The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) is a largely Muslim area in the far northwest of China. In area it is the largest province-level unit in China, accounting for about one-sixth of China's total area. The most populous ethnic group is the Uygurs, after whom the XUAR is named. The Uygurs are Turkic ethnically and culturally, and strong adherents of Islam. In the north of Xinjiang there is a large Kazak population, adjacent to Kazakhstan. Since the middle of the 20th century there have been many immigrants from China's dominant nationality the Han. The People's Republic of China (PRC), like its imperial and republican predecessor states, places a very high premium on national unity. All attempts at secession have been suppressed immediately and brutally. In fact, the great majority of these attempts at secession have taken place either in Tibet or Xinjiang, both of which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regards as integral parts of China. For a variety of reasons separatist movements have strengthened since 1990 in Xinjiang. This is despite persistent efforts by the government to crush any secessionist tendencies in all the minority areas. Actually, separatist movements appear to have impacted more heavily on Xinjiang in the 1990s than on any other part of China, even including Tibet. The year 1996 saw an intensification in the government's attempt to suppress separatism, in particular with a major meeting in Ürümqi early in May, at which the problems were aired and a counter-strategy identified. The main aim of this paper is to enquire into the causes for the increase in separatism. It concludes that there is a combination of various reasons for this growth. Most of them are long-standing, including the strained relations among the various nationalities living in Xinjiang. What changed in the 1990s, however, was that the Soviet Union collapsed (December 1991). However, no sooner had the Soviet threat been removed than it was replaced b... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]