CHINA: Uygur Muslims – Swamped by Han Influx

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

KASHGAR, Xinjiang Province, Nov 29 2006 (IPS) - The evening light dances on the glazed pink tiles of the shapely buildings around the ancient Idkah mosque and in the enfolding dusk the site evokes tales from the ‘One thousand and one nights’. But the illusion is fleeting – none of the buildings in this spot, except for the revered mosque, is more than a few years old.

In broad daylight the exotic shapes of the building are revealed as ersatz creations furnished with minarets. The intimacy of old jam-packed curio shops has been replaced with the uniformity of cavernous but still empty shopping malls.

The once teeming bazaar lanes and overloaded stalls in front of the Idkah in this city on the fringes of China’s western Xinjiang province have been cleared away to make space for a large empty square.

“The new city centre is more beautiful than the old one,” insists Askaer, a local communist party official, who comes from the Muslim Uygur minority in western China and uses only one name. These new buildings may not be original but they make the city look modern and attractive to tourists, he says, effectively parrying questions about the value of authenticity.

For centuries the Chinese had fought for control of this city with its riches of silks, spices and other luxuries. They sought to rule over these remote western lands inhabited by independent-minded Uygurs for they were a vital corridor of land connecting China with central and southern Asia and distant Europe. This famed stop on teh ancient Silk Road once had bustling bazaars where more than ten languages could be heard.

Now it seems Beijing is closer than ever to achieving its goal of stamping its seal of authority on the place. It is rebuilding the old Kashgar with an eye on attracting tourism, but with its ubiquitous central square and gaudy new buildings the city resembles many other modernised Chinese cities.

The majority of the people – some 90 percent – living in Kashgar are Uygurs. Their daily existence though is being exoticised by the immigrant Chinese as one of that mystical and different “other” in a case worthy of Edward Said’s study of contemporary Orientalism.

The Kashgar government’s model tourist project takes visitors to the cramming streets of the ancient city where they can peep into crumbling houses and observe the daily rituals of the locals – like brewing their tea, baking the traditional flat nan bread or embroidering long scarves.

The houses open to visitors – 21 out of some 640 households, have been selected because the owners are well off and their homes retain some of the old city’s charm of sunny terraces and flower-filled yards. The rest, as the young girl that serves as tour guide admits, are too poor to be visited.

The locals are also too poor to benefit from the new gaping malls in the city square as the rents for shops are beyond their means. Where once local vendors could set up their stalls outdoors virtually for free now they have to compete to lease commercial space with more affluent Han traders coming to sell cheap consumer goods from inland China.

In Hotan, another ancient city and stop on the Silk Road, the local tourist project showcases silk dyeing and carpet weaving by hand. It is a brilliant photo opportunity where all the dozen jobs or so are done by local minority people. Yet, merely a throw away, the flashy Yudu hotel advertises jobs for receptionists and waiters stating explicitly that only “Han” Chinese are wanted.

The jobs that are to be had come at a steep price for Muslims. Batur Abdula who works for the Hotan municipal government had to give up wearing a long beard and stop going to the mosque because the Chinese authorities frown at civil servants that practice religion. Does he pray at home?

“My wife and mother-in-law pray. I don’t,” he says, smiling uncomfortably.

This tough economic reality holds true for much of Xinjiang, a vast region of 20 million people. Many of those living there are Turkic-speaking Muslims like the Uigurs and Kazakhs. Since last year however, the Han Chinese have come to dominate the population mix. Now more than half of Xinjiang people, some 11 million, are ethnic Han Chinese.

Many of the immigrants arrived with the communist armies of Mao Zedong, after 1949, to capture and keep this restive land under control. Many more came in pursuit of Xinjiang’s economic riches.

Kashgar lies on the western fringes of the Tarim basin, which has an abundance of oil and gas that has been attracting ever-greater waves of Chinese immigrants since the discovery of reserves in the late 1950s.

A 4,200-km pipeline, which originates in the Tarim basin and crosses six inland provinces before reaching Shanghai, was designed in the late 1990s when Beijing embarked on a ‘Go West’ campaign to facilitate the exploration of the region’s riches. The 14.5 billion US dollar project – now complete, transports natural gas from Xinjiang all the way to the East.

Tarim’s significance has increased incrementally as output from other Chinese oil fields like Daqing, which had been pumping oil since the 1950s has declined. China’s state oil giant, PetroChina, expects production of its Tarim oil field to rise 50 percent this year to the equivalent of 15 million metric tonnes of crude, from 10 million tonnes in 2005.

Overall, the region’s projections for energy capacity are bright. Because of its location, which positions it as the natural route of any pipeline from the Central Asian states, Xinjiang is now being developed as China’s biggest centre for the petrochemical industry.

Plans for at least three oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia and Russia crossing Xinjiang have been announced as China intensifies its quest to secure and diversify energy supplies for its fast growing economy.

Uygurs however, remain deeply sceptical of how these new bright prospects would improve their economic lot. “Wherever there is oil and money you only see Han,” is how one local from Hotan appraised life in Xinjiang.

“Labour is imported from the East and profits are exported to the East,” Elizabeth Economy, a China scholar and director of Asia Studies at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, told IPS. “The people of Xinjiang are unlikely to benefit from this development, unless things are done in a new way.”

While oil giants like PetroChina assert that 28 percent of their employees in various projects in Xinjiang are from ethnic minorities, such are hard to find on the oil fields and gas stations. At Lunnan gas station, which marks the beginning of the pipeline carrying gas to Shanghai and Beijing, not one of the hundred workers and engineers is a Uygur.

The rise of Xinjiang in China’s big energy picture means that Beijing needs to tighten its grip on this politically volatile region to ensure transportation security of vital energy projects. This is bound to increase the influx of Han Chinese into a territory already heavily militarised, and where antipathy for the government’s religious and minorities policies is on the rise.

Unrest and Muslim fundamentalism in neighbouring Afghanistan and Pakistan have contributed to a resurgence of Islam in Xinjiang. But the global war on terror has provided regional authorities with an internationally viable reason for deploying more police forces and exercising even tighter control over religious practices.

Inside the province, resentment among Uygurs toward perceived repression by the Chinese is palpable. But it pales in comparison to the prevailing sense of economic marginalisation felt by non-Han ethnic groups.