Xinjiang and China's strategy in Central
Asia By Stephen
Blank
Xinjiang, like Taiwan and neighboring
Tibet, is a neuralgic issue for China, which desperately
needs internal stability in that predominantly Muslim,
resource-rich and strategically important region.
Beijing's strategic and energy objectives are based on
stability in Xinjiang and its Central Asian policies
grow out of its preoccupation with stability there.
The recent bombings in Uzbekistan, a Central
Asia neighbor which does not border Xinjiang, though,
has concerned Beijing, which was quick to label them as
the work of "terrorists", though the exact motive for
the violence is not known. Beijing also has been quick
to blame dissent among the Muslim Uighurs on
"terrorists", and in December it issued a list of what
it called terrorist organizations and individuals.
According to China's own official sources, it
has imperfect control - some say no control - of the
borders of Xinjiang with Central Asia, specifically
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and it cannot prevent border
infiltration into Xinjiang, where many Uighurs are
dissatisfied with China's governance and seek genuine
autonomy. Whatever policies China adopts, however, it is
likely to face continuing and long-term unrest,
including possible violence in Xinjiang and related
violence elsewhere, according to Western military and
strategic analysts .
Since the terrorist attacks
on the United States on September 11, China's severe
crackdown on unrest in Xinjiang has, if anything, become
even more Draconian. It remains to be seen whether China
uses the Uzbekistan violence to further strengthen its
hand against dissatisfied elements in Xinjiang.
Since September 11, Beijing has been quick to
label all forms of unrest there as expressions of
Islamic terrorism and fundamentalism, even though this
unrest goes back at least 20 years and is as much
nationalistic as anything else. Thus the various forms
of unrest displayed by the local Uighurs, a Muslim
people, against Beijing's government represent a classic
pattern of resistance to the colonial expropriation of
land and to the officially sponsored migration of Han
Chinese farmers, soldiers - often the same people - and
officials into Xinjiang.
This policy of moving
Hans into Xinjiang has also realized a classic
colonialist system of economic and social stratification
that is visible in many other cases of internal
colonialism. In those cases, too, the representatives of
the dominant nationality enjoy disproportionate economic
and political advantages in education, job placement,
and access to public goods.
China applies
'terrorist' labels to dissent Chinese foreign
policy has also been enlisted in the task of labeling
virtually any and all manifestations of opposition as
being terrorist conspiracies. Beijing successfully
prevailed upon the administration of US President George
W Bush to label the East Turkistan Independence Movement
(ETIM) as a terrorist group, thereby rewarding the China
for supporting the US-led "war against terrorism".
Similarly, China has used its superior power
vis-a-vis neighboring Central Asian regimes,
particularly Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, to get them to
suppress Uighur nationalists in those countries and to
maintain official silence about the sometimes troubling
situation in Xinjiang if they wish to have friendly
relations - and significant economic ties - with China.
While China's interests in Central Asia
transcend the suppression of any form of neighborly
support for the Uighurs, its extensive and significant
strategic and energy interests in the region are clearly
tied to Xinjiang's internal developments. Indeed, one
can say that China's policies in Central Asia represent
an outward projection of its own fears for its internal
security.
The linkages between Central Asia and
Xinjiang are evident to the Chinese establishment. As a
Chinese analyst told journalist Willem Van Kemenade, if
Central Asia disintegrates, the chaos will reach
Xinjiang. On the other hand, the analyst said, if those
countries stabilize and succeed, that will invariably
stimulate deeper drives for self-rule in Xinjiang - a
no-win situation for China.
In other words no
matter what Beijing does or what happens in Central
Asia, unrest in Xinjiang will continue. At the same time
Chinese scholars explicitly articulate the connection
between Xinjiang and Central Asia, arguing that, China's
policy to expand economic cooperation with Central Asia
is undertaken, among other reasons, because to a large
extent the stability and prosperity of northwest China
is closely tied to Central Asia's stability and
prosperity.
