Xinjiang and its Central Asian borderlands

Central Asian Survey

Volumn 17, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 373-407

  Raczka, Witt ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÉ DE STRASBOURG   (France)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ASIA; CHINA; RUSSIAN FEDERATION;

BORDER REGION; CROSS-BORDER RELATIONS; GEOPOLITICS;

CHINA; XINJIANG PROVINCE;

EID: 0031737871     PISSN: 02634937     EISSN: None     Source Type: Trade Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/02634939808401044     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. See Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) (1940), pp 173-175.
2. See René Grousset, L'Empire des steppes (Paris: Payot, 1965), pp 151-170.
3. This author visited the mausoleum of Yusup Hazi Hajip in Kashgar in 1997 and found this sentence at an exhibition set up there by the Chinese.
4. As examplified by Babur-nama, the 'memoirs' of Zahir-ud-din Babur, the founder of the Great Mughal dynasty (died in 1530).
5. See Grousset, op cit, p 612.
6. See K. Sh. Khafizova, Chinese Diplomacy in Central Asia (14th-19th century), (Almaty (Kazakstan), Gylym, 1995), pp 114-118 (in Russian).
7. Russia obtained from China all territories situated to the north and east of the Amur and Ussuri rivers.
8. See Michel Jan et al., Atlas de l'Asie Orientale, (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1997), p 131.
9. Had the relations between the USSR and China been much better when the former state was weakening in the late 1980s and early 1990s, one could imagine Chinese assistance to the Soviets in order to prevent the establishment of independent Muslim states on China's western frontiers.
10. See S. C. M. Paine, Imperial Rivals: China, Russia and their Disputed Frontier, (Armonk, NY/London, UK, 1995), pp. 133-135.
11. See John W. Garver, 'The Sino-Soviet territorial dispute in the Pamir Mountains region', The China Quarterly, March 1981, No 85, p 113.
12. The 1885 Anglo-Russian agreement, at least in its English version, does not refer to 'borders' or 'frontiers' but to the 'line of demarcation' between the 'spheres of influence' of the two empires.
13. The Soviet Union did so in 1920.
14. See David Rees, 'Soviet border problems: China and Japan', Conflict Studies, No 139, 1982, pp 4-5.
15. This agreement was signed by the Kazak president Nazarbayev and then ratified by him (!) by means of a decree in 1995. One can only wonder whether this particular procedure will not constitute legal grounds for treaty revision in the future.
16. In 1963 China and Afghanistan signed the border agreement by which they recognized the 80 km line as their common frontier.
17. A map found by this author in Kashgar, invoking the current borders of south-western Xinjiang, calls parts of the autonomous region of Gorno-Badakhshan in Tajikistan, including a stretch of the Pamir Highway (north and south of the town of Murgab), 'Chinese [territory] under Russian occupation' within temporary borders.
18. The agreement fixing the eastern 4,204 km Sino-Soviet border was signed on 16 May 1991 and then confirmed by the Sino-Russian accord of 10 November 1997. The legal demarcation of the boundary was supposed to he terminated by the end of 1997.
19. See Francois Joyaux, Géopolitique de l'Extrême-Orient, (Paris: Editions Complexe, 1991), pp 133-136; Malcolm Anderson, Frontiers, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), p 88.
20. See Francois Joyaux, Géopolitique de l'Extrême-Orient, (Paris: Editions Complexe, 1991), pp 133-136; Malcolm Anderson, Frontiers, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), p 88.
21. The Chinese translation of 'Xinjiang'.
22. See Paine, op cit, p 114.
23. Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 12 September 1996 and 28 November 1996.
24. CIS Agreement on Guarding of Borders (30 December 1991), CIS Agreement on the Status of the Border Troops (30 January 1991), CIS Statute on Joint Command of Border Troops (20 March 1992), CIS Declaration on State Borders (7 August 1993), and Treaty on Border Protection Between CIS, Non-CIS States (7 July 1995). See Z. Brzezinski and P. Sullivan (eds), Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, (Armonk, N.Y./London, UK; M. E. Sharpe, 1997).
25. General A. Nikolayev, the former head of the Russian Border Troops, declared on 15 February 1995 that the Tajik-Afghan frontier is Russia's external border (BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (former USSR), SU/2230, 17 February 1995).
26. Slovo Kyrgyzstana, Bishkek, 20 January 1995.
27. This is in addition to about 25,000 Russian troops stationing there since the Soviet period.
