URUMQI — Rebiya Kadeer, a prominent Uighur businessperson, was arrested and subsequently charged with disclosing state secrets in the Xinjiang capital Urumqi in August after trying to meet with a group of visiting Americans. Her secretary and two of her sons were also arrested and another two sons placed under house arrest. For Kadeer, this type of persecution is nothing new. Her passport was confiscated in April 1997 and, a few months later, Wang Lequan, secretary of the regional Communist Party committee, announced that she could not leave the country because "her husband was engaged in subverting the government and separatist activities outside the country." Her husband, former political prisoner and current exile Sidik Rouzi, regularly speaks out—on Radio Free Asia and Voice of America—against China's treatment of its 8 million Uighur minority in Xinjiang who share strong Islamic-inspired, anti-Chinese sentiments. China has repeatedly justified its crackdown by saying that the Uighurs are dangerous separatists who will stop at nothing short of an independent Islamic state.

Positioned precariously on the border with Central Asia, in recent years the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region —a large province in northwestern China—has been witness to increasing tensions. Within its borders, the province's largest minority population, the Uighurs, have been involved in a fight for independence against the Chinese authorities. Outside the province, Central Asian states watch nervously as China—with an eye on its mineral-rich (but technically under-equipped) neighbors—expands northward, with plans to make Xinjiang the country's new industrial center.

Of all the national minorities in Xinjiang, the Uighurs, an ethnically Turkic people, are the most dissimilar to the Chinese with respect to religion, language, architecture, and cuisine. They embraced Islam in the 10th century under the rule of Satuk Bughra Khan. Unlike the Mongols or the Manchus, none of China's dynasties have sprung from their ranks. Drawing from the Turkic roots of the Uighur language and from Islam, Uighur national identity has always developed independently of the Chinese empire and has culminated in a strong tradition of revolt against foreign domination.

Xinjiang is an ethnic and cultural crossroads. Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism are the dominant religions. Turkic, Mongol, and Tunguz are the most widely spoken languages. Today, within a population of around 17 million, there are 13 officially recognized minorities (the largest being Uighurs, Han Chinese, Kazakhs, Hui, Kyrgyz, and Mongols). China has exercised its political power in the Xinjiang region off and on since the 2nd century B.C. In the 17th century, during their successful expansion into Central Asia, the Manchu dynasty ran up against Russian interests. The result of this confrontation was a mutual agreement on 4800 kilometers of shared borderland in 1727 and China's annexation of former Jungaria—under the new name of Xinjiang (New Borderland)—in 1885.

The marginal representation of Han Chinese, the compact settlements of the local ethnic groups and the province's limited contact with Chinese culture did not make the process of assimilating Xinjiang an easy task. It was not until the onset of the Communist regime, following the military takeover in 1949, that an effective method of assimilation was found in the form of intense industrialization. The building of textile and metallurgical plants, extraction of raw materials, car transport, and more widely available consumer goods—along with the influx of large numbers of workers from other Chinese provinces (up to 149,000 a year)—managed to disrupt the foundations of Uighur cultural identity. Since 1949, the number of Chinese inhabitants has grown by almost 2,000 percent. Estimates show that in 1955, ethnic Chinese made up 10 percent of the population of Xinjiang, while in 1994 it was between 40 and 50 percent. Although Chinese authorities claim this number has significantly decreased over the past few years—curtailed partly by the limitations set on birth rate—fears of assimilation, and eventual extinction, predominate among minorities, who claim that around 4,000 ethnic Chinese move to Xinjiang every day.

CHINA HEADS NORTH

Chinese influence and authority in Xinjiang has implications not only for the Uighurs but also for the surrounding Central Asian states. "For half a century, China has been living in a state of demographic restriction. If it doesn't manage to solve its demographic problem, then this problem will become a geopolitical problem, because China will not be able to feed all of its inhabitants and will be forced to export them beyond its borders," says Konstantin Syrojezkin, deputy director of the Kazakh Institute for Strategic Studies and an expert on Chinese-Kazakh relations. "Since the south is already overpopulated, the only possibility of relocation is to the north, primarily to Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia."

Thanks to its position, Xinjiang can serve as a springboard for this northwards expansion. Because of their rich mineral deposits, the sparsely populated area, and technically illiterate workforce—the Central Asian states are fertile ground for the Chinese.