Next local war could be in
Central Asia Likewise, several Chinese military
and political analysts have asserted, even before
September 11, that the next likely theater of a major
local war that will threaten, if not involve, China will
take place in Central Asia. Certainly China feels itself
threatened by terrorists operating out of Central Asia
and by elements in Xinjiang. Even if many of these
statements are self-serving, this perception is quite
real and should not be taken lightly. Similarly, another
Chinese observer, Gao Shixian, states that "China deems
the area to be of the utmost strategic interest and a
source to fill China's energy needs".
Thus
economic growth, energy and strategic interests are
inextricably tied together. But the precondition for
realizing China's strategic and energy objectives is
founded on the premise of internal stability in
Xinjiang. Thus China's Central Asian policies as a whole
are fundamentally strategically conceived and grow out
of a preoccupation with internal stability in Xinjiang.
These assertions offer significant clues to
understanding Chinese policies in Central Asia,
including Xinjiang, because they make clear that Chinese
policies are intrinsically strategic in concept and
goal, if not in implementation. Analysts like Wu Xinbo
confirm the linkage between domestic and foreign policy
when they argue that "China is still a country whose
real interests lie mainly within its boundaries, and to
a lesser extent, the Asia-Pacific region, where
developments may have a direct impact on the country's
national interests".
Foreign analysts, too,
discern key strategic significance in China's domestic
policies in Xinjiang and its western borderlands more
generally vis-a-vis major Asian actors, especially India
and the US. Since September 11, China sees Washington's
military presence in Central Asia - the US air base at
Manas in Kyrgyzstan is only 200 miles from China - as
presaging a potentially permanent threat to Xinjiang and
China.
Because Xinjiang, like Taiwan, is a
border region that has historically been the scene of
numerous struggles and wars over territory, the question
of Xinjiang's future goes to the most basic issues of
what constitutes the Chinese state both territorially
and politically, ie what will be its territorial
boundaries and how will political power in that state be
constituted.
Massive 'go west' program to
develop Xinjiang To eliminate this perceived
threat, China has undertaken a massive "go west" program
for the better part of a decade, believing that the main
spur to ethnic-nationalist and religious unrest is a
lack of economic development and opportunity. Thus it
has launched massive development projects in energy and
transportation infrastructure to more fully tie Xinjiang
to China's coastal development and to Central Asian
economies.
But behind the objective of
overcoming poverty - which, to be fair, is being
realized - lies Beijing's unremitting drive to control
Xinjiang. This development is also tied to the parallel
and ongoing policy of officially sponsored large-scale
migration into Xinjiang by Han Chinese that fosters
immense local resentment and tension. All these policies
aim to prevent anyone from demanding more democracy or
genuine autonomy.
Given what some observers
consider the intrinsic fragility of the Chinese state,
any sign of movement towards real democracy or
federalism in Xinjiang, as in the case of Taiwan or
Tibet, are excluded a priori. In fact, any call
for democracy or even for a devolution of powers is
considered by Beijing to be a threat to China's
integrity, sovereignty and security. This rejection of
democratic reforms is tied to China's deeply held
historical view of sovereignty because any derogation of
the latter in the name of the former is considered to be
an invitation to disorder, chaos, and weakness.
Clearly, this is a classically imperial view of
the state but also one that reflects a sense of being
perpetually assailed by potential or actual threats. In
other words, Xinjiang, like Tibet and Taiwan, is a
neuralgic issue that when raised, brings out what some
scholars see as Beijing's siege mentality.
Thus
the textbook for party and government officials entitled
Zhongguo Taiwan Wenti (China's Taiwan issue)
rules out either of these alternatives (democracy or
federalism) for Taiwan because confederations occur
between independent and sovereign states - an admission
China will not make. Furthermore, the textbook attacks
federalism as unsuitable because "it does not fit the
national tradition and is not suitable for the basic
national conditions ... The current state structure form
[the unitary system] is advantageous for national
unification, consolidation among ethnic groups,
political stability, and balanced regional development."