28. Not counting the Russian Border Troops examined above.
29. Xinjiang, on the other hand, is part of China's western military region centred on Lanzhou (Gansu) in 'China proper'.
30. The Soviets stopped using their site in 1990 and the Chinese stopped using theirs in 1996.
31. The road linking the city of Naryn with the Torugart border crossing in Kyrgyzstan uses, for several kilometers, an old runway supposedly built in the 1960s for possible air attack on China's west.
32. The full text of the treaty will not be known before its ratification by the parliaments of all five states.
33. The railroad which is now being built between Korla and Kucha and which will eventually extend to Aksu and Kashgar will also considerably stimulate the latter to become a Central Asian hub of transportation network. Like the northern Xinlan railroad, however, it will also certainly enhance Han immigration, which is among Beijing's top priorities aimed at developing and pacifying the region.
34. For comparison, railroads can carry 100m-150m tonnes of cargo a year between Kazakstan and Russia.
35. Imports of weapons and explosives, of nationalist and Islamist propaganda through the Karakoram Highway (from Kashmir, Pakistan and Afghanistan) and through the dozen of border-crossings of the Central Asian divide from the post-Soviet republics is an example of these effects.
36. For the economic dilemma in Xinjiang, see also Michel Jan, 'La politique de Pékin à l'égard de ses populations turcophones'; Cemoti (Paris), No 16, July-December 1993.
37. This will help eliminate the inefficient transfer of the tanker wagons to China's rail system which has a different gauge from that used in the former USSR (Financial Times, 11 July 1997).
38. International Herald Tribune, 6 June 1997.
39. Financial Times, 18 November 1997.
40. The persistent use of the Russian language in this area, even among the non-Russian population, is a sign of the importance of the imperial heritage left on the eastern side of the Central Asian divide.
41. Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 3 November 1994.
42. Beijing Review, 3-9 February 1997.
43. In the town itself, where there used to live a sizeable Russian minority, many a public sign or slogan is often in three languages: Chinese, Manchu (with a traditional Mongolian - but originally Uyghur! - script), and Russian.
44. They are the cousins of Kalmuks (western Mongols) who in the 17th century had migrated towards the lower Volga river and who in large part returned in the 1770s, establishing themselves in what is today the Balangay Mongol Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang.
45. But for the USSR's defeat in Afghanistan, this annexation would have resulted in stretching the Soviet border south to the Hunza region of northern Pakistan (claimed by India), which would further complicate the geopolitical situation in this crucial Central Asian knot.
46. The most interesting alternative to this project is the Chitral-Khorog route, today out of any serious consideration as it passes through the most sensitive sector of the Tajik-Afghan border.
47. Historically, the main route linking the Tarim Basin with the Indian sub-continent passed via the Mingteke Pass, the other being the Yarkend-Leh route via the Karakoram Pass (now closed). Until recently, the Kunjerab Pass, through which goes the China-Pakistan Karakoram Highway, used to be of secondary importance.
48. Needless to add, that because of the highly strategic location of northern Xinjiang, local authorities remain particularly sensitive to - and vigilant about - any, though still rare, foreigners visiting it. In particular, border towns and villages are off limits to foreign visitors.
49. See Michel Foucher, Fronts et frontières, (Paris: Fayard, 1991), pp 322-323.
50. Though Uyghurs of Xinjiang do not have a 'mother country' which would constitute an identity reference like in the case of China's Kazaks, Kyrgyzs or Tajiks, their geographical, cultural and linguistic proximity (historically especially to Uzbekistan) creates an important link of solidarity and of reference with regions on the other side of the Central Asian divide. Furthermore, an especially large Uyghur minority (including recent political immigrés) lives in Kazakstan and other republics.
51. Similar reports have been made about the north-eastern region across the Amur and Ussuri rivers where the Han Chinese illegal immigration is estimated at between 200,000 and as high as 2 million ('Chinese immigration: is it good or bad for Russia?'; The Current Digest, Vol XLIX, No 19, 11 June, 1997).