BOOK REVIEW Dissecting China's far
west Xinjiang, China's Muslim
Borderland - Studies of Central Asia and the
Caucasus, edited by S Frederick
Starr
Reviewed by Colin Mackerras
BRISBANE - Xinjiang, China's Muslim
Borderland is not the first book to focus on
Xinjiang. One thinks, among quite a few others, of
Donald H McMillen's study on Chinese Communist Power
and Policy in Xinjiang, 1949-1977, published by
Westview in Boulder in 1979. However, it is the first to
take an all-round view on Xinjiang and Xinjiang alone.
There are sections on an astonishingly wide variety of
topics, including history, the economy, politics, Islam,
education, demography, health care and water management.
And given that Xinjiang is rightly called
a "borderland", it comes as no surprise to find quite a
bit of analysis of foreign affairs and how Xinjiang
affects the interrelationships of its region, especially
through the way it spans China and Central Asia.
This is a timely book, given that there has been
a great deal of debate and concern about Xinjiang
recently. The Chinese have come under a fair bit of
criticism for their human-rights abuses. But
correspondingly, both the United States and the United
Nations have taken the side of the Chinese government in
condemning one of the alleged separatist groups as a
terrorist organization. The fact that the minorities of
Xinjiang are mostly Muslims and that one of the
minorities, the Uighurs, has secessionist tendencies,
has brought fire to the controversy over whether there
is really a terrorist problem, or whether the Chinese
are simply distorting it for political purposes.
The authors who contributed to this book,
especially Dru Gladney, claim there is no organized
terrorism, but at the same time acknowledge terrorist
incidents. Gladney claims (p 381) that very few
incidents of bombing, civil unrest and assassinations
since 1990 can definitely be traced to Uighur separatist
groups or events. It follows that he does not think the
Chinese need to be quite as proactive as they are to
suppress terrorism in Xinjiang. He has made his case
well, and on the basis of very extensive field work and
research that few foreign scholars can match. I
personally share his view on the basis of my own
experiences and research in Xinjiang.
The
historical sections are fairly clear that Xinjiang's
relationship with China is a very complicated one and
that Chinese control over the area has been anything but
consistent over the centuries. It follows the claim that
Chinese have held sovereignty "since ancient times"
(zigu yilai) is somewhat simplistic. However,
there seems little doubt that the Chinese have exercised
control since 1759, even though uprisings have been
frequent, especially in the second half of the 19th and
first half of the 20th centuries.
Chinese rule
in the present comes under heavy criticism, especially
for its treatment of the Turkic Uighurs, but the authors
are at pains to be fair and the overall record comes
over as anything but uniformly bleak. For instance,
there has been great economic progress and outside of
China's eastern seaboard, Xinjiang's economy has
developed faster than any other province's. However, the
fact of ethnic inequality and ethnic tensions is
consistent throughout the book. I might add in this
context that the authors are not simply concerned with
attacking the Han Chinese, and there is also criticism
of excessive Uighur nationalism in this book.
Editor S Frederick Starr says in the
introduction that the chief factor making the book worth
writing was that Xinjiang "is also the one province of
China with a substantial population that is both Turkic
and Muslim" (p 3). What emerges here is that it is Islam
and the Turkic ethnicity of most of the population that
gives Xinjiang a special edge, making it worth studying
among China's province-level units. As a specialist in
Chinese ethnic minorities and the Islam that some of
them believe in, I heartily endorse Starr's view.
There is no doubt that the list of authors Starr
collected for the project is a highly impressive one.
Most of the people are known names and a few, like Dru
Gladney, James Millward and Linda Benson, rank at or
near the top in their disciplines with respect to a
study like the present one. Given the wealth of
expertise, even including an Israeli specialist (Yitzhak
Shichor from the University of Haifa in Israel), it
might seem churlish to point out the American focus of
the book. For me, sorely missed are the perspectives of
the Han Chinese and the Uighurs themselves. On p 23, the
editor has given a justification for omitting any
Chinese contributor, using words like sensitivity and
the "delicacy of the task". I can see the force of this
argument, but still find it a great shame. The fact is
that Chinese views are so important and they so often
come over to us in the form of propaganda statements
that are not very helpful and often serve to obscure
dialogue rather than clarify it. The book has one Uighur
participant who has contributed to two chapters. But it
is not clear precisely what his ideas are and what are
the other authors'. The fact that this is essentially an
American work of scholarship is not so much to criticize
it, as to say that it could have been more.
One
point struck me as interesting in the chapter on the
economy: the lack of material on cotton. This bulks very
large in some accounts, notably that of Nicolas
Becquelin, "Xinjiang in the Nineties", The China
Journal, No 44 (July 2000), where it comes over as an
additional way the Chinese are oppressing the Uighurs,
because it is mostly Han Chinese who get what wealth and
employment the cotton brings. Yet Calla Weimer hardly
mentions this factor, dwelling much more on oil
production and the development of the infrastructure in
Xinjiang. There is mention of cotton on p 272 in the
chapter on water, but it is comparatively sparse in its
content.
And what of Xinjiang's future? Most of
the chapters take up this issue from the point of view
of their particular topic. Of course, nobody knows the
future and most confine themselves to a statement of
pessimistic or optimistic scenarios. Full Uighur
independence may be sought by some Uighur groups, but is
not touted as particularly likely by the authors of
these articles. It is striking that the greatest threat
to Xinjiang's future discussed in this book is HIV/AIDS,
which is infecting and will continue to infect both Han
and Uighurs (pp 318-19). It is ironic that the Chinese
authorities are so concerned about separatism and
terrorism, when their top priority ought really to be
the prevention of this disease.
This book has a
profusion of maps, illustrations and tables. That is one
of its strengths. So many tables and maps lend a
scholarly credibility and also make a book easier to
follow. The pictures are chosen for their historical
value and for the ways they show the differing
interpretations that different ethnic groups can place
on historical events.
On the back cover
Professor David Lampton of Johns Hopkins University is
quoted as saying that "the day it is published is the
day it will become the standard work on the subject". I
actually think Lampton is right about this. I think this
is already the standard work on the subject and I expect
it to remain so for a long time to come. I admire it
especially for its scholarly and hard-hitting yet
balanced approach, the broad range of its coverage, the
high standard of its expertise and the depth of research
each scholar has carried out. I would have liked it to
be less America-centered, but concede that it was an
American foundation (The Henry Luce Foundation of New
York) that provided the money making the book possible.
Certainly, I recommend this book to all those with
specialist or general interest in a highly interesting
and important region of the world and in China; this
book has the potential to become even more important in
the coming years.
Xinjiang, China's Muslim
Borderland, edited by S Frederick Starr. M E Sharpe,
2004. ISBN 0-7656-1317-4 (hard cover) US$89.95. ISBN
0-7656-1318-2 (paperback) $32.95. Tables, maps,
illustrations, 494 pages.
Colin
Mackerras is Foundation Professor in the Department
of International Business and Asian Studies at Griffith
University, Queensland, Australia. He has visited
Xinjiang four times, most recently in October and
November 2003. He has written extensively on ethnic
issues in China, including Xinjiang, his most recent
book being China's Ethnic Minorities and
Globalisation, RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
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given that Xinjiang is rightly called
a "borderland", it comes as no surprise to find quite a
bit of analysis of foreign affairs and how Xinjiang
affects the interrelationships of its region, especially
through the way it spans China and Central Asia.
