Writing Insecurity: The PRC's Push to Modernize China and the Politics of Uighur Identity

Issues and Studies

Volumn 39, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 33-74

  Fogden, Scott ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY   (Canada)

Author keywords

Chinese modernization; Identity and culture; Security; September 11th; Terrorism; Uighur nationalism

Indexed keywords

EID: 0344196725     PISSN: 10132511     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (156)

1. Harry Wu, Troublemaker: One Man's Crusade Against China's Cruelty (London: Vintage, 1997), 158-59.
2. Jens Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
3. Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 66.
4. According to the 2000 census. See Zhongguo tongji nianjian (China statistical yearbook) (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 2002), 97.
5. The 2000 census counted 8,399,393 Uygurs. Ibid.
6. Without getting lost in the intricacies of self-government theory, this article loosely relates the term "self-governance" to ideas and structures of recognition, rights, and administrative authority based on principles of national self-determination such as those laid out in the United Nations Charter.
7. Dru C. Gladney, "Internal Colonialism and China's Uyghur Muslim Minority," in International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) Newsletter (Leiden University), available online at 〈http://isim.leidenuniv.nl/newsletter/l/regional/01AC23.html〉.
8. The PRC's State Commission for Nationality Affairs (SCNA) and the Central Institute for Nationalities (now Central University for Nationalities) provide a highly centralized political/philosophical structure with regard to state-minority relations allowing for some degree of policy clarity, in opposition to the diffuse nature of U.S.-First Nations or France-Bretagne relations, for example.
9. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 35.
10. Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 258.
11. Ernest Gellner, "The Warwick Debates on Nationalism," Nations and Nationalism (London) 2, no. 3 (1996): 357-70.
12. Dru C. Gladney, Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People's Republic (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University East Asian Monographs, 1996), 17.
13. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge: Polity, 1991), 227.
14. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998).
15. Justin Jon Rudelson, Oasis Identities: Uyghur Nationalism Along China's Silk Road (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 4.
16. Ibid., 5.
17. I b i d.
18. Ibid., 6.
19. Ibid., 7.
20. I b i d.
21. Andrew D.W. Forbes, Warlords and Muslims in Chinese Central Asia: A Political History of Republican Sinkiang, 1911-1949 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 232.
22. Ibid., 67.
23. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), 204-6.
24. Gladney, Muslim Chinese, 66.
25. I b i d.
26. Ibid., 76.
27. David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 9.
28. Ralph Litzinger, "Reimagining the State in Post-Mao China," in Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the Production of Danger, ed. Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson, and Raymond Duvall (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 295.
29. The first census conducted by the PRC in 1953 actually registered only forty-one nationalities. By 1964 there were fifty-three. It was not until 1982, however, that all fifty-six (fifty-five minority nationalities as well as that of the Han) were recognized. It is worthy of mention that the 1990 census revealed 749,341 individuals of "unidentified ethnicity." See Gladney, Muslim Chinese, 66.
30. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 224.
31. Almost all of the minorities are exempt from the single-child-per-couple rule introduced in the 1980s. See Colin Mackerras, The New Cambridge Handbook of Contemporary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 251-66.
32. Gladney, Muslim Chinese, 76-77.
33. For a colorful rendering of this discourse (originally written in 1940), see Aitchen K. Wu, Turkistan Tumult (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1984), 273.
34. Jacques Derrida, "Declarations of Independence," New Political Science 15 (Summer 1986): 14.
35. Gladney, Muslim Chinese, 21.
36. For reviews of IR's evolving treatment of identity, see Marysia Zalewski and Cynthia Enloe, "Questions about Identity in International Relations," in International Relations Theory Today, ed. Ken Booth and Steve Smith (Cambridge: Polity, 1995), 279-305; and David Campbell, "Violent Performances: Identity, Sovereignty, Responsibility," in The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory, ed. Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1996), 163-80.
