Abstract
This chapter explores questions of nationalism and national identity in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The official government narrative grossly simplifies the intricacies of history and exacerbates tension in the region by failing to engage with the experiences and perceptions of its citizens in Xinjiang. Xinjiang has witnessed, at times serious, ethnic conflict in recent years. This chapter examines the effect of recent conflict on ideas of the nation and senses of belonging among people from both ethnic groups. It examines the multiplicity of nationalist discourses in Xinjiang, both in terms of state constructed narratives of Chinese national identity, which emphasises ethnic unity and material progress, and with the lived experiences of people in a region struggling with deep divisions.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 2016.
Armstrong, John A. Nations Before Nationalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.
Billig, Michael. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage, 2002.
Bovingdon, Gardner. The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
Cesaro, Cristina. “Consuming Identities: Food and Resistance among the Uyghur in Contemporary Xinjiang.” Inner Asia 2, no. 2 (2002): 225–238.
Cliff, Tom. Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Gladney, Dru. “Nationality in China: Refiguring Majority/Minority Identities.” The Journal of Asiatic Studies 53, no. 1 (1994): 92–123.
Gladney, Dru. Ethnic Identity in China: The Making of a Muslim Nationality. Forth Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1998.
Harrell, Stephen. Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontier. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995.
Leibold, James. Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism: How the Qing Frontier and its Indigenes Became Chinese. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Mackerras, Colin. “The Uighurs.” In The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, edited by Denis Sinor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Mair, Victor. “The North-Western Peoples and the Recurrent Origins of the Chinese State.” In The Theology of the Modern Nation-State: Japan and China, edited by Joshua A. Fogel, 46–84. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.
Millward, James. “‘Coming onto the Map’: ‘Western Regions’ Geography and Cartographic Nomenclature in the Making of Chinese Empire in Xinjiang.” Late Imperial China 20, no. 2 (1999): 61–98.
Millward, James. Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Millward, James, and Peter Perdue. “Political and Cultural History of the Xinjiang Region through the Late Nineteenth Century.” In Xinjiang China’s Muslim Borderland, edited by S. Frederick Starr, 27–62. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2003.
O’Brien, David, and Christopher P. Primiano “Opportunities and Risks along the New Silk Road: Perspectives and Perceptions on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.” In International Flow in the Belt and Road Initiative Context: Business, People, Ideas and History, edited by Faith Chen, David O’Brien and Hing Kai Chan. Forthcoming, 2020.
O’Brien, David, and Melissa Shani Brown. “Harmony and Dancing on the New Frontier: The Idealisation and Commodification of Ethnic ‘Otherness’ in Xinjiang.” In Reclaiming Identity and (Re)Materialising Pasts: Approaches to Heritage Conservation in China, edited by Carol Ludwig and Yiwen Wong. Forthcoming, 2020.
Perlez, Jane. “China Wants the World to Stay Silent on Muslim Camps. It’s Succeeding.” New York Times, September 25, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/world/asia/china-xinjiang-muslim-camps.html.
Rudelson, Justin. Oasis Identities: Uyghur Nationalism along China’s Silk Road. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.
Shih, Chih-yu. Negotiating Ethnicity in China: Citizenship as a Response to the State. Abingdon: Routledge, 2002.
Smith, Joanne Finlay. “Making Culture Matter: Symbolic Spatial and Social Boundaries between Uyghurs and Han Chinese.” Asian Ethnicity 3, no. 2 (2002): 153–174.
Stalin, Joseph. “Marxism and the National Question.” In Collected Works of J. V. Stalin Vol. 2, 307. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953.
State Council Information Office. White Paper on Historical Matters Concerning Xinjiang. Beijing: The Information Office of the State Council, July 2019.
Statistics Bureau of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Xinjiang Tongji Nianjian 2011 [Xinjiang Statistical Yearbook 2011]. Beijing: Zhonguo Tongji Chubanshe, 2011.
Tobin, David. “Between Minkaohan and Minkaomin: Discourses on ‘Assimilation’ Amongst Urban, Bilingual Uyghurs.” In Language, Education, and Uyghur Identity in Urban Xinjiang, edited by Joanne Smith Finley and Xiaowei Zang. Abingdon: Routledge 2015.
Tobin, David. “‘A Struggle for Life and Death’: Han and Uyghur Insecurities on China’s North-West Frontier.” China Quarterly (July 2019): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1017/S030574101900078X.
Zhang, Xiaoling, Melissa Shani Brown, and David O’Brien “‘No CCP, No New China’: Discourses of Pastoral Power in the Xinjiang Region of China,” China Quarterly, no. 235 (September 2018): 784–803.
Acknowledgements
I am hugely grateful to Melissa Shani Brown for all her help and suggestions for this chapter and to the participants in the ‘Chinese National Identity in the Age of Globalization’ conference at Maynooth University for their comments and lively discussion. I am also grateful to the reviewers of this chapter for their helpful and constructive feedback.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
O’Brien, D. (2020). The Complexity of Nationalism and National Identity in Twenty-First Century Xinjiang. In: Zhouxiang, L. (eds) Chinese National Identity in the Age of Globalisation. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4538-2_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4538-2_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-4537-5
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-4538-2
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)