Issues & Studies© 43, no. 2 (June 2007): 39-92.
Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era,
1978-91: The Political and
Economic Dynamics of
Dengist Integration
MICHAEL E. CLARKE
This paper charts the development of the People's Republic of China's
(PRC) reevaluation of its strategy of control and development in Xinjiang
in the post-Mao era. It argues that the reevaluation and restructuring of
the CCP's socioeconomic priorities after the repudiation of the Maoist line,
and the ideological innovations that followed thereafter, produced contradictory dynamics in Xinjiang that reinvigorated the potential for the convergence of internal unrest and external interference by the close of the
1980s, laying the foundation for the intensification of ethnic minority opposition during the 1990s. The emerging strategy toward Xinjiang during
this period attempted to utilize the strategic and "frontier" nature of Xinjiang to strengthen the endeavor of integration, stimulating the beginnings
of a number of dynamics both within Xinjiang and the wider Central Asian
region that would challenge Chinese power and policy in the final decade
of the twentieth century.
MICHAEL E. CLARKE (Ph.D., Griffith University, 2005) is currently a research fellow at the
Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. His dissertation is entitled
"In the Eye of Power: China and Xinjiang from the Qing Conquest to the 'New Great Game'
for Central Asia, 1759-2004." His research interests concern the history and politics of
Xinjiang, ethnic separatism in China, China's foreign policy, the history and international relations of Central Asia, and nuclear proliferation in the Asia-Pacific. He has published a number of articles on China's foreign policy in Central Asia, Chinese policy in
Xinjiang, and the history of Xinjiang since the eighteenth century. He can be reached at
<[email protected].>.
©
Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan (ROC).
June 2007
39
ISSUES & STUDIES
KEYWORDS: Xinjiang; integration; regional politics; economic policy; ethnic
policy.
* * *
The status of Chinese rule in Xinjiang (新疆) upon the resurrection of Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1978 exhibited numerous contradictory
dynamics. The maelstrom unleashed during the Cultural Revolution in
Xinjiang had undermined the legitimacy and authority of the CCP, stimulated overt ethnic minority resistance to the "fusionist" policies it pursued,
and proved catalytic in the stimulation of external pressure along the frontiers. The response of the CCP during the 1976-78 Hua Guofeng (華國鋒)
"interregnum" was to couple the strengthening of its key instruments of
integration and control— the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and Han
(漢族) in-migration— with a partial return to the rhetoric of the "gradualist," immediate post-liberation era (1949-55) of Party policy concerning
ethnic minorities.1 Moreover, within this period the potential Soviet threat
to Xinjiang once more contributed to the coupling of "moderation" and
strengthened integration. Although the Chinese state's ultimate goal of
achieving the integration of Xinjiang remained intact, it was nonetheless
placed in significant jeopardy by the legacy of the turbulent vicissitudes
of the Mao Zedong (毛澤東) era. Yet the key contradiction within the
CCP leadership both during and after the Maoist period did not concern
the goal of integration but rather the strategies by which this end could
be reached and the intensity with which they were to be pursued. The
emerging Dengist era would prove to be no different in regard to the internal techniques and tactics of rule within Xinjiang. This period did, however, see the state attempt to utilize the strategic and "frontier" nature of
Xinjiang to strengthen the endeavor of integration in contrast to the approaches of the Maoist era that sought the region's isolation. Moreover,
論
See Donald H. McMillen, Chinese Communist Power and Policy in Xinjiang, 1949-1977
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1979).
1
40
June 2007
Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
the period 1978-91, in retrospect, exhibited the beginnings of a number of
dynamics both within Xinjiang and the wider Central Asian region that
would challenge Chinese and Russian dominance over the heart of the
Eurasian continent. Indeed, a recurring theme in observations and accounts
of Xinjiang in the 1990s was that the interaction of the internal dilemmas
of Chinese rule with those of newly independent Central Asia played a
major role in the intensification of ethnic minority unrest.2
This paper argues in this regard that the reevaluation and restructuring
of the CCP's socioeconomic priorities after the repudiation of the Maoist
line, and the ideological innovations that followed thereafter, produced
contradictory dynamics in Xinjiang that reinvigorated the potential for
the convergence of internal unrest and external interference by the close
of the 1980s, laying the foundation for the intensification of ethnic minority
opposition during the 1990s. The impact of Deng's gradual "reformist"
agenda on the CCP's approach to the PRC's ethnic minorities was significant, as the general questioning of the Maoist legacy ultimately led to a reappraisal of the Party's record in relation to the "nationalities question."
