Xinjiang
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Two hundred prosecutions. No, nor would I wish to stand trial in China. But a point still needs to be made.
Why are Han Chinese “Han Chinese”, but Uighur Chinese simply “Uighurs”? They have been Chinese for about as long as each other, i.e., more or less for ever. For that matter, they have lived in Xinjiang (even if not always at the current ratio) for about as long as each other, i.e., more or less for ever. But, of course, we all know why the Han are described as Chinese yet the Uighur are not. The Trots are in charge now. For that is what hatred of China in our media is: student Trotskyism from back in the day.
For all the same depiction of the perpetrators as the victims that we saw when Tibetans also turned on their age-old Han and Hui neighbours, the events in Xinjiang show up the vitally important point that just because the Chinese regime is nasty, that does not make its opponents nice. Those who want an ethnically pure Islamist state in Xinjiang are of a piece with those who want an ethnically pure feudal theocracy in Tibet, with those who feel that Maoism has been betrayed, with those who always saw Maoism as a betrayal of Stalinism, and with the Koumintang ludicrously agitating to have their accidental bolt-hole on Taiwan declared independent.
Is every one of China’s 56 ethnic groups to be given a state? The population clearances necessary to create such states in Tibet and Xinjiang alone would make the partition of India look like a parish council boundary dispute. Even leaving aside the horrifying visions of those who want control of those territories in order to give those visions life. The whole thing is completely unconscionable.
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Trots? The only Trotskyites in America are the Neocons, who are anything but friendly toward the Muslim Uighurs. Indeed, what few Uighurs who fell into our net were kept in Guantanamo by just such people in the Bush administration. I’ve never heard anyone even suggest independence for the Uighurs. I have heard voices asking that they be treated better.
One would think that the point would not be why we make a differentiation between the Chinese and the Uighurs, but that they make such distinctions themselves.
Your dismissal of the Tibetans and their Llama as feudal, echoes Communist propaganda perfectly. Or is that just Old Labor? Of course we should not go looking for trouble with China, or any other country. But your parroting of Communist propaganda on a Conservative site is a bit distasteful.
The Han and the Uighurs are quite distinct. But they are both Chinese. Being Chinese is a civic thing, not an ethnic one. Like being British. Or being American.
Before 1959, Tibet (which was internally self-governing but has never been a sovereign state in all of history) was ruled feudally by the lamas and by the aristocratic class from which they were drawn; even “Dalai” is a family name, since only a member of the House of Dalai is permitted to become the Dalai Lama. Life expectancy was half what it is today.
The Dalai Lama was born hundreds of miles outide Tibet, since huge numbers of ethnic Tibetans have always lived elsewhere, just as huge numbers of Han and others have always lived in Tibet. Or, at any rate, since a very long time before any Caucasians lived in America.
The people now running Tibet are ethnic Tibetans, but from more pitchfork backgrounds than their predecessors. Like all the ethnic minorities, the Tibetans are exempt from the one child policy.
And so on, and on, and on.
China has plenty of faults. But neither Tibet nor Xinjiang is among them. It is the separatist tendencies (Islamist in Xinjiang) that are the problems there.
Oh, and on the party point, I’d say that this attitude to China was Nixonian.
The word is “forever,” Lindsay.
I suppose your general ignorance of Tibetan history would be of a piece with your complete ignorance of American History. A distinct Tibetan people and state have existed since about 600AD. All Chinese claims to Tibet rest on the fact that both countries were once part of the same empire….The Mongol Empire. Tibet became part of that empire before the Chinese did.
For a Catholic, your assault on Feudalism and traditional religion as per Chinese communist propaganda, is more than a little inconsistent.
The neo-cons may be fishing in troubled Chinese waters, but Christians hope for an end to the cultural genocide in Tibet and a lighter hand by Chinese authorities.
On the contrary, “Zhonghua minzu” or Chinese nationality–the idea that Chinese nationality transcends ethnicity–is a 19th-century idea. It hasn’t been around “forever;” rather, it emerged with the rise of the nation state, is adopted by the Chinese after the fall of the Qing and crystallizes under the influence of Soviet nationalities policies. I was in China many years as a journalist, and spent quite a lot of time in Xinjiang. The overwhelming majority of Uyghur nationalists I have met are fully aware that the former Soviet Union cannot serve directly as a model for a Uyghur national movement. China is not a federal state. Secession, or contemplation of it, is a political sin precisely because the Communist Party defines China as a united, multi-national socialist republic.
