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China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an ambitious, contentious, and world-spanning project. Using Chinese Communist Party (CCP) documents, this paper examines one of the stated purposes of the BRI: to address regional inequality between China’s east and west, focusing upon Xinjiang. Through an analysis of regional economic data, the demographics of Xinjiang and Xinjiang governing bodies, and a case study of the Chinese steel industry, this paper shows that the BRI has so far failed to check increasing regional inequality in China and that job opportunities for local communities in Xinjiang are constrained by social and political factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, Xinjiang's municipal government has enacted a series of religious policies with the overt aim of combatting religious extremism, but which increasing numbers of Uyghur activists, scholars and human rights NGOs assert are discriminatory, serving as a vehicle for religious repression and the cultural assimilation of the region's Uyghur and other Muslim minorities. Within this context, this paper will consider the applicability of international human rights law in protecting the Uyghurs' cultural identity as a religious minority. However, any attempt to do so remains stymied as China has yet to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the sole human rights treaty of the United Nations that contains a provision dedicated to freedom of religion or belief for all. By exploring the applicability of cultural rights as a protection of the Uyghurs' religious identity, this paper will highlight how the UN's evolving definition of culture ensures that Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights provides one of the broadest protections for minority rights within the core human rights instruments of the United Nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic investment and the growing immigration of Han Chinese from other parts of China to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region over the last three decades have increased the presence of eastern Chinese architecture in the urban built environment. This paper refers to the making of, residing in and speaking about the materiality of urban architecture by Turkic-speaking Muslim Uyghur middle-class actors. Besides creating personal comfort through Uyghur elements they draw ethnic boundaries to the Han Chinese. In highlighting the materiality of architecture, the analysis expands beyond the individual house by investigating the ways in which urban architecture offers spaces of meaning for social and ethnic communities. Based on ethnographic data, this paper argues that due to the political context and the state-controlled urban development with Chinese characteristics, urban Uyghur architecture was relegated from the outside of houses to an emphasis on interior decoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, reports have emerged that China operates "political re-education" camps of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. China justified them as a sort of vocational training program to assist Uyghurs in participating in the Chinese economy. In actuality, they are brutal incarceration camps; these forms of 'education' can qualify as torture that perhaps 1.5 million adults have been subjected to, and have led to detaining children of people incarcerated in state-run boarding schools. It is necessary to interrogate the underlying factors that have enabled the Chinese government to open and operate these camps under the guise of education. This paper first examines the impact of the current geopolitical interests of China's Belt & Road Initiative and the historical backgrounds of Xinjiang and the Re-Education through Labour program. It then explains the methods of 'education' taking place within the camps and interrogates China's justifications for building them. This education issue is more about inhibiting Uyghur power than China's claim that the camps are meant to empower Uyghurs to participate in the Chinese labour force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tumultuous events of summer 2009 have brought Uighur protests and minority mobilization in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) to the forefront. But this focus overlooks similar protests organized by various groups of Han Chinese settlers over the years. This paper contributes to the body of literature on minority mobilization and ethnic relations in Xinjiang by illustrating how the political mobilization of a group that is simultaneously a national majority and a regional minority differs substantially from ‘traditional’ minority mobilization. Reviewing the main instances of Han Chinese political mobilization since the XUAR was created in 1955, I argue that two factors are particularly important in enabling their mobilization: the Han Chinese's subjective perception of discrimination and their close ethnic ties to the state. This paper concludes with a discussion on the presence of a cycle of protests between Han settlers and the Uighurs in Xinjiang. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background:Students’ daily-life experiences may render favorable effects on the students’ affective domain like interest, enthusiasm, motivation, joy, curiosity, awareness, and eagerness to learn science as not commonly found in the classroom environment. However, no rigorous research has been reported on those aspects in Mainland China despite many recent studies done in various Western countries. Purpose:This paper aims to report and compare the science-related experiences of ninth-graders from two places (in Urumqi City of Xinjiang province and Shanghai) in China through a large-scale survey of their junior secondary three students. Sample:The sample consists of 4115 students in Urumqi City (from 28 schools) and Shanghai (from 25 schools). Design and methods:This study adopted a Likert scale questionnaire instrument, as translated from the international Relevance Of Science Education (ROSE) Project. From a confirmatory factor analysis of the data, we identify and focus on six factors which are directly correlated with students’ science-related experiences outside school environment in Xinjiang and Shanghai and employ relevant factor scores to compare the gender, regional, and socioeconomic effects. Results:As revealed by thet-test, gender and regional differences were statistically significant in affecting (1) students’ outdoor living experience, (2) hands-on experience of transportation, and (3) their daily-life experience with do-it-yourself tools and models. In all three aspects, boys and Xinjiang students possessed richer experiences than girls and Shanghai students, respectively. Conclusions:Based on ANOVA tests, Shanghai students’ out-of-school science-related experiences were more often significantly affected by various socioeconomic variables (including their parents’ education and occupation and their family income) than Xinjiang students. From cross-regional comparison, Chinese students had much fewer science-related experiences than those of Greek and Finnish students. The limitations and educational implications of the present study are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that Beiijing's handling of the Xinjiang and Uyghur issues at the domestic, regional and international levels is characterised by a number of contradictions. Domestically, the July 2009 unrest suggests that China's longstanding approach to Xinjiang is at risk of failure due to the contradictions inherent in the logic that underpins Beijing's strategy. Regionally, Beijing faces a contradiction between its growing influence on the governments of Central Asia and the ambivalent attitude of Central Asian publics towards China. Internationally, the major implication of the July unrest has been to signal the internationalisation of the Uyghur issue whereby it has become a significant irritant in Beijing's relations with a number of major Western states, including the USA and Australia. It has been Beijing's own approach to Xinjiang domestically and its handling of the Uyghur issue in its diplomacy that has contributed to the internationalisation of the issue. [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]

