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Chinese academics and politicians argue that Xinjiang's 'terrorism' problem can only be solved by 'optimizing' its ethnic population structure. High ethnic minority population concentrations are considered a national security threat. 'Optimizing' such concentrations requires 'embedding' substantial Han populations, whose 'positive culture' can mitigate the Uyghur 'human problem'. Scenarios that do not overburden the region's ecological carrying capacity entail drastic reductions in ethnic minority natural population growth, potentially decreasing their populations. Population 'optimization' discourses and related policies provide a basis to assess Beijing's 'intent' to destroy an ethnic minority population in part through birth prevention per the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention. The 'destruction in part' can be assessed as the difference between projected natural population growth without substantial government interference and reduced growth scenarios in line with population 'optimization' requirements. Based on population projections by Chinese researchers, this difference could range between 2.6 and 4.5 million lives by 2040. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article brings together archival and ethnographic research to explore the ways that expressive culture and intangible cultural heritage flow across national borders, how transnational communities in Central Asia engage with discourses and practices of preservation and revitalization, and how local heritage initiatives can respond to the pressures of economic marginalization, migration, Islamization and cultural assimilation. Mäshräp gatherings involving music, dancing and joking have played a prominent role in modern imaginings of Uyghur national identity, and in local processes of community-making. Since 2009, Uyghurs in Kazakhstan have engaged in new forms of 'heritaging' mäshräp, attempting to revive their role as a medium for strengthening communities and sustaining language and culture. We argue that the unruly, affective and performative aspects of mäshräp are key to the success of these social goals, and we highlight their role as a space for the negotiation of tensions between religion, nation and hot sociality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Imam Hüsäynim', a traditional song about the martyrdom of the Shi'a Imam Husayn ibn Ali, has been popular among the Uyghur Sufis in Khotan, an oasis town in Xinjiang, or Chinese Central Asia. People perform it in the dastan epic, mäshräp gathering, and localized samāʿ ritual. The categorization of these repertoires is based not only on musical styles but also on religious meanings, which makes 'Imam Hüsäynim' a song that can be used across repertoires. Although the song is about a Shi'a Imam, the Uyghur people, who are dominantly Sunni Muslims, do not associate it with Shi'a Islam but receive it as a song about the history of Islam in general. Outside the Sufi community, the song's melody has been adapted as the theme song of a comedy film and a propaganda song to promote a county's image. These incarnations of the song have lost the meaning of 'Imam Hüsäynim' because of radical changes of its text and context. Why has this particular melody been appropriated in these various ways, and what are the dynamics among its different versions and incarnations? Based on ethnographic research in Khotan and relevant ethnomusicological literature, this article will discuss the factors that determine the meanings of 'Imam Hüsäynim' and its incarnations, and the broader issue of repertoire crossover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family law is an important constituent of law that deals with social relations within the family and the household. It regulates conflicts concerning marriage, divorce, child custody, adoption, inheritance and so on. During the Chinese Republican era (1912–1949), as a continuation of the practice in Imperial China, the settlement of conflicts emerging in the Uyghur domestic sphere was governed by Islamic law. In this article, based on several text corpora consisting of legal documents originating in southern Xinjiang (Khotan and Kashgar) from the Republican era, I will analyse the reasons behind such disputes and the final decisions made by Muslim judges. It will also touch upon women's position in pre-socialist Uyghur society, the role of village elders and fathers-in-law, patterns of dispute settlement, the influence of the different forms of divorce, and the parameters for further research on the texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The media often focuses on the visible aspects of state violence. However, the invisible aspects of everyday struggle often go under-reported. How does dispossession and displacement occur for Uyghurs in Xinjiang? What is the role of their dispossession in securing state territorial control? Some Uyghurs from rural areas in Xinjiang, China have experienced a triple dispossession: displacement from the countryside, alienation in the city, and eviction from the city. The stories concern the agony people feel as they move from rural to urban settings and back again, pain caused by severe hardship in the economic, political and cultural senses. This case shows how economic development works together with interventionist state power to violently dispossess and displace the most vulnerable poor minorities from their homes and livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article approaches 'informal' modes of organization among Uyghur bazaar traders in Xinjiang and Kyrgyzstan in a complex context of increasing state regulatory measures and strong social networks. It captures this organization as a 'formal side of informality'. The practices comprising it are deemed 'informal' from a state-centred perspective, as they are not regulated by the state law or bureaucracy, but they still display a non-state formalization in the sense of being codified, regular and predictable to the traders. The article explores areas and examples of such 'informal' formality in the bazaar trade that are built around notions of morality, piousness, pride and shame. It pays special attention to oral contracts, purchase on credit, go-betweens and the status of profit. The article draws on participant observation and interviews in Xinjiang and Kyrgyzstan as well as on descriptions of trade morals and trade customs in ethnographic and folkloristic publications by local Uyghur scholars in Xinjiang. