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Although ethnic governance in the People's Republic of China is often portrayed as a matter of controlling "minority nationalities" in the country's frontier regions, the ethnic affairs bureaucracy operates in every province. The origins of "nationalities work" as a discrete domain of governance can be traced to the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to mobilize scattered Hui communities in the eastern provinces of Shandong and Hebei in the 1930s–1940s. Thanks to the initiative of Hui Communists, local Party leaders came to understand that Hui were not simply scattered but interconnected. They adapted and replicated organizational methods to exploit Hui networks for gathering intelligence, smuggling goods and penetrating enemy-controlled cities. This history offers an instructive case of adaptive governance in the revolutionary period and the role of ethnic minority cadres in policy entrepreneurship. It also underscores the importance of the Party's experience in eastern China in the study of Chinese ethnic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how the legendary general Yue Fei (1103–1142) and his legacy have been perceived and appropriated in Chinese history. Twentieth-century historians approached Yue's career by highlighting the tension between his dedication to the nation (baoguo) and his personal loyalty (jinzhong) to Emperor Gaozong (1107–1187) of the Song. I argue that for Yue Fei himself and those who wrote about him in late imperial China, Yue's guo , from which he derived his political identity and toward which he devoted his service, meant first and foremost the Song dynastic state. The pushing and pulling of multivalent themes of loyalty and state service in the "historic assessment" of Yue Fei since the turn of the twentieth century speak to the complexities embedded in different Chinese governments' navigation of ethnic and class politics in their pursuit of a new national identity for China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, as part of the efforts of the Chinese government first to integrate and, more recently, to forcibly assimilate the Uyghur population into China's mainstream culture and society, the Uyghur language has been marginalized and repressed to an unprecedented extent. The academic literature on Xinjiang's language policy has repeatedly acknowledged that this repression is a major source of concern and discontent among many Uyghurs. However, to date, little has been written about the public response of Uyghurs to this policy and their open efforts to challenge it. In particular, with very few exceptions, little is known about the public response of Uyghur writers and artists. In this article I analyse a large corpus of Uyghur poems and songs that engaged openly with the Uyghur language crisis and were published and disseminated in the Uyghur public sphere between the mid-1990s and the mid-2010s. Unlike some studies that try to assess the condition of certain languages at a certain point in time through objective methodologies, these literary and artistic works provide an insider view on how the Uyghur cultural elite and many other Uyghurs experienced the repression and loss of their native language, and also, how they struggled against this repression. In the article I examine the diverse sentiments, perceptions, and discourses that these literary and artistic expressions communicate, and the different strategies that the Uyghurs used to struggle against the language policy and its consequences. I also explore what these works tell us about the development of Xinjiang's language policy over time, the linguistic reality in the region, and the impact that the language policy has had on Uyghur society. Finally, the article also investigates the broad political meanings of these works and speculates on the link between them and the efforts of the Chinese government to further marginalize the Uyghur language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial parks in north-west China occupy a liminal space between labour camps and private industry. Drawing on worker interviews, government documents, industry materials and images this article shows that for-profit public-private industrial parks have been built as part of a "camp fix" mechanism centred on detaining and "re-educating" Uyghurs and Kazakhs at the periphery of the nation. It argues that these industrial parks concentrate forms of repressive assistance and "dormitory labour regimes" that operate at other frontiers of Chinese state power and point these strategies of disempowerment towards a seemingly permanent, ethno-racialized underclass, producing a "re-education labour regime." It further argues that the material infrastructures of these surveiled and policed spaces themselves are productive in enforcing the goals of the "camp fix": the creation of high-quality, underpaid, docile and non-religious Muslim workers who are controlled through the built environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wu Jieh-min's book, "Rival Partners: How Taiwanese Entrepreneurs and Guangdong Officials Forged the China Development Model," explores the role of Taiwanese businesses, known as Taishang, in China's rapid economic rise. Wu argues that Taishang played a crucial role in China's economic growth by forming partnerships with local officials in Guangdong province, which allowed for the establishment of factories producing labor-intensive products for export. The book also highlights the exploitation of migrant workers in this model and connects these domestic dynamics to global trends. While the book provides valuable insights, it lacks discussion on how senior officials in Beijing perceived these relationships and the intentional nature of China's rise. Overall, "Rival Partners" is a significant contribution to understanding China's economic development and cross-strait relations. [Extracted from the article]

