This new book, Xinjiang in the Twenty-First Century: Islam, Ethnicity and Resistance, continues an enquiry into the ongoing confict in Xinjiang that beganwith Xinjiang, China‘s Muslim Far North-West (London: Routledge, 2004) andwas developed in Xinjiang and the Expansion of Chinese Communist Power:Kashghar in the Twentieth Century (Routledge, 2014).
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The introductory chapters give a brief overview of the character of Xinjiangand the Uyghurs for readers who are new to this region of Central Asia. The narrative originally outlined in Xinjiang: China‘s Mustim Far North-West, whichwas published in 2004, is then developed. - P5
The second chapter, which includes material from field research carried outin the Kashgar and Khotan areas in the summer of 2010, illustrates the para-doxical nature of the religious and political tandscape of southern Xinjiang in theearly twenty-first century. The destruction of the traditional, and architecturally - P5
important, bazaar and residential quarters of the ancient Uyghur city of Kashgarproceeded in spite of furious local protests.
The third chapter considers the public narrative on terrorism that has beendeveloped by the government in Beijing since 2001 to account for the violentout in Xinjiang. The unambiguous message that emerges in this narrative is that any dissent, opposition or resistance by Uyghurs, whether violent or not, is classified as ‘terrorist‘ by the govertiment in Beijing and its media.
The final section of the book offers a retrospective analysis of the violent conflict in Xinjiang and a typology of the violence. Possible resolutions to the conflictand the ruifficulties that are likely to frustrate such a resolution are examined in the light of this analysis.
Chapter 7 concludes with the draconic changes in Xinjiang‘s security regime that began with the transfer of Chen Quanguo from Tibet to Xinjiang as Secretary - P6
of the regional Communist Party in August 2016. Chapter 8 offers a summary of the nature of the conflict ant the possibility - rather remote - of a resolution.
Millitant Uyghurs reject the Chinese Name for their region, Xinjiang, which dates back to the eighteenth century, and prefer to think of it as Eastern Turkistan: this connects it directly with Western Turkistan, the Turkic-speaking regions of former Soviet Central Asia which are now divided among Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. There is a persistant, and that times confrontational, movement for Uyghur independence or, as the Chinese government prefers, ‘separatism‘, or ‘splittism‘. This Movement draws much of Its inspiration from memories of two independent, although short-lived republics that existed in the region in the 1940s. - P7
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