Uyghurs

“ The ethnic cultures in Xinjiang always have their roots in the fertile soil of Chinese civilization and make up an inseparable part of Chinese culture. Well before Islamic culture spread into Xinjiang, all ethnic cultures in the region, including the Uygur culture, had prospered in the fertile soil of China’s civilization. ”

“ At the turn of the 20th century, separatists and religious extremists in and outside China, inheriting the so-called theories of "Pan-Turkism" and "Pan-Islamism" created by former colonialists, spread the word that Uygurs were the only "masters" of Xinjiang, that the ethnic cultures of Xinjiang were not Chinese culture, and that Islam was the only religion practiced by ethnic groups of Xinjiang. They incited all ethnic groups speaking Turki and believing in Islam to join in creating the theocratic state of so-called "East Turkistan". ”

“ The People's Republic of China has upheld ethnic equality, unity, common prosperity and development of all ethnic groups as the basic principles in solving ethnic problems and handling ethnic relations. It made it a state policy to practice ethnic regional autonomy in areas where people of ethnic minorities live in concentrated communities. When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, the ethnic peoples of Xinjiang mainly comprised the Uygur, Han, Kazak, Hui, Kirgiz, Mongolian, Xibe, Tajik, Manchu, Uzbek,Russian, Daur and Tartar, with the Uygurs boasting the largest population. ”

“ Islam is neither an indigenous nor the sole belief system of the Uygur people. It has taken root in the Chinese culture and developed soundly in China.
I. Xinjiang Has Long Been an Inseparable Part of Chinese Territory A unified multiethnic country, China came into being as a result of economic and social development. Historically, the East Asia continent that nurtured the ancestors of today’s Chinese nation had both farming and nomadic herding areas. Different ethnic groups with diverse livelihoods and lifestyles communicated with and complemented each other, and migrated and lived together. ”

“ Since the modern times, some Pan-Turkism advocates with ulterior motives have described all peoples of the Turkic language family as “the Turks” using the untenable argument that the Turkic-speaking tribe integrated with the ancestors of the Turkish people after migrating westward. A language family and an ethnic group are two essentially different concepts. In China, ethnic groups speaking Turkic languages include the Uygurs, Kazaks, Kirgiz, Uzbeks, Tatars, Yugurs, and Salars, each with its own history and unique culture. These peoples cannot be referred to as “Turks”. ”

“ Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is a land of beauty, diversity and unity. Fifty-six ethnic groups are closely united as family members, just like pomegranate seeds that stick together, to build a beautiful homeland, maintain social stability, and realize economic development and prosperity, flourishing cultural heritage preservation, ethnic unity and harmony, and freedom of religious belief, with people of different ethnic groups living and working in peace and contentment. ”

“ Today, Xinjiang, home to various ethnic groups, is an integral part of the Chinese nation.
The evolution of ethnic relations in Xinjiang has always been linked to that between all ethnic groups in China. There have been periods of isolation and conflict, but exchange and integration, and unity and joint effort have always been the prevailing trend. The ethnic groups of China, including those in Xinjiang, live together alongside each other. They are economically interdependent and embrace each other’s culture, and are a unified whole that has become impossible to separate. ”

“ Historically Xinjiang was the gateway and medium through which the Chinese civilization opened to the West. The Silk Road opened a new chapter in cultural exchanges and integration between East and West. China’s papermaking, sericulture, silk weaving, and other advanced technologies spread to the West via Xinjiang during the glory days of the Silk Road, exerting a far-reaching impact on world civilizations. Buddhism, Manichaeism and Nestorianism were introduced into Xinjiang through the Silk Road, and practiced together with primitive local religions. ”

“ In the early 1950s the separatists instigated many riots in Xinjiang, calling on Uygurs to "unite under the moon-and-star banner to create a republic of Islam". In the 1960s there were the riots in Ili and Tacheng on the China-Russia border, the riot of the "East Turkistan People's Revolutionary Party", and the armed rebellion of the Gang of Ahongnof in southern Xinjiang. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, religious extremism made further inroads into Xinjiang. It soon blended with terrorism to stir up social unrest in the region, seriously undermining local stability and security. ”

“ For fifty years, or for five hundred, China will rule an unmurmuring people with justice, and lead them into the paths of prosperity and peace; but if they rebel, if they openly defy authority, if they invite a hostile stranger within their borders, the punishment will be as sweeping, as cruel, and, in one and a higher sense, as wrongfully foolish, whether the association of the races may have been for fifty years or five centuries, as it was in the case of Kashgar. ”

“ I am sorry for the Mongol; he is a happy-go-lucky, likeable fellow, but it is all nonsense for the Russian Government to talk about the way the Chinese settlers are wronging him, taking away the tillable lands. He does not want them to till, but to pasture his herds, and that is just the difficulty. It is not China but civilization that is driving the gol to the wall, just as the Red Indian was driven. Nowadays the people that will not make the best use of the land must give it up to those who will. ”