This article clarifies a mythologized episode in the early development of the South China Sea disputes and shows how it was later 'forgotten' by British policymakers for strategic reasons. Using documents from the UK National Archives it confirms, for the first time, that Qing/Chinese officials did deny responsibility for the Paracel Islands in 1898/1899. It then shows how this correspondence was strategically ignored by British officials during the 1930s in the context of renewed disputes between China, France, and Japan over the sovereignty of the islands. It argues that during the 1930s, British officials sought to bolster the Chinese position in the South China Sea because of a concern that France would remain neutral in any forthcoming conflict. This resulted in Britain taking a view on the sovereignty disputes that was at odds with the evidence in its own archives but which provided useful political support for the Republic of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Saskia Witteborn's book, "Unruly Speech: Displacement and the Politics of Transgression," focuses on the discourse of Uyghurs, a group that has gained international attention due to stories of persecution and re-education camps in their homeland of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Witteborn uses the ethnography of communication to analyze how Uyghurs challenge social and political limits through transgressive communication practices. The book explores transgressive communication in the Uyghur region, the diaspora community in Germany and the United States, and online. It also examines the significance of names and the role of Uyghur NGOs in promoting free thought and political self-determination. The book includes personal narratives and testimonies that shed light on human rights abuses in XUAR. While the heavy theoretical discussion may distract from the author's own observations, the book provides a comprehensive overview of Uyghur studies and communications for scholars in these fields. [Extracted from the article]

The book "Rival Partners: How Taiwanese Entrepreneurs and Guangdong Officials Forged the China Development Model" by Wu Jieh-min provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between Taiwanese entrepreneurs and Chinese officials in the development of China's export-oriented industrialization. The book spans 40 years of China's development and is based on first-hand data collected throughout the period. It challenges simplistic narratives of China's economic miracle and offers a nuanced understanding of the embedded relationship between foreign investors and the local institutional structure. The book also explores the exploitation of the migrant working class and compares the Guangdong model to the experiences of other East Asian states. While the book focuses on the cooperation and conflict between Taiwanese entrepreneurs and Chinese local governments, it briefly alludes to the Sino-Taiwanese political background. Overall, the book provides a detailed and nuanced analysis of the contribution of Taiwanese entrepreneurs to China's development trajectory. [Extracted from the article]

The book review discusses Chi Zhang's work, "Legitimacy of China's Counter-Terrorism Approach," which examines China's rationale and mindset regarding counter-terrorism in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The author argues that external observers should not dismiss China's justifications for repression, but rather seek to understand them. Zhang focuses on the concept of the "mass line ethos" and its role in China's approach to counter-terrorism. The book provides valuable insights into Chinese security policy and is relevant to scholars studying Xinjiang, Uyghur studies, and terrorism and counter-terrorism. However, it does not fully address the question of why the Chinese Communist Party has taken such drastic measures in Xinjiang. [Extracted from the article]