Federalism is unacceptable, then, on domestic
grounds ie, its threat to the unity of state power, not
for any other reason. Were the regime forced to move in
a federal direction for Taiwan or any other province, it
could not then deny that structure to all the other
provinces. Thus it would have to generalize a more
decentralized and democratic form of rule across China.
Minority peoples live on insecure
borders And since the minority peoples live on
China's insecure and troubled borders, in the context of
Chinese history and prudent considerations of current
political leaders, such devolution of power means both
the end of their power and in their view the integrity
of the Chinese state. This would particularly be true if
ethnic discontent combined with the widespread internal
labor unrest, permitting a dual-sided domestic
opposition, for then internal and external oppositions
would link up, representing precisely what Beijing
regards as the gravest possible threat to the regime's
security.
But as the Xinjiang issue has moved
onto the international agenda because of the US-led "war
on terrorism", China also has been forced to respond to
charges of its repression in the region, by publishing a
White Paper on Xinjiang in 2003. This white paper is a
comprehensive effort to justify Beijing's governance
there and answer its critics. But in fact it only
confirms the validity or legitimacy of an
internationalization of the problem and - with
unconscious irony - overtly spells out the continuing
imperial tradition in Chinese statecraft towards
Xinjiang. Thus it states:
"China has a centuries-old tradition of
developing and protecting its border areas by
stationing troops to cultivate and guard the frontier
areas. According to historical records, all the
dynasties in Chinese history adopted the practice of
stationing troops to cultivate and guard the frontier
areas as an important state policy for developing
border areas and consolidating frontier defense. The
beginning of this practice by the central authorities
on a massive scale in Xinjiang can be traced back to
the Western Han Dynasty, to be subsequently carried on
from generation to generation. This policy had played
an important part in uniting the nation, consolidating
frontier defense, and promoting social and economic
development in Xinjiang. "
However, the
agency responsible for such consolidation, the
Bingtuan, or the Xinjiang Production and
Construction Corps (XPCC), is a major factor, if not the
major factor, in what is considered the regional gulag
in Xinjiang. Thus the white paper states:
"As an important force for stability in
Xinjiang and for consolidating frontier defense, the
XPCC and the ordinary people attach equal importance
to production and militia duties. It has set up in
frontier areas a 'four-in-one' system of joint defense
that links the PLA, the Armed Police, the XPCC, and
the ordinary people, playing an irreplaceable special
role in the past five decades in smashing and
resisting internal and external separatists' attempts
at sabotage and infiltration and in maintaining the
stability and safety of the borders of the
motherland."
Special corps is
quasi-military-business grouping Another
assessment of the XPCC describes it as a
quasi-military/business conglomerate. It consists of 2.4
million people, including workers and their families,
virtually all of them Han Chinese. It has its own
schools, media, hospitals, courts, and prisons. It owns
about one-third of the land, and its industrial
production equals approximately 25 percent of Xinjiang's
total output, yet its primary function is to ensure
social stability and conduct extensive political work.
Thus despite all the undoubted achievements of
economic development, Xinjiang province remains
troubled. Indeed, the Australian Sinologist Greg Austin
has even written that China, according to its own
official sources in Beijing, has lost control of the
borders of Xinjiang with Central Asia, specifically
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and cannot prevent
infiltration across those borders. American observers
like S Frederick Starr and Graham Fuller, writing for
the Central Asia Caucasus Institute of Johns Hopkins
University, also maintain that China cannot evade the
classic dilemma of minority people's uprisings against
colonialist powers within the latter's home territory,
the so-called metropole.
In other words, no
matter whatever policies China adopts, it is likely to
face continuing and long-term unrest, including violent,
even possible "terrorist" operations, in Xinjiang and
even in Beijing itself. While this problem has not
reached the level in other conflicts, such as Kashmir or
Palestine, it is real enough and growing. Worse, Chinese
experts appear to concede that there is no way out.
Thus besides the challenge of sustaining
economic development, meeting the calls for domestic
reform, and dealing with Taiwan, Tibet and North Korea,
one can add Xinjiang to the list of major challenges
confronting the Chinese government.
Stephen Blank is an analyst of
international security affairs residing in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania.
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