The modern Uyghur identity certainly was forged by Islam, but that is moderated by Turkic ethnicity, a history of Ataturk secularism, and Sufi notions of religious secrecy. There are Wahabists in Xinjiang, too, increasingly influenced by religious developments in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and proselytizers. But the important question is the extent to which Islam is a political factor in Xinjiang’s ethnic violence. The Chinese historically have not been blind to the degree to which their policies generate fear and perceived status inequities among Uyghurs. In much greater and growing numbers than the Wahabis are young Uyghur men who bridle at Chinese restrictions on mosque attendance and local customs such as the meshrep. But not even the most disaffected Uyghurs want an “ethnically pure Islamist state in Xinjiang.”
Oh, my God, this is ridiculous. Don’t people get to define THEMSELVES? Uighurs don’t consider themselves Chinese, and don’t want to be part of China. To answer your question regarding which 55 nationalities have a right to self-determination, the sane and reasonable answer would that any ethnic group that lives in a geographically concentrated area that wants it bad enough ought to be able to get a divorce.
As a recent convert to what I thought was paleoconservative, traditionalist conservativism, I’m quite taken aback by your hostility and Daniel Larison’s hostility toward ethnonationalist states. Perhaps I entirely misunderstand what you or he are saying, but it sounds like you think a prison house of nations along the ideas of Hapsburg or old Russian Empire is a much better idea than sovereign monoethnic states. What I can’t understand is why.
“but that is moderated by Turkic ethnicity”
Turkey now has an Islamist government. Were it not for the constant threat of an American-backed military coup, Turkey would be an Islamic Republic now.
“a history of Ataturk secularism”
Not working in Turkey itself, so hardly likely to work anywhere else.
“Sufi notions”
The Chechens are Sufi. The Sanussi synthesis of Sufism and Wahhabism, illustrating that they are perfectly compatible, is also followed by at least one third of Libyans. Sufism is hugely influential in Pakistan and in the Pakistani diaspora. And so on.
“In much greater and growing numbers than the Wahabis are young Uyghur men who bridle at Chinese restrictions on mosque attendance and local customs such as the meshrep”
They will be organized by someone. I think we all know who.
“But not even the most disaffected Uyghurs want an “ethnically pure Islamist state in Xinjiang.””
They are being played. And they are doing a more than passable impersonation of people who want that.
China has been where China is for so long, with all the corresponding geographical mixing up of ethnic groups, that any move towards disintegration cannot be countenanced for one moment. Nothing remotely on the scale of the consequences has ever been seen. Not when the Soviet Union broke up. Not when Yugoslavia broke up. Not even at the partition of India. Never. It must not be allowed to happen.
Lindsay, aside from the snide tone and off-handed character of your response, I am sure you would not prefer a purely secular-nationalist government in Turkey of the kind that promotes an environment in which Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is a bestseller, Armenian genocide is denied and minorities are mercilessly persecuted. Turkey has constitutional problems, but secularists are helping stir up some of the trouble. For obvious reasons, the U.S. has a real interest in preventing Turkey’s courts or military from removing a legally elected government.
Chechens are mainly Sunnis of the Shafia tradition, made up of Nakshbandiya and Kadiriya Sufi groups. Of course various traditional Sufi groups throughout history have been violent, but in the vast majority of cases such actions have been defensive in resistance to colonial occupations. Anyone who knows the history of the Caucasus understands the serious contemporary conflicts that divide Sufis and Wahabis in that region, and knows that armed clashes between the two have occurred throughout Chechnya, as in the 1999 invasion of Dagestan. To point to Sanussism in Libya as somehow representative of the potential “synthesis of Sufism and Wahhabism” belies a deficient understanding of the history of Islam. To look at Islam without seeing Sufism as a moderating force in China and elsewhere is to be ignorant of the struggle within Islam itself.
“They are being played. And they are doing a more than passable impersonation of people who want that.”
That’s reaching. Again, the Communist Party in China continues to shoot itself in the foot in Xinjiang with jackboot policies that exacerbate inequality and foment ethnic tensions. But the handful of radicals in Xinjiang who support such disorganized groups as the Hizb ut-Tahrir want a worldwide Caliphate, not an independent state. In July, we didn’t see or hear Uyghurs in Xinjiang screaming for either.
P.S.