The progress of the reform of ethnic minority policy, however, was not
unidirectional but experienced a number of fluctuations. These fluctuations in policy were the product of a complex interaction between the
differing tempos of reform deemed necessary by the central and regional
authorities, and the perceived impact of specific policies on the security of
this strategic region. The convergence of internal unrest and external interference remained in Chinese perceptions the single greatest possible threat
to the state's integrationist goal in Xinjiang throughout the period 1978-91.
Importantly, Deng Xiaoping's ascendancy within the CCP also produced
a reassessment and reorientation of the PRC's foreign policy that had a
2
See, for example: Colin Mackerras, "Xinjiang at the Turn of the Century: The Causes of
Separatism," Central Asian Survey 20, no. 3 (2001): 289-303; Nicolas Becquelin, "Xinjiang
in the Nineties," The China Journal, no. 44 (July 2000): 65-90; Dru C. Gladney, "Rumblings
from the Uyghur," Current History, September 1997, 287-90; Ahmad Lufti, "Blowback:
China and the Afghan Arabs," Issues & Studies 37, no. 1 (January/February 2001): 160-214;
and Sean R. Roberts, "A 'Land of Borderlands': Implications of Xinjiang's Trans-Border Interactions," in Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland, ed. S. Frederick Starr (Armonk, N.Y.:
M.E. Sharpe, 2004), 216-37.
June 2007
41
ISSUES & STUDIES
significant impact on the potential for the convergence of these dynamics.
In this period the PRC's foreign policy became characterized by the interaction of domestic imperatives and the dynamics generated by the SovietU.S.-PRC "strategic triangle" initiated by Mao's limited rapprochement
with the United States in 1972. Within the context of Xinjiang, China's
relations with the Soviet Union remained of primary importance. Therefore, the aims of the paper are to identify and analyze the changing imperatives underpinning the state's techniques and tactics of rule and their relation to the ultimate goals of the state in Xinjiang during this significant
era of Chinese history.
Integration in the Balance:
The Restoration of "Gradualism" and the
Renewed Soviet Threat, 1978-81
The resolution of the Party's post-Mao succession struggle in favor
of Deng Xiaoping at the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee
in December 1978 had an enormous impact on the direction of CCP policy
toward China's ethnic minorities. The Third Plenum, among other things,
repudiated the "two whatevers" (兩個凡是) espoused by Hua Guofeng and
determined that the "four modernizations"3 were to take precedence, thus
marking a decisive turn away from the policies of the late Mao era.4 Important elements of the Third Plenum's departure from the Maoist legacy/
model were the initiation of the "household responsibility system" in
agriculture that effectively began the de-collectivization of China's agricul-
3
The "four modernizations" referred to the new national developmental goals of the modernization of agriculture, industry, defense, and science and technology.
4
See Roderick MacFarquhar, "The Succession to Mao and the End of Maoism," in The Politics of China: The Eras of Mao and Deng, ed. Roderick MacFarquhar, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 320; and Lowell Dittmer, "Chinese Reform
Socialism under Deng Xiaoping: Theory and Practice," in China in the Era of Deng Xiaoping: A Decade of Reform, ed. Michael Ying-mao Kau and Susan H. Marsh (Armonk, N.Y.:
M.E. Sharpe, 1993), 9-14.