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Sinicization' of the Uyghur world – that is, the pervasive progression of Chinese influence into it – is a familiar topic of both Uyghur complaint and academic writing on Xinjiang. In this article, I discuss the striking appearance of this same motif in reference to the Sinicization of the physical Uyghur body, and use this example to argue that the communally enforced moral separation of the Uyghur from the Chinese, and the particular understanding of history that underpins this, have epistemological consequences for how the Uyghur people see themselves and the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since spring 2017, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China has witnessed the emergence of an unprecedented re-education campaign. According to media and informant reports, untold thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslims have been and are being detained in clandestine political re-education facilities, with major implications for society, local economies and ethnic relations. Considering that the Chinese state is currently denying the very existence of these facilities, this paper investigates publicly available evidence from official sources, including government websites, media reports and other Chinese internet sources. First, it briefly charts the history and present context of political re-education. Second, it looks at the recent evolution of re-education in Xinjiang in the context of 'de-extremification' work. Finally, it evaluates detailed empirical evidence pertaining to the present re-education drive. With Xinjiang as the 'core hub' of the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing appears determined to pursue a definitive solution to the Uyghur question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1949, illiteracy among both Uyghurs and Tibetans was similar to that throughout China and estimated as higher than 90%. Since then, the rate of illiteracy in Xinjiang has shrunk considerably, while in Tibet it has remained the highest in China. This gap can explain the difference between the small volume of literature published annually in Tibet and the extensive literature that appears yearly in Xinjiang. A major reason for the high literacy rate and the emergence of a thriving modern literature in Xinjiang is the system of modern education that developed in the region at the start of the twentieth century. In contrast, in Tibet, the religious conservatism of the Buddhist elite prevented the introduction of modern education in order to retain local cultures. The comparison of the influences of modern education on the creation of literary traditions allows us to examine the continuity of Uyghur and Tibetan cultures in the context of contemporary China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, state-directed Han settlement and capitalist development in the Uyghur homeland in Chinese Central Asia have uprooted thousands of Uyghurs, causing them to move to the city. In this article, I explore how low-income male Uyghur migrants and Uyghur culture producers build a durable existence despite these challenges. Based on analysis of migrant responses to the Uyghur-language urban fiction and indigenous music as well as ethnographic observations of Uyghur migrants from Southern Xinjiang, I argue that indigenous knowledge provides underemployed male Uyghurs a means to refuse the alienating effects of settler colonialism and economic development. By broadening the scope of what counts as ‘resistance’ to Chinese attempts to eliminate aspects of Uyghur society, I show that ‘refusal’ can be a generative way of embodying sovereignty, particularly when confronted by structural violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China in 2016 and 2017, this article addresses the meanings of security from subjective perspectives by investigating Uyghur perceptions of marriage, which offer crucial insight into the meanings of security. The Uyghurs, as the major indigenous population in Xinjiang, have encountered securitization, particularly since the 2009 Ürümchi riots, deemed the worst ethnic conflict in the region since 1949. While official security practices based on stability have won the support of most Han Chinese citizens in and outside Xinjiang, these same security practices have penetrated to and influenced intimate Uyghur life, such as marriage. Uyghur participants in this research indicate that marriage is a social field in which the official counter-extremism campaign, individuals’ happiness (bext), and the security (bixeterlik) of the Uyghur collective identity encounter and negotiate with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Persian language manuals uniformly adopt national categories such as Persian/Farsi (Iran), Dari (Afghanistan) and Tajik (Tajikistan). These categories at once impose an imagined contrast between the languages at the high register that is in fact marginal, while occluding profound linguistic variation within these nation-states at colloquial registers. Similar schemas apply to Central Asian Turkic languages such as Uyghur and Uzbek, which are closely related at the formal/literary register, but regionally diverse at lower registers. This dominant instructional approach ill prepares language learners for engaging the region on its own terms, rather than through the lens of nationalist aspirations. Students would be better served by an integrative method that teaches a transnational