Inside Xinjiang: Space, Place and Power in China's Muslim Far Northwest (Routledge Contemporary China Series)

"The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is China's largest province, shares borders with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and Mongolia, and possesses a variety of natural resources, including oil. The tensions between ethnic Muslim Uyghurs and the growing number of Han Chinese in Xinjiang have recently increased, occasionally breaking out into violence. At the same time as being a potential troublespot for China, the province is of increasing strategic significance as China's gateway to Central Asia whose natural resources are of increasing importance to China. This book focuses in particular on what life is like in Xinjiang for the diverse population that lives there. It offers important insights into the social, economic and political terrains of Xinjiang, concentrating especially on how current trends in Xinjiang are likely to develop in the future. In doing so it provides a broader understanding of the region and its peoples"-- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Title 10 Copyright 11 Contents 12 List of figures, maps and tables 14 List of acronyms 16 Notes on contributors 18 Introduction: Inside Xinjiang 22 PART 1 Identity formation and sense of belonging 34 1 The burden of the past: Uyghur peasants remember collectivisation in southern Xinjiang 36 2 ‘If there is harmony in the house there will be order in the nation’: an exploration of the Han Chinese as political actors in Xinjiang 53 3 Space, place and ethnic identity in the Xinjiang Regional Museum 73 PART 2 Inter-ethnic relations in Xinjiang 94 4 Whose Xinjiang? Space, place and power in the rock fusion of Xin Xinjiangren , Dao Lang 96 5 From Uncle Kurban to Brother Alim: the politics of Uyghur representations in Chinese state media 121 6 Segregated diversity: Uyghur residential patterns in Xinjiang, China 143 PART 3 Government policies in the region and beyond 170 7 Socio-economic disparities and development gap in Xinjiang: the cases of Kashgar and Shihezi 172 8 Health in Xinjiang: Uyghur adolescents’ vulnerability to HIV/AIDS 204 9 Protested homecomings: Xinjiang Class graduates and reacclimating to life in Xinjiang 227 10 Xinjiang from the ‘outside-in’ and the ‘inside-out’: exploring the imagined geopolitics of a contested region 246 Index 282 Space, Place and Power in China's Muslim Far Northwest