Using recently declassified Soviet documents, Jamil Hasanli examines Soviet involvement in the anti-China rebellion in East Turkistan. Hasanli takes readers back to the early 1930s when the Turkic national movement was suppressed by the Soviet government and the USSR. Hasanli deftly illustrates how Stalin’s policies toward the movement changed after the turning point of World War II and the treachery of Sheng Shicai, leading up to the 1944 establishment of the Eastern Turkistan Republic and the start of the Cold War.
Along the Russian-Qing frontier in the nineteenth century, a new political space emerged, shaped by competing imperial and spiritual loyalties, cross-border economic and social ties, and revolution. David Brophy explores how a community of Central Asian Muslims responded to these historic changes by reinventing themselves as the Uyghur nation.
Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State views modern Chinese political history from the perspective of Han officials who were tasked with governing Xinjiang. This region, inhabited by Uighurs, Kazaks, Hui, Mongols, Kirgiz, and Tajiks, is also the last significant “colony” of the former Qing empire to remain under continuous Chinese rule throughout the twentieth century. By foregrounding the responses of Chinese and other imperial elites to the growing threat of national determination across Eurasia, Justin Jacobs argues for a reconceptualization of the modern Chinese state as a “national empire.” He shows how strategies for administering this region in the late Qing, Republican, and Communist eras were molded by, and shaped in response to, the rival platforms of ethnic difference characterized by Soviet and other geopolitical competitors across Inner and East Asia. This riveting narrative tracks Xinjiang political history through the Bolshevik revolution, the warlord years, Chinese civil war, and the large-scale Han immigration in the People’s Republic of China, as well as the efforts of the exiled Xinjiang government in Taiwan after 1949 to claim the loyalty of Xinjiang refugees.
In 1950 the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China signed a Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance to foster cultural and technological cooperation between the Soviet bloc and the PRC. While this treaty was intended as a break with the colonial past, Austin Jersild argues that the alliance ultimately failed because the enduring problem of Russian imperialism led to Chinese frustration with the Soviets. Jersild zeros in on the ground-level experiences of the socialist bloc advisers in China, who were involved in everything from the development of university curricula, the exploration for oil, and railway construction to piano lessons. Their goal was to reproduce a Chinese administrative elite in their own image that could serve as a valuable ally in the Soviet bloc's struggle against the United States. Interestingly, the USSR's allies in Central Europe were as frustrated by the "great power chauvinism" of the Soviet Union as was China. By exposing this aspect of the story, Jersild shows how the alliance, and finally the split, had a true international dimension.
Presents a comprehensive study of the central Asian region of Xinjiang's history and people from antiquity to the present. Discusses Xinjiang's rich environmental, cultural and ethno-political heritage.
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. Domestic Chinese opinion on ethnic policies over the last five years is reviewed and implications for future policies under the new leadership of CPC Secretary General Xi Jinping are explored. Careful review of a wide spectrum of contemporary Chinese commentary identifies an emerging consensus for ethnic-policy reform. 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. These reformers argue that divisive ethnic policies adopted from the former USSR must be replaced by those supporting an ethnic "melting pot" concept. Despite this important shift in opinion, such radical policy changes as ending regional ethnic autonomy or minority preferences are unlikely over the short-to-medium term. Small-yet-significant adjustments in rhetoric and policy emphasis are, however, expected as the party-state attempts to strengthen interethnic cohesiveness as a part of its larger agenda of stability maintenance. About the author James Leibold is a senior lecturer in Politics and Asian Studies at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism (2007) and co-editor of Critical Han Studies (2012) and Minority Education in China (forthcoming). His research on ethnicity, nationalism, and race in modern China has appeared in The China Journal, The China Quarterly, The Journal of Asian Studies, Modern China, and other publications.
An economic and military superpower with 20 percent of the world’s population, China has the wherewithal to transform the international system. Xi Jinping’s bold calls for China to “lead in the reform of the global governance system” suggest that he has just such an ambition. But how does he plan to realize it? And what does it mean for the rest of the world? In this compelling book, Elizabeth Economy reveals China’s ambitious new strategy to reclaim the country’s past glory and reshape the geostrategic landscape in dramatic new ways. Xi’s vision is one of Chinese centrality on the global stage, in which the mainland has realized its sovereignty claims over Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the South China Sea, deepened its global political, economic, and security reach through its grand-scale Belt and Road Initiative, and used its leadership in the United Nations and other institutions to align international norms and values, particularly around human rights, with those of China. It is a world radically different from that of today. The international community needs to understand and respond to the great risks, as well as the potential opportunities, of a world rebuilt by China.
In 1944, Moslem forces in the Chinese province of Xinjiang staged an uprising and established an independent Islamic state - the East Turkestan Republic. This book describes that challenge to China's rule, and the Nationalist government's response to Turkic-Moslem nationalism.
In 1944, Moslems in Yili, Xinjiang, rose up in rebellion against the Guomindang (GMD or KMT) Government in China and established the Eastern Turkestan Republic (ETR), which became part of the newly established People's Republic of China in 1949. Sparking intense separatist feelings in the region for years, the ETR in Yili is regarded today as a dynamic symbol of the East Turkestan Independence Movement. A better understanding of events between 1944-1949 in Xinjiang enables us to gain insights into the ongoing Uygur separatist movement. This study explores the historical background of the ETR, examining the domestic and international politics from which the ETR emerged, and analyzing accounts of Soviet participation in the republic. Detailed analysis highlights Xinjiang politics between 1944 and 1949, and explains how and why the Chinese Communist Party was able to take over Xinjiang peacefully in 1949. This book also illustrates the interlocking pattern of ethnic disputes, government policy, foreign interference, and international rivalry in this complex event.