high language (in the case of Persian) while introducing a diverse range of dialects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explains the intellectual history and ideology of the Turkic insurgency and the East Turkestan Republic in Kashgar in 1933–34. Texts in periodicals from the period suggest that the insurgency was defined by its intellectual elites more as a nationalist enterprise than as a religious one. The insurgency's ideologists established important national attributes of the East Turkestani nation, particularly its national name, homeland, symbology, and history, and they also articulated East Turkestani national interests, particularly political independence, representative government, and modernization. Regardless of the arguably low degree of social penetration of the ideas of the elites among common society and the small extent to which policy was actually implemented, the intertwining of East Turkestani national identity and interests with political self-government and modernization was an ideological concept that had a profound impact on all subsequent administrations in Xinjiang. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the changing relationship between ethno-national and local narratives in the historiography of Kazakhstan's Uyghurs through the parallel analysis of general and local histories compiled in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Uyghur history writing in the post-Soviet period is discussed in relation to the divided loyalty of the Uyghur community: while interest in writing ethno-nationalist histories is based on the growing feeling of being a part of the broad, transnational category of the Uyghur, deep attachment to the Semirech'e region is expressed in the emerging histories of Uyghur villages and neighbourhoods. In analysing the local histories of Kazakhstani Uyghurs in the post-Soviet period, the author focuses on the gradual transition from Soviet-style local histories praising the uniqueness of the ‘Soviet’ Uyghurs to new local histories emerging ‘from below’ as exemplified by the history of the Sultanqorghan neighbourhood of Almaty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focusing on representations of the Muslim dynasty that exercised power locally under the Qing dynasty until 1930 in the oasis of Qumul in eastern Xinjiang, this article challenges the binary notions of ‘official’ versus ‘unofficial’ discourse by looking at the production of historical knowledge on the ground. Versions of local histories are communicated both in censored publications and in informally transmitted oral narratives, which are not independent realms but in constant dialogue with each other. Produced at the interface of the oral and the written, these representations are laden with contradictions and ambiguities, portraying the Muslim dynasty sometimes as feudal exploiters, at other times as models of good governance. It will be shown how historical knowledge is produced at the junctures of the oral and the written, and of official and unofficial discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the authors discuss topics connected to Central Asian local history that are addressed in the issue, including Uyghur history writing, Kyrgyz genealogy, and local history in Tajikistan's Murghab Valley.

Kashgar's seventeenth-century ruler-saint, Afaq Khoja, is remarkable for the amount of historical writing he has inspired, both outside and within Chinese Turkestan. His reputation among Uyghur historians is one of the few aspects of local Uyghur historical knowledge production that has attracted the attention of foreign scholars. In this essay the author uses the now-familiar example of Afaq Khoja's reputation to show that much of what is distinctive about local Uyghur approaches to history has been so little understood as to be missed even in this often-discussed case. This article describes how the local historical appropriation of Afaq's reputation, particularly the recording of narratives about Afaq in writing, began as a typical product of the Naqshbandi maqāmāt tradition, was reshaped into Kashgarian local history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and then reshaped again as an ethno-national history beginning in the 1930s, culminating in the publication of the popular historical novel, Apaq Khoja, and its subsequent burning by officials of the People's Republic of China. While the reputation of Afaq in the present certainly reflects the current political context, it also bears significant marks of these earlier traditions through which it has passed. Thus this article argues for an understanding of ‘local history’ as a form of knowledge production that embraces a host of historical approaches, including transnational devotional literature, popular local oasis history and nationalist historical fiction. The author also suggests that these transformations of local history have reflected shifting senses of what is ‘local’ over the last 300 years. The argument is advanced through philological investigation of the manuscript sources, ethnographic fieldwork and literary analysis of the recent novel Apaq Khoja. