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In contrast, media from Hong Kong and Macao pointed out the internal problems of Kazakhstan and critically analyzed the actions of Kazakhstan's authorities during the January events. Kazakhstan is the largest country in Central Asia and one of the largest countries in the world who has ambitions to play a greater international role as a regional power. Moreover, US President Joe Biden's administration is trying to use China's Xinjiang region, which borders Kazakhstan, "to disturb China.". [Extracted from the article]

Infrastructure power announces the priorities of a state: who and what is authorized to move and act, whose lives and what materials have significance. In the colonial context of the Uyghur region in Northwest China, surveillance systems—checkpoints, cameras, digital forensic tools, and nearly sixty thousand low-level "grid workers"—build forms of infrastructure power that make hidden or resistant populations appear legible, decoded, and editable as "enemy intelligence." Drawing on a recently obtained internal police database of thousands of Chinese-language digital files, ethnographic observations, and interviews with Muslims who recently fled from China to Kazakhstan, this article argues that in this location at the frontier of the neoliberal and illiberal East, a smart city functions in part as a neo-Taylorist assembly line that employs an army of grid workers to produce Muslim enemies and non-Muslim friends. [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]

The Kazakhs, Turkmens, Tajiks, Uyghurs and Uzbeks in Central Asia share some distinct religious elite groups - Xojas - some lineages of which appear in two or more of them. The Xoja group is a patrilineage, which traces kinship through blood relationships. Endogamous marriages prevail among the Uzbekspeaking Xoja contrary to descendants of nomadic, Kazakh-speaking Xojas. In this article I compare the kinship systems of the Uzbek-speaking Xoja of the Uzbek people and the Kazakh-speaking Xoja of the Kazakh people and analyse their transformation in the twentieth century. The analysis shows that interpretation of differences in kinship terminology is situational: in some cases it is interpreted as an example of adaptation to different cultures, and in other instances it may serve as a symbol of belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation examines the effect of the Updated Content of Education (UCE) project on Kazakh, Russian, and Uyghur child literacy in Kazakhstan. Participants included 1,920 Kazakh, 1,528 Russian, and 143 Uyghur speaking Grade 1 students tracked longitudinally from 2015 to 2019 under both control and pilot curricula conditions. Based on Rasch modelling using a linked equating design, multi-level piece-wise growth modelling suggested that the UCE pilot had a positive effect on the between-school growth rate for the first year for both Kazakh (b = 1.49, p <.001) and Russian (b = 1.40, p <.001). For Uyghur, the UCE pilot had a significant positive effect (b = 0.40, p <.001) for the final two-year period. Overall, findings support the implementation of the updated curriculum for the advancement of child literacy suggesting that the UCE may also be implemented more broadly. Implications for other post-Soviet and Central Asian jurisdictions looking to simultaneously advance minority, indigenous, and regional child language literacy are offered. • Study reports effect of updated curriculum on Kazakh, Russian, and Uyghur literacy. • Study is first large-scale investigation on longitudinal growth in Kazakhstan. • Updated curriculum improved Kazakh, Russian, and Uyghur child literacy. • Study informs stakeholders including citizens, educators, and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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.

Time-dependent changes in reproductive parameters were analyzed using data on 203 female Uighurs. A decrease was observed for the total fertility (3.77 vs. 6.50 in females 45-55 or 56 and more years of age, respectively), live birth (3.3 vs. 5.14), stillbirth (0.045 vs. 0.41), and voluntary abortion (0.29 vs. 0.59) rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]