Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang, Revised and Updated by James Millward

Author:James Millward [Millward, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History/Asia/China, HIS037060, HIS008000, History/Modern/19th Century
ISBN: 9780231555593
Publisher: ColumbiaUP
Published: 2021-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

Members of a Kazakh family in their yurt, after erecting it on summer pastures in the Tianshan (photo: J. Millward 1990)

Of the official nationality groups in Xinjiang, the Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Hui (Chinese Muslim), Mongols, Tajiks and Sibe were assigned autonomous counties, districts and/or prefectures. The province as a whole was of course designated an Uyghur Autonomous Region in light of the Uyghur majority. In practice, ‘autonomy’ in this system means that representatives of the various recognised nationalities serve on local representative bodies (not popularly elected) and as functionaries and officials in government offices. The PRC went to great lengths to train non-Chinese cadres in educational institutions at both regional and national levels. However, the autonomous counties and prefectures in mid-1950s Xinjiang all included multiple nationality groups (the smallest number is six different nationalities, in Chapchal and Tashkurgan), and in only twelve of the twenty-seven autonomous units did the eponymous nationality constitute a majority. Moreover, the power of any one minority group is further limited by the nesting of autonomous counties of one nationality within prefectures of another, the whole arrangement of course lying within the Uyghur autonomous region. In practice too, while the chairmen of each autonomous area were members of the nationality with a demographic plurality in that area, the ranking vice-chairmen were Han Party members. Moreover, each ‘autonomous’ unit remained answerable to central authorities and to the Party, whose Xinjiang department heads were almost all Han. In fact, the Xinjiang branch of the Chinese Communist Party, which had been under the northwestern Bureau in Xi’an, now answered directly to the Central Party offices in Beijing—in this way, supervision after the formation of the XUAR was more centralised than before. Finally, although autonomous areas did form their own police forces, military command lay outside the autonomous area structure, as did the Bingtuan state farm and militia system (discussed below). The system of local and regional autonomous areas, then, although it placed members of the various recognised ethnic groups at each level of government in Xinjiang, does not provide what most people would understand to be ‘autonomy’.14

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