37. For reviews of IR's evolving treatment of identity, see Marysia Zalewski and Cynthia Enloe, "Questions about Identity in International Relations," in International Relations Theory Today, ed. Ken Booth and Steve Smith (Cambridge: Polity, 1995), 279-305; and David Campbell, "Violent Performances: Identity, Sovereignty, Responsibility," in The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory, ed. Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1996), 163-80.
38. Gladney, Muslim Chinese, 22.
39. Colin Mackerras, Pradeep Taneja, and Graham Young, China Since 1978: Reform, Modernization and "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" (Singapore: Longman Cheshire, 1994), 198.
40. Gladney, Muslim Chinese, 78.
41. Ibid., 302.
42. James P. Piscatori, Islam in a World of Nation-States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 35.
43. Don Baker, "World Religions and National States: Competing Claims in East Asia," in Transnational Religion and Fading States, ed. Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and James Piscatori (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997), 161.
44. Alongside Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, and Daoism.
45. Jacob M. Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 310-11.
46. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization has been the most prominent of the attempts to cooperate on security issues in the region. In 1996, China founded the regional alliance known then as the Shanghai Five, consisting of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. The group specifically focused on terrorist threats emanating from various actors in Central Asia, and Afghanistan in particular, In June 2001, Uzbekistan was invited to join, and the group was officially named the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
47. John Anderson, The International Politics of Central Asia (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 196.
48. Mehrdad Haghayeghi, Islam and Politics in Central Asia (London: Macmillan, 1995), 166.
49. Rudelson, Oasis Identities, 167.
50. Title of a book by Song Qiang, Zhang Zangzang, and Qiao Bian expressing revival of popular Chinese nationalist sentiments: Zhongguo keyi shuo bu (China can say "no") (Beijing: Zhongguo gongshang lianhe chubanshe, 1996).
51. Dru Qladney, "Ethnic Separatism in China: Threat or Smoke?" The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition, July 9, 1996, available online at 〈http://www.innermongolia.org/english/ethnic_threat_in_ china.htm〉. See also Joseph Fewsmith, "Neoconservativism and the End of the Dengist Era," Asian Survey 35, no. 7 (July 1995): 635-51.
52. Dru Qladney, "Ethnic Separatism in China: Threat or Smoke?" The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition, July 9, 1996, available online at 〈http://www.innermongolia.org/english/ethnic_threat_in_ china.htm〉. See also Joseph Fewsmith, "Neoconservativism and the End of the Dengist Era," Asian Survey 35, no. 7 (July 1995): 635-51.
53. Guo Yingjie, "Patriotic Villains and Patriotic Heroes," in Nationalism and Ethnoregional Identities in China, ed. William Safran (London: Frank Cass, 1998), 164.
54. James Townsend's characterization of the "Culturalism to Nationalism" thesis in "Chinese Nationalism," The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no. 27 (January 1992): 102.
55. Yi Xiaoxiong, "China's U.S. Policy Conundrum: Balancing Autonomy and Interdependence," Asian Survey 34, no. 8 (August 1994): 684.
56. For instance, the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by the Americans during their military operation in Yugoslavia was an important point in this movement. The government was very clever about inciting nationalism without actually telling citizens to protest. In 1996, for the fiftieth anniversary of the defeat of Japan, Chinese TV broadcast several hours of programming per night on Japanese atrocities (e.g., Rape of Nanjing) and heroic Chinese resistance (information drawn from personal correspondence with Dr. Richard King, Department of Pacific & Asian Studies, University of Victoria).
57. Gunter Schubert, "Nationalism and National Identity in Contemporary China: Assessing the Debate," Issues & Studies 37, no. 5 (September/October 2001): 133 n. 6.
58. Susan Lawrence, "The Say No Club," Far Eastern Economic Review, January 13, 2000.
59. Townsend, "Chinese Nationalism," 120.
60. Yongnian Zheng, Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China: Modernization, Identity and International Relations (Hong Kong: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 70.
61. Quo, "Patriotic Villains and Patriotic Heroes," 167.
62. Abigail Sines, "Civilizing the Middle Kingdom's Wild West," Central Asian Survey 21, no. 1 (2002): 6.
63. Rudelson, Oasis Identities, 137-40.
64. Sines, "Civilizing the Middle Kingdom's Wild West," 9.
65. Andrew J. Nathan and Robert S. Ross, The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China's Search for Security (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 228.