In recent years, domestic tourism into the Xinjiang region of China has grown rapidly. Government officials view tourism as a source of both economic capital and social stability, presenting a normalcy that makes it attractive for investment. There are two paradoxes to Xinjiang tourism. According to most literature, a massive military presence should deter tourists, but numbers have continued to grow in the militarized Xinjiang region. Second, the cultural "otherness" of Xinjiang is a big draw to the region, yet this culture is being suppressed by state policies to contain Islam. Using a dataset of Han Chinese travel diaries, I look at how narrated tourist experiences of Xinjiang justify policing, how ethnic boundaries are reinforced by practices in both transportation and personal interaction, and how state policies influence Chinese travellers' views on the authenticity of their experience. While bodily assurances of security substantiate political legitimacy, tourists resist the bureaucratic management of sites, allowing for critiques focused almost exclusively on aesthetic taste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its one hundred years of existence, the Communist Party of China has experimented with how to connect its narratives of legitimacy to people's affects. In this essay, I trace the conceptualization of gratitude, from its repudiation in the Mao era as a vestige of feudalism and imperialism to its return in the reform era as a re-verticalization of Party sovereignty. The paper addresses four examples of gratitude work: Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Yang's short-lived critique of gratitude in the name of a different conception of popular sovereignty; the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake as a day of gratitude; the detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang who are taught to be grateful to the Communist Party in a campaign of religious de-radicalization; and the refusal of gratitude in quarantined Wuhan during the COVID-19 pandemic. In these cases, the Communist Party's sovereignty stands at the threshold between bio- and necro-politics, promising life and salvation in the midst of death and destruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the Ili Rebellion in Xinjiang (1944–49). Relying primarily on Chinese sources, the author identifies variations in the rise and fate of non-Han ethnic guerillas, and the patterns of military conflict in different regions during the expansionist stage of the Ili Rebellion from 1944 to 1946. The article argues that neither a nationalist nor a geopolitical explanation adequately account for such variations. Rather, the overlapping and intersecting geopolitical influence (both the Soviet Union and the two Chinese regimes) as well as local conditions (including local ethnic composition and social structure) explain such patterns. Finally, this article discusses broader implications of the role of nationalism and geopolitics in revolutions in small and dependent states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

$27.00 ISBN 978-1-478-0150-2 Darren Byler has become one of the world's leading experts on Uyghur society, producing books, articles and reports at a prodigious rate. The last chapter is built around the trajectories of two other Uyghur migrants and develops the concept of I musapir i or traveller (migrants, here) in Uyghur culture. In this second monograph, Byler also follows individual figures to expose the techno-political systems that dehumanized Uyghurs and other native Turkic people, and empowered private contractors and state workers from inner China. [Extracted from the article]

Argument: Moreau (2019) has raised concerns about the use of DNA data obtained from vulnerable populations, such as the Uighurs in China. We discuss another case, situated in Europe and with a research history dating back 100 years: genetic investigations of Roma. In our article, we focus on problems surrounding representativity in these studies. We claim that many of the circa 440 publications in our sample neglect the methodological and conceptual challenges of representativity. Moreover, authors do not account for problematic misrepresentations of Roma resulting from the conceptual frameworks and sampling schemes they use. We question the representation of Roma as a "genetic isolate" and the underlying rationales, with a strong focus on sampling strategies. We discuss our results against the optimistic prognosis that the "new genetics" could help to overcome essentialist understandings of groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Association was found between tea and neural tube defects. However, few studies investigated the relationship between tea consumption and blood folate levels. We aimed to investigate the association between tea consumption and plasma folate concentrations among women aged 18-30 years in different ethnicities of China.Design: Data were obtained from a national cross-sectional study conducted from 2005 to 2006 of women aged 18-30 years in China. Socio-demographic characteristics and lifestyle were obtained from a questionnaire. Dietary folate intake was determined by 24-h dietary recall. Plasma folate concentrations were measured by a microbiological assay. Multiple linear regression model was used to calculate partial regression coefficients after adjusting for confounding factors.Setting: Nine provinces or autonomous regions in China.Participants: A total of 2932 women aged 18-30 years in China.Results: After stratifying by ethnicity and tea type, tea consumption was significantly positively associated with plasma folate levels in Han women who drank unfermented tea weekly (β = 0·067, and P = 0·037) or daily (β = 0·119, and P = 0·031) and in Uighur women who drank fermented tea weekly (β = 0·325, and P = 0·028). For women who drank unfermented tea in Han ethnicity, weekly and daily tea drinkers had 6·77 % (95 % CI: 6·36 %, 7·21 %) and 7·13 % (95 % CI: 6·40 %, 7·96 %) increase in plasma folate concentration compared with no tea drinkers.Conclusions: There is a suggestion of possible positive association between unfermented tea drinking in Han ethnicity and plasma folate concentrations, for Chinese women aged 18-30 years. The relationship between tea drinking in other ethnic groups and plasma folate still needs to be further explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July 2009, nearly 200 people were killed in ethnically targeted mass violence between Turkic-speaking Muslim Uyghurs and Han Chinese in Urumqi, overshadowing the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC). How have ethnic relations between Han and Uyghurs descended into mass violence among ordinary people? This paper argues that the party-state exacerbates ethnic tensions between Han and Uyghurs through ethnocentric security narratives. These narratives frame China's identity as being under threat from Turkic enemies within who are supported by Islamic terrorists and Western "enemies of China" from outside. Discourse analysis of official texts, participant-observation of security practices, and interviews with Han and Uyghurs reveal the interplay between official identity discourses and everyday security practices before, during and after the violence. Since July 2009, one official solution to ethnic violence has been the construction of a shared multi-ethnic identity, officially described as a "zero-sum political struggle of life or death." However, Han-centric conceptualizations of ethnic unity promote Han chauvinism and portray the Uyghur as a security threat. The party-state thus creates hierarchical ethnic relations that exacerbate both Han and Uyghur insecurities and contribute to spirals of violence. China's extra-judicial internment camps in Xinjiang are the logical conclusions of the ethnocentric insecurity cycles analysed in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

