The history of China’s Xinjiang Province sheds light on the recent ethnic violence there
Its name alone indicates what the western region of Xinjiang means to the Chinese state: it translates as New Frontier or New Dominion, a place at the margins of empire. For centuries, the rulers of China have sought to control and shape Xinjiang, much as the dry winds of the vast deserts here sculpt the rocks.
A history exhibition in the main museum in this regional capital goes one step further. “Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of the territory of China,” it asserts, implying that Beijing or Xian or some other imperial capital has for time immemorial held sway over this land at the crossroads of Asian civilizations.
But many Uighurs, a Turkic race of Muslims that is the largest ethnic group among the 20 million people of Xinjiang, have their own competing historical narrative. In it, the region is cast as the Uighurs’ homeland, and the ethnic Han, who only began arriving in large numbers after the Communist takeover in 1949, are portrayed as colonizers.
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A history exhibition in the main museum in this regional capital goes one step further. “Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of the territory of China,” it asserts, implying that Beijing or Xian or some other imperial capital has for time immemorial held sway over this land at the crossroads of Asian civilizations.
But many Uighurs, a Turkic race of Muslims that is the largest ethnic group among the 20 million people of Xinjiang, have their own competing historical narrative. In it, the region is cast as the Uighurs’ homeland, and the ethnic Han, who only began arriving in large numbers after the Communist takeover in 1949, are portrayed as colonizers.