain terrorism in China as an ethno-nationalist conflict rooted in issues involving minority identity. However, a largely domestic conflict is being hijacked by the radical Islamists.
Full title: Critical analysis of the presence of Islam in China and the current plight of the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. The central postulation made in this essay is that the current plight of the Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang province of China is two-pronged in its cause. The first involves a deeply-rooted historical rejection, or at least suspicion, of any religion that is not Chinese in origin and secondly involves a concerted effort on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party to gain greater control over a people group whom it sees as representing a threat to its authority and dominance in the province of Xinjiang. To justify the validity of this statement, this essay will be divided into three distinct parts; the first two parts will explore the historical background and present day context of Islam in China with the aim of clarifying the Chinese worldview on foreign religions and people groups. These will act as important contributions to culminate into the third part which will focus on the current occurrence of sinofication/sinicisation in the Xinjiang province to the detriment of the human rights, religious and cultural liberties, and the very existence of the Uighur Muslim ethnic group. The essay will provide a historical context by explaining the timeline of the presence of Islam across different parts of China where it experienced the most activity and adherence. This particularly includes the southwestern ports where it was brought into the country by Arab traders as well as in the westernmost reaches as a result of being part of the outer edges of different Islamic empires that held territory across Central Asia.
This book looks ahead to consider the most likely results of the encounter between China and the international system. Environmental, cultural and perceptual matters are considered as well as more traditional economic and military issues. Underpinning the book is the question will the 21st century be 'China's Century', for China and the world?
"During Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, hundreds of thousands of famine refugees in the recently founded People's Republic of China set their sights on the agricultural promise of Inner Mongolia. Cheng Tiejun was one of those refugees, arriving in Inner Mongolia in 1959. In 1966, as the PRC plunged into the tumultuous events of the Cultural Revolution, he joined the millions of students and young intellectuals in the Red Guards, who saw in the early days of the Cultural Revolution an opportunity to shape a new nation embracing freedom and equality. In Inner Mongolia, however, that year saw the Party-led destruction of the Mongol-centered autonomous polity led by Ulanhu. In the years after the fall of Ulanhu's administration, the region descended into a living hell for Mongols. Even those among the rebels were accused of being Ulanhu sympathizers and tortured for information. At the heart of this book are Cheng's first-person recollections of his experiences as a rebel. These are supplemented by a close examination of the documentary record of the era--as patchwork and censored as it is--from co-authors Mark Selden and Uradyn E. Bulag. The final chapter offers a theoretical framework to understand such persecution. Its goal was not to destroy the Mongols as a people or as a culture--that is, it was not a genocide. It was, however, a "politicide," an attempt to destroy an officially and politically recognized nationality in possession of an autonomous region, forcing Mongols to assimilate as "ethnic minorities" within a "Chinese nation." This unusual narrative provides urgently needed primary material to understand the events of the Cultural Revolution, while at once offering a novel way to understand contemporary Chinese minority politics"--
For a long time, India and China have been seen as the rising economic giants on the Asiatic mainland. Studies of the conflicts which have plagued the borderlands of India and China however have tended to only analyse individual case studies without attempting to compare and contrast the situation in these conflicts. This book compares and contrasts the situation in India’s disputed borderlands – Kashmir and the Indian north eastern states – with China’s contested borderlands – Xinjiang and Tibet. The book looks at the root causes of the conflict and how these conflicts have evolved and changed their character with the passage of time. Analysing how the countries have dealt with their territorial disputes from the 50’s till more recent times, the author shows to what extent these state policies have exacerbated the already strained situation. Using primary data collected primarily through interviews, from the people/inhabitants of these conflict zones, the book throws new light on the problem. This bottom up approach allows the people to speak and provides a different understanding of the nature of the conflict, which may very well be the way forward for long lasting peace. A comparative study of the conflicts in the contested borderlands of China and India, the book will be of interest to scholars studying Asian security studies and Asian Politics particularly and Defence and Security Studies more generally.
This book focuses on the nature of ethno-national conflicts and impacts of ideological orientation of the Communist Party of China (CPC) towards the national question in the context of Han nationalism and political, economic and security policies towards Xinjiang. Violence in Xinjiang since the mid-1990s is projected as one of the major national security challenges for China, along with issues pertaining to Tibet and Taiwan. The author argues that the post-Mao reformist model may have been a beneficial economic and political innovation, but failed in dealing with regional conflicts and unrests arising out of the demands for independence, freedom, greater autonomy and assertion of democratic and civic rights. The book discusses Chinese nationalism and the construction of Uyghur national identity, consequences of economic modernisation in the region, ethnic conflicts and coercive measures, the security and social stability situation in Xinjiang, intensification of violence in Xinjiang under the new leadership, vision of the ‘Chinese dream’, key policies and programmes, post-riot fallouts and social contradictions manifest in discourses surrounding development, separatist violence, religious fundamentalism and international terrorism. With its in-depth, accessible and comprehensive analyses, this book will be a valuable addition to scholars and researchers of Chinese studies, politics and international relations, security and strategic studies, sociology, social anthropology and ethnic studies.
Even in the Rain: Uyghur Music in Modern China explores music as constitutive of Uyghur cultural and social life where subaltern experiences of ethnicity, race, and nationhood are indexed. A Central Asian Turkic-speaking, predominantly Muslim people, the Uyghur are identified in China as one of the fifty-five officially designated “minority nationalities.” Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the Uyghur homeland in the far Chinese northwest, Chuen-Fung Wong focuses on aspects of Uyghur music making as it faces the state’s management of minority art expressions. Music serves as a metaphor of the Uyghur nation—as heritage (miras), culture (medeniyet), and tradition (en’ene)—while it struggles to survive, respond, and adapt to the Chinese state’s aggressive maneuvering and the broader intercultural influences that have shaped Uyghur performing arts in modern times. As the Uyghur and other non-Han peoples in China continue to be minoritized under the pretexts of multiculturalism and cultural enlightenment, local musicians and audiences react with a vast range of performing and listening approaches to engage assimilation, racism, and other grim realities of everyday life. Even in the Rain provides the political, historical, and theoretical context to address overlapping genres and soundscapes, which are bound by creative processes that have negotiated the state’s minority policy and the collective pursuit of identity. With a focus on the minoritized musical consciousness in Uyghur performance, especially on the ways in which Uyghur musicians encounter modernity under a colonial context, this book examines the cultivation of a unique musical deftness that has allowed musicians to move across the various localizing strategies and intercultural practices. Uyghur musical modernity should not be understood as the passive acceptance of outside influences—and certainly not the erasure of indigenous elements and national heritage. Local traditions and hegemonic influences sometimes appear to be more collaborating than conflicting, in that subaltern expressions actively opt to manifest in forms that are dominant and deemed universal. This timely and comprehensive analysis spans approximately seven decades of modern Uyghur musical life, during which musicians and audiences adopted an array of methods, experimenting with new identity formations to navigate life as often reluctant Chinese citizens.