66. W.J.F. Jenner, Tyranny of History: The Roots of China's Crisis (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 4.
67. Schubert, "Nationalism and National Identity in Contemporary China," 134.
68. Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, vol. 5 (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1977), 295-96.
69. SEZs - set up throughout the 1980s and 1990s in various southern coastal areas and more recently in northern centers - are regions designated to stimulate foreign capital inflow and economic development mirroring similar successful projects in Taiwan and South Korea. See Jung-Dong Park, The Special Economic Zones of China and Their Impact on Its Economic Development (London: Praeger, 1997).
70. Nicolas Becquelin, "Xinjiang in the Nineties," The China Journal, no. 44 (July 2000): 67.
71. Sines, "Civilizing the Middle Kingdom's Wild West," 8.
72. See note 68 above.
73. Mackerras, The New Cambridge Handbook of Contemporary China, 235. See also BBC World News: "The Future Shines for China's Silk Road," available online at 〈http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_33000/33624.stm〉.
74. Mackerras, The New Cambridge Handbook of Contemporary China, 235. See also BBC World News: "The Future Shines for China's Silk Road," available online at 〈http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_33000/33624.stm〉.
75. Sines, "Civilizing the Middle Kingdom's Wild West," 11.
76. Petrochina is partly owned by British Petroleum (BP) and will take a 50 percent stake in the project, with consortium members Shell, U.S.-based ExxonMobil, and Russia's Gazprom taking 15 percent each. The remaining 5 percent will go to the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), China's main indigenous oil firm. BBC World News: "Trans-China Pipeline Deal Signed," available online at〈http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_337000/ 337927.stm〉.
77. I b i d.
78. BBC World News: "China's Ambitious Railway," available online at 〈http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_1468000/ 1468282.stm〉; and "Asia-Pacific Rail Link Opens China's Far West," available online at 〈http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_337000/337927. stm〉.
79. BBC World News: "China's Ambitious Railway," available online at 〈http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_1468000/ 1468282.stm〉; and "Asia-Pacific Rail Link Opens China's Far West," available online at 〈http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_337000/337927. stm〉.
80. Becquelin, "Xinjiang in the Nineties," 74.
81. See note 7 above.
82. Bruce Gilley, "Uighurs Need Not Apply," Far Eastern Economic Review, August 23, 2001.
83. Colin Mackerras, China's Minorities: Integration and Modernization in the Twentieth Century (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1994), 250.
84. Sines, "Civilizing the Middle Kingdom's Wild West," 12.
85. Becquelin, "Xinjiang in the Nineties," 77.
86. Mackerras, China's Minorities, 170.
87. Sines, "Civilizing the Middle Kingdom's Wild West," 12.
88. I b i d.
89. Wu, Troublemaker, 298-303. According to Nicolas Becquelin, between 1990 and 1997, bank loans to the XPCC (including the money from the World Bank) amounted to 20 billion yuan. See Becquelin, "Xinjiang in the Nineties," 80.
90. Wu, Troublemaker, 298-303. According to Nicolas Becquelin, between 1990 and 1997, bank loans to the XPCC (including the money from the World Bank) amounted to 20 billion yuan. See Becquelin, "Xinjiang in the Nineties," 80.
91. Becquelin, "Xinjiang in the Nineties," 78.
92. Mackerras, China's Minorities, 257.
93. Gilley, "Uighurs Need Not Apply," 27.
94. Professor James Millward, quoted in ibid.
95. Becquelin, "Xinjiang in the Nineties," 76. See also Jasper Becker, "Rural Peasants Cast Adrift on Flood Tide," South China Morning Post, February 14, 1999; and Canadian Council for International Cooperation, "China: Country Profile (1999)," available online at 〈http://www.ccic.ca/archives/devpol/1999/ap5_ohina_country_profile. htm〉.