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although China's Uyghurs have progressively engaged in informal trade following economic reforms, in recent years a small group of corporate Uyghur entrepreneurs have positioned themselves in more formal industries where they hold a cultural advantage. However, we argue that the clustering of firms and a lack of experience and capital limits entrepreneurs' ability to compete with established Han businesses. This restricts Uyghur economic participation more generally, contributing to labour-market inequalities and ethnic tension in cities like Urumqi. The authors conclude that government support for Uyghur entrepreneurs is a crucial step to strengthen economic development and reduce ethnic tension in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Deryabuyi, a small isolated town in the Takla Makan desert in Xinjiang, China, is viewed from the perspective of its rural economy. The minority Uyghur inhabitants are similar to other rural minority communities in China. In particular, focus is placed on the digging of rabbit carrots, a medicinal herb that grows on the roots of mesquite trees. Just as the Tibetan caterpillar-fungus collection has brought cash, and problems, to rural Tibetans, the collection of rabbit carrots has brought cash to Deryabuyi. However, the loss of the ability to engage in sustainable economic activities due to environmental degradation, loss of grazing land, overharvesting of scarce resources, diversion of water resources, government neglect along with scarce and/or inadequate social services such as health care and education, and job discrimination among others, may mean the destruction of this unique cultural community. As such, Deryabuyi can be seen as a microcosm of the challenges facing rural minorities in Xinjiang and in other parts of China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The generally accepted narrative for the birth of the modern Uyghur nation suggests that a national ideal for the Uyghur people and the use of the 'Uyghur' ethnonym in the modern context were creations of Soviet bureaucrats in the 1920s that were later promoted among Uyghurs in Xinjiang by Chinese authorities with Soviet sympathies. This article challenges this view by drawing on Uyghur language sources, which demonstrate the agency of Uyghur intellectuals in the creation of the concept of a modern Uyghur nation during the early twentieth century. In examining the activities of Uyghur intellectuals in fostering a modern Uyghur national identity, the article emphasizes the role of anti-colonial sentiments in this movement, thus linking the Uyghur example to post-colonial scholarly arguments about the development of modern national consciousness among formerly colonized peoples around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much scholarship and commentary has raised concerns about the fate of traditional Uyghur culture in the context of development and globalization in the twenty-first century, some even predicting its disappearance through assimilation to mainstream majority Han culture. However, by exploring the modern Uyghur culture of consumption - in foodstuffs, entertainment and real estate - this paper shows an opposite phenomenon: the transformation of the traditional Uyghur culture to a distinct cultural, religious and linguistic popular contemporary Uyghur culture that thrives and expands with the aid of globalization and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To provide background for the four papers on Xinjiang and the Uyghurs in this special issue, this introduction discusses developments in the region since 1991, then outlines the events of June and July 2009 in Shaoguan, Guangdong, and Urumchi, Xinjiang, as best can be pieced together from available information. It concludes with brief introductions to the four articles on Xinjiang that follow in this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An ethnic identity is not simply a catalyst for collective action; rather, it is an idea, a social variable shaped by its own intellectual history and by the historical consciousness of those who, wittingly or otherwise, engage with and articulate it. As one example, modern Uyghur identity, as it is most widely understood today, is the product, in part, of the action of a series of educational institutions operating in the years before 1949. Intellectuals and activists, beginning in the 1880s, formed networks of schools that provided an organizational basis for social and political movements, as well as a site for the negotiation of the ideas of those movements. Uyghur identity, along with a broader scheme of ethno-national classification, gained currency among a particular sector of Xinjiang society through participation in a set of broader organizations in the Sheng Shicai era. This history is reflected today in the actions and attitudes of contemporary Uyghur intellectuals, who react to encroachment on mother-tongue education with ideas and organizations informed by historical knowledge of this earlier period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work examines the labour export programme of south-west Xinjiang that brought Uyghur migrant workers to the Early Light Toy Factory in Shaoguan, Guangdong and places it in the context of capitalist-working class divisions emerging in contemporary China, where clashes between managers and workers have become frequent occurrences, and increasing worker solidarity and growing labour activism have become a leading concern of the Communist Party of China and an increasingly influential business class. The author suggests that labour export is primarily utilized not as a means to alleviate poverty and reduce minority-Han income gaps, as claimed by official sources, but as an instrument of business-class interests for dividing and conquering the shop floor through the ethnic diversification of the workforce, an age-old tactic of factory bosses harkening back to the manipulation of foreign-born workers in late-nineteenth-century industrial America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that at present there are two distinct groups among the Uighurs living in the Ili river valley region of eastern Kazakhstan. The border between China and Kazakhstan intersects the valley that has been the backdrop to several migrations since the first Uighur families moved to the Russian Empire in the 19th century. Eugene Schuyler was the first American diplomat to visit the Ili Valley region during the 10 year Russian occupation. He reported violence by the Chinese Muslims against the Qing forces, including Chinese and Manchu civilians, on a grand scale.

A correction to the article "Dispossession and displacement of migrant workers: the impact of state terror and economic development on Uyghurs in urban Xinjiang" that was published in a previous issue of the periodical, is presented.