Uyghur Culture Faced with Endless Campaigns

D.T. provides his observations on policy trends and the growing number of political campaigns targeting Uyghurs since 2002.
Officially, nothing has changed in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The region continues to be extolled as a paradise for tourists and investors, both from abroad and other regions in China, a place to enjoy pristine landscapes, bountiful fruits and vegetables and exotic performances by “ethnic minorities.” Nonetheless, as the years go by, the CPC (Communist Party of China) continues to reinforce and adapt its strategy to ensure that the XUAR remains politically welded to the rest of the People’s Republic of China(PRC).As everywhere in China, “thought work” remains the preferred tool; nonetheless the promotion of its ideology is equally underpinned by stringent enforcement of selected laws and regulations (including a reportedly higher rate of capital punishment), that creates resentment among Uyghur and other “minority” (non-Han) populations in specific ways that differ from political dissent in “central” areas. Based on informal talks with a number of Uyghur, Kazakh,Hui, and Han Chinese individuals in the XUAR,1 this piece is an attempt to assess the latest policy trends and the reactions they have provoked. Rather than a shift in paradigm, continued adaptations on behalf of the central government suggest that its objectives in the XUAR remain largely unchanged by shifts in the regional and international environment. Rather, the successive launching of theWestern Development Strategy (Xibu da kaifa) campaign2 in early 2000, and the new“antiterrorist strategy” as formulated in a January 2002 report by the State Council, have simply provided new and more sophisticated tools for the ongoing policy of integrating the XUAR into the political framework constituted by the CPC, into the dynamics of all-out economic growth, and into a formof cultural homo geneity associated with Chinese state culture that has been developed since 1949.

Dowaonload here: http://hrichina.org/sites/default/files/oldsite/PDFs/CRF.4.2007/CRF-2007-4_Uyghur.pdf