42
June 2007
Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
tural sector, the elimination of the commune system, and an undertaking to
"open" the PRC's economy to the outside world.5 Moreover, and perhaps
most significantly for China's ethnic minorities, the Third Plenum also
determined that "class struggle" was no longer the "key link" in the development of Party policy.6 It should be noted that from the mid-1950s
onwards the CCP's approach to the ethnic minorities had been guided by
Mao's position that in the final analysis "national struggle" was a question
of "class struggle." Throughout 1979 Party leaders made a number of important statements regarding the ethnic minority issue, building upon the
initial relaxation proposed after the Third Plenum. On the occasion of the
thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the PRC in late September 1979,
Party leaders stated that Mao's 1956 speech "On the Ten Major Relationships," the program of the 1956 Party Congress, and Mao's 1957 "On Correctly Handling Contradictions among the People" provided the guiding
principles for the socialist revolution.7 The significance of this stemmed
from the fact that both Mao's speeches of 1956-57 and the Party program
of 1956 stressed that opposition to "Han chauvinism" was the "cornerstone" of nationalities policy and generally upheld a "gradualist" approach
to the integration and assimilation of the ethnic minorities.8 The Nationalities Commission of the National People's Congress (NPC) (全國人大民族
委 員會), abolished during the Cultural Revolution, was reconvened in
October 1979.9 At this meeting Ulanhu (烏蘭夫), a Mongol leader of
prominence within the CCP, criticized the policies of the Cultural Revolution as "coercive assimilation," and called for the strengthening of auton-
5
Dittmer, "Chinese Reform Socialism under Deng Xiaoping," 10.
Hsi-sheng Ch'i, Politics of Disillusionment: The Chinese Communist Party under Deng
Xiaoping, 1978-1989 (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1991), 15; and MacFarquhar, "The Succession to Mao and the End of Maoism," 320.
7
Walker Connor, The Nationality Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), 427.
8
See Mao Zedong, "On the Ten Major Relationships" (April 25, 1956) and "On Correctly
Handling Contradictions among the People" (February 27, 1957), in The Writings of Mao
Zedong, 1949-1976, vol. 2: January 1956-December 1957, ed. Michael Y.M. Kau and John
K. Leung (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1986), 43-61; 308-40.
9
See note 7 above.
6
June 2007
43
ISSUES & STUDIES
omy and greater government expenditure on ethnic minority regions.10
Therefore, by the close of 1979 the return to a more "gradualist" approach
to ethnic minorities appeared to be assured.
The dynamics created by the emergence of Deng Xiaoping's reformist
agenda in Xinjiang over this period illustrate the continuity of the contradiction between the prerogatives of the central leadership and the imperatives of the regional authorities. This contradiction was a function of the
responses or reactions of the major political actors in the region— the PLA,
the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC, 新疆生產建設兵
團), Han immigrants, and the ethnic minorities— to the directives of the
central government.11 There was often a great deal of difference between
what the central government wanted to do and what the regional government could actually implement. This particular theme became evident
during the tenure of Wang Feng (汪鋒) as chairman of the Xinjiang Uighur
Autonomous Region (XUAR, 新疆維吾爾族自治區) in 1979-81, as his
prerogatives to implement the reformist agenda of Beijing met with varying degrees of opposition from the major political actors in the region.
Wang's attempts to "rectify" the Xinjiang CCP by reorienting cadres toward
the new reformist line and the rehabilitation of cadres purged during the
Cultural Revolution resulted in the development of intense inner-Party
struggle.12 Over the period 1979-80, Wang Feng implemented an eightpoint plan for agricultural policy and initiated a review of the officially
disbanded PCC. The agricultural policy instituted the new "household
responsibility" system, permitted the restoration of private plots, and per-
Ibid.; and Colin Mackerras, China's Ethnic Minorities and Globalisation (London: Routledge, 2003), 25. Ulanhu had been a member of the CCP since 1925, and in 1977 became
a member of the Politburo.
11
For a thorough account of the XPCC see Donald H. McMillen, "Xinjiang and the Production and Construction Corps: A Han Organization in a Non-Han Region," Australian
Journal of Chinese Affairs, no. 6 (July 1981): 65-91.
12
Donald H. McMillen, "Xinjiang and Wang Enmao: New Directions in Power, Policy, and
Integration?" The China Quarterly, no. 99 (1984): 572. "Rectification" in the Party's terminology generally refers to the process of ensuring that the various levels of the Party implement the "Party line" consistent with the ideological/political program propounded by
Beijing at a given point in time.