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]

Northern Xinjiang in Northwest China is an important part of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt (CAOB) and is characterized by Fe, Cu, Ni, Pb, Zn, W, Mo, Au and rare metal deposits. Cobalt is a critical mineral resource and new energy material, but cobalt resources are scarce in China. Many by-product cobalt deposits have been found in the CAOB of Xinjiang. In addition to cobalt-dominant minerals that contain essential Co, cobalt mainly occurs in sulphides, with minor amounts present in arsenic, oxides, and natural metal elements in the form of isomorphic substitutions. Co deposits are mainly distributed in East Tianshan and Beishan, and minor deposits occur in Junggar and West Tianshan. We recognize five types of Co deposits in the Central Asian Orogenic Belt of Xinjiang: magmatic, magmatic-hydrothermal, volcanogenic, skarn, and sedimentary. Of these types, magmatic deposits are the most common. The ore formation in Co deposits can be divided into five mineralization phases: Early Cambrian, Early Silurian, Early Devonian, early Carboniferous, and Early Permian. Among these phases, the Early Permian was the main mineralization phase, in which magmatic-type (Cu–Ni–Co and Ni–Co) and skarn-type (Fe–Co and Ag–Cu–Pb–Zn–Co) deposits formed. The evolution of subduction, collision, and postcollision in the Paleo-Asian oceanic plate resulted in the formation of diverse types of Co deposits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a paper which explores on Han-Uyghur inequality through the comparison of Han and Uyghur migrants at Urumqi, Xinjiang in China. It says that base on a survey of 30 sites conducted in 2008, it is crucial to consider the role of self-initiated migration. It states that through the analyses of migration characteristics, findings show that Uyghur migrants do not seem disfavored compared to Han migrants. Moreover, heterogeneity of Urumqi's labor market is also investigated.

This article draws on critical scholarship on (counter-)terrorism as well as the authors' long-term fieldwork (conducted in Xinjiang from 2005 to 2017) to explore not only the securitizing agency of the state and counter-securitizing agency of "terrorists" but also the manner in which other societal actors (involving street-level bureaucrats, local Imams, and ethnic inhabitants) interact with these processes in China. This article argues that the practice of security, both in the Chinese province of Xinjiang and across China, has a performative quality to it, which manifests in not merely the official regulations and propagandas, but also the localized responses to their bureaucratic operations in the state project of "stability maintenance." While the "stability"-focused counter-terrorism activities in China involve supplementing the traditional model of retrospective intervention with a performance-based, preemptive approach that allows for more civic participation, the authors argue that the public performance of "stability" and "counter-terrorism" has become a means of professional advancement and/or survival for local cadres. In the unstable geopolitical environment of Xinjiang, where anxious contests have taken place between state and various non-state powers for control over territory, the government has been compelled to constantly seek out potential agents (referring in the present context to local cadres, Imams, and mosques) in order to forge local partnerships as part of the process of implementing counter-terrorism policies. The article examines how local cadres and ethnic inhabitants in Xinjiang, being motivated by their own survival and interests, react to and capitalize on the processes of implementing counter-terrorism policies in local societies, which ultimately challenges the ability of the state to rule and thus leads to unpredicted and unintended counter-terrorism policy outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reviews the history of Uighur related terrorism in Xinjiang as well as elsewhere in China and discusses the political motivations and effectiveness of the Chinese government in suppressing terrorism. The essay assesses both the motivations of the Uighurs engaged in terrorism, as well as the motivations for counter terrorist by the Chinese authorities. A key objective of the essay is to determine what are the political and other reasons that drive the Chinese government’s counter terrorism strategy and tactics and whether these have been effective or counter-productive. The essay assesses the counter terrorism strategy of the Chinese government in Xinjiang Province and across China, the political motivations for the strategy, the impact and success or otherwise. The essay discusses if the government is combatting terrorism, or separatism, or extremism, the confusion of these terms, and whether this has had any impact on the effectiveness of counter terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Negotiations of collective subjectivities among the Han living in ethnic minority areas of the People's Republic of China have so far received little attention. This article explores one such process among the ‘Uyghurized Han’ living in southern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, an area in which Han make up less than one-fourth of the population. Based on research material collected during long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this article suggests that Uyghurized Han creatively construct a sense of belonging in Xinjiang by positioning themselves at the interface of Han-ness and Uyghur-ness. They do so by engaging in contradictory but nonetheless simultaneous processes of blurring and fixing boundaries of identity vis-à-vis both Uyghur and other Han. The aim of the present article is to discuss the ways in which their collective subjectivities are produced in the process of boundary negotiation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

China appears to be many things at once: it has wealthy cities and poor villages; the futuristic cityscape of Shanghai exists alongside ancient traditional temples; it is a Communist state and a booming capitalist economy; it shows a Han Chinese face to the world as it struggles with multinational diversity; it ranks well on governance for its economic development index but still confronts enormous governance challenges. How well China deals with its governance challenges will impact not only all of Asia but also the entire world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]