Who are the Uyghurs?

Editor’s Note: Events of recent weeks in far western China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region, prompted this submission from someone who has been there, and who must – for now – remain anonymous.

Urumqi, Xinjiang is a fascinating city of broad ethnic diversity, mixed Soviet and traditional architecture, a reasonable infrastructure, and excellent food. In addition to the balanced and dominant Uyghur and Han ethnicities, also represented are Kazak, Hui, Mongolian, Kirgiz, Xibe, Tajik, Ozbek, Manchu, Daur, Tatar and Russian. But throughout Xinjiang, it is the Han, associated with the central government, and the Uyghurs, who still call the area East Turkistan, who are, and have been for recorded history, in conflict. As we have seen this summer, the conflict has often been violent.

We traveled to Urumqi from Beijing on our way across Asia on the Silk Road a few years ago. We found the people to be friendly, both Han and Uyghurs alike, but ethnic division was apparent throughout the region.

The year before we traveled through Xinjiang, the Uyghurs had bombed several buses in Urumqi, but it was not fully covered by the Western press, probably for lack of reporters in the region.

Who are these Uyghurs anyway? They live in such a remote part of China that few Westerners visit, or even know it exists. The Uyghurs are a Turkic people, and lay ethnic claim to a huge area of Central Asia reaching as far as Turkey in the west, Iran in the south, most of Kazakhstan and all of Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Early multiple invasions by warring peoples, and modern divide-and-conquer tactics of the Russians, with the consent of China, shattered geographic Turkistan, but the memory of Turkic speaking peoples is long.

Uyghurs, who lay moral and historic claim to East Turkistan (Xinjiang), have been the most active in attempting to regain full autonomy in historic times. As with the Tibetan minority, they chafe under Chinese (Han) rule. That constant burr under the saddle of their steppe ponies, periodically leads them to violence.

The most recent burr was the killing of Uyghurs by Han in a Southern China factory in the city of Shaoguan. The Uyghurs have trouble finding work in their own oil and gas rich region, and are forced to compete with the Han for factory jobs far from home.

As we arrived in one remote village, we were swarmed by a large group of Uyghur men, curious about the rare sight of a Caucasian couple riding a type of bicycle they had never seen. We soon learned they had been waiting for days, a prayer rug and blanket comprising their possessions, for a few low paying hard labor jobs repairing the single road to Kazakhstan. The supervisors were all Han, and paid much more than the Uyghurs

A few days later, near the border with Kazakhstan, a Uyghur had been told an American couple was staying at the hotel, and he waited for us to return from a walk. If you travel independently in China, you soon learn many people know where you are at all times. It can be unsettling at first. Local authorities knew he was meeting with us, and he probably was taking a risk.

Here is an account of our meeting from my journals:

He is a large Uyghur man of 47. He says he was a boxer and basketball player. He is fat now, in a successful businessman sort of way; proof of prosperity, somewhat of a rarity among Uyghurs. He orders the Han staff around like the stereotypical “Ugly American,” though he is a Chinese citizen. However, he is not Han, he is Uyghur, and thus does not see himself as being Chinese. Uyghur is his identity; he knows the bounds of his ethnicity and chafes at the loss of autonomy at the hands of the Chinese.

“Peejo! Peejo!” He waves his arm ordering more beer, and another Uyghur dish, both of which he pushes on us. “America good!” he says, and smiles broadly, setting broadside on his chair, legs spread to make room for his belly. He says something else, raises both hands high into the air, lifting up an imaginary something to great heights. “America,” he sighs. “America.” Then his beatific smile turns to a snarl, “China!” He turns up a little finger and spits on it, ultimate insult. “China bad.” Spit. “America!,” his voice softens again, and he lays his hand on his heart. “America.” Then he brightens, “George Bush! Good! America. Good!” He frowns again, “Saddam. Bad!” He is showing his solidarity with another small ethnic minority, the Kurdish in northern Iraq and Turkey.

We listen. He of course assumes we agree with him completely. There is no use trying to communicate that these questions are more complicated than perhaps he sees from his perspective. We smile. I try to drink just enough beer to please him, without getting drunk. I feel sorry for the poor man. He really thinks (he is not alone among Uyghurs) that America will someday restore the Uyghur homeland of western China to them. He really thinks America will attack China, just like we attacked Iraq. Poor man. Even an ego as big as George W. Bush would not consider attacking China.

The commercial dragon is awakening, and that is arguably good for the world economy; the sleeping dragon of the Chinese military might is not something to be awakened; not for a few million Uyghurs; sheepherders, horse and camel wanderers of the steppes and deserts of China. No, the Uyghurs will be free when they free themselves, and the Han will probably never allow that. They will dominate and eventually overwhelm with sheer population numbers, as they have done to the Tibetans. The dragon sleeps, but is still a dragon.

It appears that many in this major ethnic group, have somehow come to believe that we are their saviors. I’m not sure what our government has told them, or to what purpose, but since some of them are training to be terrorists, which is how they got to Guantanamo, I hope they don’t turn on us in their disappointment.

In coming months I will write about different Chinese ethnic groups, their relationship to the Han majority, and what that could mean for the Chinese government and their single party system.

China is a force to be reckoned with in this century, and we had better learn as much about the people and their ambitions as possible. The Communist government has adopted a market driven economy with a vengeance in recent years. How they bring those minorities, and the poorer Han, into economic parity with the new rich and the ruling class, will partially determine if the single party system evolves, or is replaced by something else. That something else, a system we enjoy, strikes fear in the hearts of the power elite in China.

Should current trends toward social instability remain unresolved, China could, as North Korea has done, turn to imaginary external threats and expand the military. The Han are very patriotic, and any outside threat would bind them together in a way that could threaten the peaceful relationship China has with us now. Let’s hope for continued evolution in China; in the political arena, not just the economic world.