C hris B ramall is professor emeritus at SOAS University of London and a former editor of I The China Quarterly i . L auren J ohnston is research associate, China Institute, SOAS University of London, and is widely published in the area of China-Africa economic relations. His most recent book with Professor Selina Ho and Professor Cheng-Chwee Kuik is I Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia i (University of California Press, 2020). [Extracted from the article]

This article asks: is the cost of being Uyghurs higher for young Uyghurs than for old Uyghurs in Ürümchi? I address this question with data from a survey of 2,947 people conducted in Ürümchi in 2005. The cost of being Uyghurs refers to the extent of economic inequality in the earnings of Han Chinese and Uyghurs. I develop three hypotheses on the effect of age on earnings differentials between Han Chinese and Uyghurs. Data analyses show that although young Uyghurs are better educated and earn more than old Uyghurs, they are more likely than old Uyghurs to suffer from being Uyghurs in Ürümchi. This finding has policy implications for the reduction of ethnic disparity in Xinjiang [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the course of Uyghur-related violence in Xinjiang and Central Asia since 1990? Using data derived from a variety of sources, I argue that the locations and types of violent incidents were influenced by a combination of Chinese government policies and the political geography of Xinjiang. Specifically, 1990 to 1996 were dominated by logistically complex incidents in a low-level violent campaign in Xinjiang. The Strike Hard campaign in 1996 brought about an increase in logistically simple incidents in Xinjiang and some violence in Central Asia as Uyghur separatists had trouble moving people, information and weapons across the well-guarded, difficult terrain of Xinjiang's borders. China's rapprochement with Central Asian countries in the late 1990s led after 2001 to a dramatic decrease in Uyghur-related violence in general, but also signalled the appearance of logistically creative attacks that required little planning or materials. My findings suggest that Uyghur rebels will have a difficult time mounting a large-scale violent campaign as long as China retains even minimal control of Xinjiang. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Have workers of minority status suffered labour market discrimination in China? Do all actors in the state sector discriminate against minority workers? What are the rationales for discrimination? To address these questions, I compare two ethnic groups (Han Chinese and Uyghur) with regard to job attainment in the state sector. Data are from a 2005 survey (N= 2,947) conducted in Ürümchi, China. Data analysis shows that controlling background characteristics does not remove the Uyghur-Han difference in job attainment in state firms. However, there is no ethnic variation in employment in redistributive agencies. This contrast is explained with reference to post-1978 market transition and the resulting differentiation in the institutional tasks between state firms and government agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Han and Uyghur populations of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China differ in all major health indicators. In life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality and morbidity Uyghur people are much worse off than Han. Calculations performed with the linear mixed effect multiple regression model show that poor health in Xinjiang is tied directly to Uyghur nationality. Although education, employment and income are also correlated with public health outcomes, they neither cancel out the effect of nationality nor lessen it significantly. Various socio-economic, cultural and historical factors are responsible for the health gap. Preliminary investigations suggest that lack of education, low income, cultural attitudes about gender, group-specific psychological stress, and the socio-economic and demographic changes of the past 60 years could be the major factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]