96. Becquelin, "Xinjiang in the Nineties," 76. See also Jasper Becker, "Rural Peasants Cast Adrift on Flood Tide," South China Morning Post, February 14, 1999; and Canadian Council for International Cooperation, "China: Country Profile (1999)," available online at 〈http://www.ccic.ca/archives/devpol/1999/ap5_ohina_country_profile. htm〉.
97. Becquelin, "Xinjiang in the Nineties," 76. See also Jasper Becker, "Rural Peasants Cast Adrift on Flood Tide," South China Morning Post, February 14, 1999; and Canadian Council for International Cooperation, "China: Country Profile (1999)," available online at 〈http://www.ccic.ca/archives/devpol/1999/ap5_ohina_country_profile. htm〉.
98. Vaclav Smil, China's Environmental Crisis: An Inquiry Into the Limits of National Development (London: M.E. Sharpe, 1993), 69.
99. Eastern Turkestani Union in Europe, "The Consequences of Nuclear Tests in Eastern Turkestan," reproduced at 〈http://www.caccp.org/et/cnt.html〉. See also Michael Dillon, Xinjiang: Ethnicity, Separatism, and Control in Chinese Central Asia (Durham: University of Durham, 1995), 26.
100. Eastern Turkestani Union in Europe, "The Consequences of Nuclear Tests in Eastern Turkestan," reproduced at 〈http://www.caccp.org/et/cnt.html〉. See also Michael Dillon, Xinjiang: Ethnicity, Separatism, and Control in Chinese Central Asia (Durham: University of Durham, 1995), 26.
101. Becquelin, "Xinjiang in the Nineties," 84.
102. I b i d.
103. Between 1978 and 1985, 6.05 million hectares were planted with trees, See Mackerras, China Since 1978, 163.
104. Mackerras, The New Cambridge Handbook of Contemporary China, 189.
105. From a song banned in Xinjiang; quoted in Rachel Harris, "Cassettes, Bazaars, and Saving the Nation: The Uyghur Music Industry in Xinjiang, China," in Global Goes Local: Popular Culture in Asia, ed. Timothy J. Craig and Richard King (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002), 265. The lyrics were provided to Rachel Harris by the author-composer of the song.
106. The Third Plenum of the Eleventh CCP Central Committee (December 1978) ushered in "the period of reform par excellence in China." See Mackerras, China Since 1978, 19-25.
107. Quoted in David Campbell, National Deconstructton: Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 88.
108. Becquelin, "Xinjiang in the Nineties," 87, citing Agence France Presse (Hong Kong), "Governor Says Xinjiang Suffering Separatist Violence," March 11, 1999.
109. Becquelin, "Xinjiang in the Nineties," 87, citing Agence France Presse (Hong Kong), "Governor Says Xinjiang Suffering Separatist Violence," March 11, 1999.
110. Mackerras, The New Cambridge Handbook of Contemporary China, 38.
111. Dewardic L. McNeal, "China's Relations with Central Asian States and Problems with Terrorism," U.S. Department of State, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, December 17, 2001, available online at 〈http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/7945.pdf〉.
112. I b i d.
113. Amnesty International 1999 Country Report: "People's Republic of China: Gross Violations of Human Rights in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region," available online at 〈http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engASA170181999〉.
114. I b i d.
115. I b i d.
116. Mackerras, The New Cambridge Handbook of Contemporary China, 38.
117. R.B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 16.
118. This statement furthers his claim that "abstract humanism can happily coexist with loathing for actual human beings." See Michael Ignatieff, Warrior's Honour: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (London: Vintage, 1998), 55.
119. Nathan and Ross, The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress, 184-86.
120. Edgar Emmett, "The Knight of Freedom," The Uighur-L Archive, 1997, available online at 〈http://www.taklamakan.org/uighur-l/archive/5_21_1.html〉.
