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The statement that Xinjiang is an integral province of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is not as banal as it would first appear. The primary question that arises from this statement is how - by what processes and strategies - was Xinjiang brought to its contemporary situation as a province of the PRC? This paper seeks to highlight that, although Xinjiang's history since the eighteenth century has been one of great turbulence and dynamism, underlying continuities in both the practice of Chinese power and perceptions of Xinjiang impact profoundly on contemporary China's rule of Xinjiang. Therefore, this study attempts to chart the transition of the Qing goal of territorial incorporation of the region based upon a system of indirect rule c.1760 to the post-imperial Chinese state's goal of territorial incorporation based on the extension of direct, modern strategies of government and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illustrates how Uyghurs in the 1990s defined and reinforced contemporary Uyghur national identity in relation to Xinjiang's growing Han Chinese population. Adopting Barth's theory of fluid and negotiable ethnic boundaries, it focuses on the notion of change. While Uyghurs are currently activating and exaggerating certain religio-cultural differences—in particular the avoidance of pork—as a means of ensuring symbolic, spatial and social segregation from the Han, those criteria did not prevent interaction to the same extent in the past; nor do they prevent Uyghurs from making concessions when it benefits them to do so. It is argued that it is not religio-cultural differences per se that lie at the root of increased tensions between Uyghurs and Han Chinese, but changing social, political and economic contexts: on the one hand, growing Uyghur perceptions of socio-economic inequalities between themselves and the Han (the 'internal factor') and, on the other, the vast changes within the international political arena since the late 1980s (the 'external factor'). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owen Lattimore once depicted Xinjiang as the "pivot of Asia." As the nexus of the Silk Road, Xinjiang played a critical role in East-West exchanges. Subsequently, Xinjiang's pivotalness was amplified by great power rivalry. The emergence of new Central Asian states and China's economic reforms lead to greater interactions between Xinjiang and Central Asia. The author argues that Lattimore's depiction of Xinjiang is borne out not only in terms of politics and security, but also in terms of economics and trade. At the dawn of the new millennium, Xinjiang is sitting at the crossroads of a spatial and temporal pivot. As the forces of regional development, geoculture, and geopolitics converge in Inner Asia, Xinjiang's future can go either way: move away from the periphery and become a positive pivot in the economy, or fall prey to ethno-religious and geopolitical struggle and turn into a negative pivot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the aspects of traditional modes in dealing with the supernatural among the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China. Concentration on rituals linking the living to the world of the dead; Religious practices of the Uyghurs; Persistence of the practices throughout the socialist period.