“ In line with the principles of equality, unity, and mutual assistance for ethnic groups, the peoples of Xinjiang became the masters of the region, and for the first time elected deputies to the people's congresses at all levels. The democratic reform that followed, with rural land reform at its core, abolished feudal land ownership and distributed land to the deprived local peasants, putting an end once and for all to centuries of oppression and exploitation for the working people of Xinjiang. ”

“ Her Eastern Diplomatic Authorities own that they fear that China may become some day too strong for Russia. Russia has had one experience of the rapid growth of an Eastern nation's military prowess, and she does not intend to allow China to balk her well-laid plans. She fears Chinese insidious commercial enterprise, Chinese admirable colonial methods. She does not want China along her frontier, and the subsequent expense of a frontier line to guard. From a British point of view, one cannot help seeing the danger of any Russian influence in Mongolia. Tibet and Mongolia are very closely allied. ”

“ Interested parties, those whose individual gains in commerce or labor are served by these destitute and hungry and humble people, — who thrive on stinted wages and refuse food, — have been pronounced public enemies for favoring the incoming of the Chinese. Among those directly concerned in the exciting question there is a bitter controversy whether this Mongolian race shall make further increase on our continent, and whether those already here shall not be driven out. ”

“ Up in Shanghai the whites admired and envied; and: “better far to be ruled by one lion who cannot steal much, than by a thousand and three rats—who can steal a great deal,” said the Yarkand burgesses to the emissaries of the “Central Chinese Committee for Liberty, Union, and Progress.”
When finally, after the Dowager Empress’ death, China overthrew the Manchu throne and established the republic, the general turmoil was hardly felt in this far-away western backwater of Turkestan. ”

“ Up and down this road, year in and year out, passes all China in vivid procession, hungry, eager for gain, out for the main chance, hurrying, ever hurrying, grudging the hours of rest spent in camp or towns by the way: flat-featured Mongolians with raucous voices, their hair burnt rust-red by the sun ”

“ As we have done in other regions of importance to the United States, we must expand our efforts to promote pluralism, tolerance, and openness in Central Asia. The people of these nations deserve a political avenue to express their opinions and grievances. Extremist Islam must not be the only outlet for Uzbeks, Turkmen, Tajiks, and other Central Asians as it unfortunately has become for so many other people in the region. ”

“ The fur and leather will also meet our needs. Once the opportunity comes, Outer and Inner Mongolia will be ours outright. While the sovereign rights are not clearly defined and while the Chinese and Soviet Governments are engaging their attention elsewhere, it is our opportunity to build our influence. Once we have purchased most of the land there, there will be no room for dispute as to whether Mongolia belongs to the Japanese or the Mongolians. Aided by our military prowess, we shall realize our positive policy. ”

“ One of their sub-groups moved to the modern Jimsar and Turpan regions, where they founded the Gaochang Uighur Kingdom. Another sub-group moved to the Central Asian grasslands, scattered in areas from Central Asia to Kashi, and joined the Karluk and Yagma peoples in founding the Karahan Kingdom. After that, the Tarim Basin and its surrounding areas were under the rule of the Gaochang Uighur Kingdom and the Karahan Kingdom. The local residents were merged with the Uighurs that had moved west, thus laying the foundation for the subsequent formation of the Uygur ethnic group. ”

“ The black Tatars, who occupied the greater part of what we now call Mongolia, remained unaffected by their uninterrupted contact with more advanced races whose representatives entered their country only in the quality of merchants. The trade of barter and exchange with the nomads was in the hands of men of Turkestān, Uïghūrs, and Musulmans, who in such matters were far more enterprising than the Chinese. These Uïghūrs and Musulmans, moreover, kept in their own hands the commerce between Mongolia and China ”

“ Whereas detained and imprisoned Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are held arbitrarily and without due process, coerced to disavow religious beliefs and cultural practices, forced to work in factories, deprived of food and other essential needs, and subjected to physical abuse, including torture and alleged organ harvesting ”

“ Currently, 10 spoken and written languages are used among the various ethnic groups of Xinjiang. Ethnic minority languages are extensively used in such areas as judicature, administration, education, press and publishing, radio and television, internet, and public affairs. At important meetings such as those of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference documentation and simultaneous interpretation in Uygur, Kazak, Mongolian or other ethnic minority languages are provided. ”

“ Integrating the principle of universal human rights with the country's realities, China has enriched its strategy for the governance of Xinjiang with the following guidelines: governing Xinjiang in accordance with the law, maintaining stability in the region through ethnic unity, nourishing the cultures of Xinjiang, promoting prosperity among the local population, and developing Xinjiang from a long-term perspective. ”

“ And it would soon pay for itself, for the millions of taels' worth of trade done between North Mongolia and China would easily be doubled if once freed from the handicap of the costly and uncertain journey of to-day. But more important than all else is the political side of the question. The Chinese Government must have known for years that its hold on North Mongolia was insecure; it has pushed forward colonization by the Chinese with much more than its usual vigour, and, given time, that would have settled the matter. ”