121. I b i d.
122. Mackerras, The New Cambridge Handbook of Contemporary China, 34.
123. Mackerras, China Since 1978, 55.
124. Rudelson, Oasis Identities, 131-32.
125. McNeal, "China's Relations with Central Asian States and Problems with Terrorism," 9-10.
126. Amnesty International 1999 Country Report: "People's Republic of China," 2-5.
127. Leyli Yakob, "Recent Developments in Xinjiang," Uighur-L Archive, available online at 〈http://www.taklamakan.org/uighur-1/archive/〉.
128. Harris, "Cassettes, Bazaars, and Saving the Nation," 265.
129. BBC News, "China 'Cracks Down on Muslims'," March 22, 2002, available online at 〈http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_1887000/ 1887335.stm〉.
130. Mackerras, The New Cambridge Handbook of Contemporary China, 261.
131. Amnesty International 1999 Country Report: "People's Republic of China," 10-11.
132. Lucy Ash, "China's Fearful Muslim Minority," BBC News Asia-Pacific, January 8, 2002, available online at 〈http://news.bbc.co.Uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1748801.stm〉.
133. This can be attributed to a number of events including the 1998-99 allegations of Chinese nuclear espionage, the accidental U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May 1999, and the collision between a U.S. reconnaissance plane and a Chinese fighter in April 2001.
134. See note 123 above.
135. The PRC Foreign Ministry has denied, however, any linkage between Chinese cooperation against terrorism and a change of U.S. policy toward Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan. John Pomfret (Washington Post), quoted in Jing-dong Yuan, "The War on Terrorism: China's Opportunities and Dilemmas," available online at 〈www.nautilus.org/fora/Special-Policy-Forum〉.
136. Rachel Harris and Rahilä Dawut, "Mazar Festivals of the Uyghurs: Music, Islam and the Chinese State," British Journal of Ethnomusicology 11, no. 1 (2002): 101-19.
137. From Ildiko Beller-Hann, "Making the Oil Fragrant: Dealings with the Supernatural Among the Uyghurs in Xinjiang," Asian Ethnicity 2, no. 1 (2001): 9-23.
138. "Wahabbi" is the Central Asian catchall term for orthodox Muslims. The term is derived from the Wahabbi cult of Saudi Arabia but is generally used in a rather loose way equivalent to the Western use of the term "fundamentalist." See ibid.
139. Rudelson, Oasis Identities, 168. In 'fact, Professor Rudelson testified before a U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China (June 10, 2002) that "almost all [Uighur] militants are secular nationalists, seeking independence from China, whose struggle has no connection with Islam."
140. Rudelson, Oasis Identities, 122.
141. Becquelin, "Xinjiang in the Nineties," 89.
142. Erik Ringmar, Identity, Interest, and Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 176-77.
143. Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World-A Derivative Discourse (Avon: Zed Books/United Nations University, 1986), 30.
144. Manning Nash, The Cauldron of Ethnicity in the Modern World (London: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 115.
145. "Xinjiang's Uyghers in the Ensuing U.S.-China Partnership," Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Uygher Panel, June 10, 2002, available online at 〈http://www.cecc.gov/pages/roundtables/061002/rudelsonStatement.php3〉.
146. I b i d.
147. Michael C. Williams' formulation of the Copenhagen School perspective in "Modernity, Identity and Security: A Comment on the 'Copenhagen Controversy'," Review of International Studies 24 (1998): 437.
148. I b i d.
149. Anderson, Imagined Communities, xiv.
150. Litzinger, "Reimagining the State in Post-Mao China," 298.
151. Stephen May, Language and Minority Rights: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Politics of Language (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2001), 25.
152. Owen M. Lynch, "Contesting and Contested Identities: Mathura's Chaubes," in Narratives of Agency: Self-Making in China, India, and Japan, ed. Wimal Dissanayake (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 75.
153. Robert Benewick and Paul Wingrove, China in the 1990's (London: Macmillan, 1999), 256.
154. See Ashis Nandy for apioneering study of colonial rule's psychological ramifications: The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983).
155. Jean Fisher, "Unsettled Accounts of Indians and Others," in Myth of Primitivism, ed. Susan Hiller (London: Routledge, 1991), 284.
156. James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (London: Harvard University Press, 1999), 16.