Above, you state that “Like all the ethnic minorities,” Tibetans are exempt from the state’s one-child policy, as if this were some form of Chinese beneficence. In fact, Tibetans are exempt because, officially, the one-child policy covers only nationalities in China with more than 10 million members. Despite being exempt, Tibetans have been subjected to decades of forced abortions and sterilizations, which are well-documented by numerous human rights groups.
“I am sure you would not prefer a purely secular-nationalist government in Turkey of the kind that promotes an environment in which Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is a bestseller, Armenian genocide is denied and minorities are mercilessly persecuted”
But I don’t see how the AKP is any better. It is either secular ultra-nationalism or Islamism in Turkey. Unless you happen to be Kurdish. Then you get a third option of Marxist terrorist separatism. Why Turkey is treated as a Western country, I honestly have no idea. It is less Western than Lebanon (French as an official language, President has to be a Maronite Catholic), Syria (Christian-majority provinces, Christian festivals as public holidays) or Iran (three reserved parliamentary seats for Christians, although I can’t remember whether it’s two Armenians and one Assyrian or vice versa – at any rate, there are several thriving Armenian churches in Tehran, and Assyrians there are a lot better off there than inn “liberated” Iraq).
“For obvious reasons, the U.S. has a real interest in preventing Turkey’s courts or military from removing a legally elected government”
That depends what the government is. This “real interest” certainly has not proved “obvious” in the past. How could it be? Unless we are have reverted to Bush Era nonsense about how these things should (but in fact don’t and can’t) work. Bush himself couldn’t keep that one up. He considered – I am not making a point about whether he was right or wrong to think it – that the wrong side had won elections in, for example, the Palestinian Authority. So he acted accordingly. Well, of course he did. The problem with Turkey is that there is no right side to win elections.
“Of course various traditional Sufi groups throughout history have been violent, but in the vast majority of cases such actions have been defensive in resistance to colonial occupations”
Oh, that one? Well, we’d better leave that to one side, or we’d start on something that would never end. Consider that there are, so to speak, many extreme Christian movements (Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Amish) that are pacifist. There is no pacifist sect of Islam. Not one. To call Sufism “a moderating force” is to be ignorant of the nature of Islam itself.
“a worldwide Caliphate, not an independent state”
That’s always how it starts. There will still be people, comparable to Trotskyists during the Soviet period, who refuse to accept “Caliphate in one country”, even with at least a theoretical strategy for export. But most people have always done so when living under such a Caliphate. There was, for example, one in Turkey for a very long time. And there were purist dissidents. But never very many.
The Chinese regime is brutal. But it is like that to everyone, not just the Tibetans, or the Uighur, or whoever. And its enemies in (or concerned with) Tibet, Xinjiang and elsewhere are at best no more agreeable. Your enemy’s enemy isn’t necessarily your friend. He is at least as likely to be your enemy, too. If the War on Terror has taught nothing else, then it has certainly taught that.
“any ethnic group that lives in a geographically concentrated area”
That rules out all of the ethnic minorities in China. Apart from some totally Han parts, there is no monoethnic part of China. And ethnic minorities may be concentrated in Tibet, or Xinjiang, or Manchuria, or wherever. But it is never the only substantial population to have been living there for a very long time.
Are the Hispanics of southern California or southern Florida entitled to “self-determintion” of this kind? If so, then what would be conservative about that? Or if not, why not?
David, if we had invaded the Southwest at a time when there were large numbers of Mexicans living there you might have a point. But we took the Southwest from Mexico at a time when few people of any type lived their. The Mexicans who demand special treatment now, moved there in order to take advantage of our wealth and stability.
The Chinese invaded Tibet and any demographics you care to site now reflects the injection of Han Chinese onto land that was not theirs to begin with. This is the same population shuffling that Stalin did to the Baltic States, infesting these states with Russians.
The decent thing for the Chinese to do is to grant local autonomy to Tibet. This is what the Dali Llama asked for, not independence. Let the Chinese have their military bases and road projects if they want to protect regional interests, but the supplanting of the Tibetans in their own land by Han Chinese is a form of genocide.
>>d with the Koumintang ludicrously agitating to have their accidental bolt-hole on Taiwan declared independent.<<
ROFLMAO. Your ignorance is astounding. The KMT doesn’t support independence for Taiwan, it’s the DPP that does. I can’t recall when I’ve seen such rampant badness in so small a space.
Michael Turton
The View from Taiwan