The Chinese government has typically attempted to gain concessions for the extraction of raw materials in Central Asia for a set period of time and then brings in a large number of Chinese workers. In Kazakhstan, for example, China has a contract for oil drilling in the north of the country and has completed a railway line connecting the Xinjiang capital Urumqi and the former Kazakh capital Almaty—making a direct link between Beijing and Central Asia. Despite recent delays, a 3,200-kilometer, $2.4-billion pipeline projected to carry oil from Aktyubinsk in Kazakhstan's northwest to Xinjiang is still slated to go ahead. Many analysts believe the pipeline is too important for China's interests to not be eventually completed.

RESISTING ASSIMILATION

Recently Chinese authorities have manipulated local feelings of antipathy toward the Uighurs throughout Central Asia—based on fears that the Uighurs' aims are exclusionary and will lead to an intolerant Islamic state. With Chinese encouragement, Central Asian governments are increasingly cracking down on Uighur insurgency. On 8 April 1998, four influential Uighur activists were arrested in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan on the grounds of Islamic fundamentalism. Similarly, in Taskent, Imindzan Osmanov, the chairman of the Uighur cultural center and writer, was jailed. In the spring, Kazakh authorities turned over three Uighur defectors suspected of terrorism who were—according to an Uighur exile organization—immediately executed by the Chinese police.

At a recent summit in Bishkek on 25 August, political leaders of the "Shanghai Five" (Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) met to discuss increasing cross-border cooperation. The leaders signed a security agreement that aims to fight—among other things—terrorism, national separatism, and religious extremism. Most commentators say the agreement gives the Chinese authorities a carte blanche in dealing with the Uighurs—and, perhaps more importantly, serves to cut off lines of communication between Xinjiang Uighurs and the potentially destabilizing Uighur minorities in Central Asia. In response, the Association of Uighur Organizations of Kazakhstan issued a statement saying that "the struggle of Uighurs in Eastern Turkistan has nothing to do with Islamic fundamentalism or extremism, that struggle can be defined as [one for] national liberation." The thaw in relations between the region's powers—a far cry from the days of huge troop face-offs along the border between China and the Soviet Union—will not bode well for the Uighurs, keeping their tradition of revolt against assimilation and foreign dominance very much alive.

The Uighurs are one of the forces capable of slowing down China's advance northward. Historically, the speed of Chinese expansion depends primarily on the country's domestic stability, particularly in Xinjiang. A major impetus for the Uighur separatist movement came following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of independent Central Asian republics. The resistance was aided by Uighur exile communities' strong contacts with their homeland. Following the Great Leap Forward—the economic and social plan initiated by Chairman Mao in 1958—the Chinese government allowed some Uighurs to go into exile. A strong Uighur community, which primarily aspired to forestall total assimilation and preserve Uighur national and cultural identity, formed in the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union. According to a 1979 Soviet census, 210,612 Uighurs lived in the Soviet Union, 148,000 of them in Kazakhstan, and 30,000 in Kyrgyzstan. In 1991, they supposedly numbered 263,000 although Uighur exiles put the figure somewhat higher at about 500,000.

In 1993, fearing Chinese expansion and colonization, the Uighur resistance turned to organized terrorist activities within Xinjiang, aimed at Chinese soldiers and civilians. In February 1997, tensions within the region exploded into large-scale unrest in Guldzi, involving several thousand people and leading to waves of arrests and persecution. Special military divisions were called into the region and several court proceedings—allegedly with predetermined verdicts—took place. Prisoners were tortured and then sent directly to work camps after their sentences expired. "What is happening in Urumqi, Guldzi, and elsewhere is not the fault of Uighurs and cannot be called terrorism," says Jusupek Muchsili, the leader of the United National Revolutionary Front of East Turkestan (the Uighur name for the province). "If the Chinese regime suppresses a calm demonstration with bloody armed force, then this must be called terrorism, state terror. The commensurate response of the radicals is then the placement of explosives on a bus occupied predominately by Chinese." And the tension is only increasing.

Translated by Kazi Stastna.

Ivo Dokoupil is a freelance journalist based in the Czech Republic, who travels frequently to the former Soviet Union.

Transitions articles on the Uighurs:
Lowell A. Bezanis's article "Melee suggests Uighur Problem Festers In Xinjiang," from February 1997, discusses the violent end to a demonstration by Uighur youth.
From October 1998, Nadira Artyk's "An Exodus of Minorities" dealt with the problems created by Stalin's resettlement policies, not just for those who were resettled, but also for indigenous populations who received the new immigrants.
In "Bordering on Friendship" Bruce Palmer addresses the history of Sino-Russian/Soviet relations in light of the new warming trend between the two huge countries.