10
44
June 2007
Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
mitted commune members to raise livestock for their own use. De-collectivization was not, however, equivalent to privatization as land was not
returned to private ownership. Rather, the collective retained land ownership and villagers leased land as household units, thus creating peasants as
de facto tenants with the state acting as landlord.13 This "de-centralization"
to the household unit "signaled the state's decision to change the terms of
the struggle over the harvest."14 The peasant household now had the first
claim, as it were, to its individual harvest and could define the surplus after
it had turned over a set amount to the state in taxes and sales (i.e., procurements).15 Significantly, although the peasants could now define and dispose of their surplus as they saw fit, the state still remained a "claimant" for
the peasant's harvest.16 The "responsibility system" thus contained economic "channels" through which the state could exert and extend its power
over villages. This aspect of the reform of agriculture would assume significance in the coming decade in Xinjiang, particularly in the mid-1980s,
as the state attempted to re-assert its control over rural areas.17 The review
of the PCC focused on the rehabilitation of cadres purged during the Cultural Revolution and the restoration of differential material incentives.18
Importantly, under Wang's leadership, the Xinjiang CCP also attempted to
promote more ethnic minority cadres to positions of authority, following
the post-1978 return to prominence of a more "gradualist" approach to
13
For state-wide policy of de-collectivization see Richard Madsen, "The Countryside under
Communism," in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 15: The People's Republic, part 2:
Revolutions within the Chinese Revolution, 1966-1982, ed. Roderick MacFarquhar and
John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 669; and Nicholas R.
Lardy, "Recasting of the Economic System: Structural Reform of Agriculture and Industry," in Kau and Marsh, China in the Era of Deng Xiaoping, 105. For its implications in
Xinjiang, see Ildiko Beller-Hann, "The Peasant Condition in Xinjiang," Journal of Peasant
Studies 25, no. 1 (1997): 90-91.
14
Jean C. Oi, State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village
Government (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 155.
15
Ibid., 155-56.
16
Ibid.
17
Beller-Hann, "The Peasant Condition in Xinjiang," 87-112.
18
June Teufel Dreyer, "The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region at Thirty," Asian Survey
26, no. 7 (July 1986): 732.
June 2007
45
ISSUES & STUDIES
"nationalities policy." Yet the imperative to dismantle the key instruments
of the Maoist model in Xinjiang embodied in Wang's agenda provoked residual opposition among both Han and ethnic minority cadres. A major
factor in this reservation about adopting the new line in Party policy undoubtedly came from a sense of self-preservation, as many were cognizant
that today's "correct" ideological line could rapidly become tomorrow's
"deviationism" or worse. Moreover, a total denunciation of Maoist policies
that had ostensibly underpinned Chinese rule in Xinjiang since 1949 could
also pose serious problems for the Party's legitimacy.19
The period 1978-80 also saw major changes in the PRC's foreign
policy orientation that was largely determined by the new leadership's renewed attempts to build on the limited Sino-U.S. rapprochement achieved
under Mao with the visits of Henry Kissinger in 1971 and President
Richard Nixon in 1972, with a particular focus on utilizing greater SinoU.S. comity to counter the perceived Soviet "encirclement" of the PRC.
Two particularly worrisome developments for Beijing throughout 1978
were the Soviet Union's maneuvers and overtures to two of China's neighbors, Vietnam and Afghanistan. The escalation of Soviet activities and
interests in both these states, if successful, would achieve the Kremlin's
objective of strategically encircling the PRC with pro-Soviet states from
China's Inner Asian frontiers in the west to Indochina in the east. Moreover, two key external events in 1979 served to reinforce China's antiSoviet imperatives and complicate its rule of Xinjiang. The first event, the
Islamic Revolution in Iran of February 1979, threatened the PRC as it
constituted a dynamic revival of Islam as a political force.20 The Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, however, posed a far more
proximate threat to China's Central Asian frontiers. These events compounded the sense of urgency within the provincial and central authorities
to stabilize and improve the situation in Xinjiang. In particular, the PLA's
"defensive counterattack" (i.e., invasion) against Vietnam on February 17,
19
McMillen, "Xinjiang and Wang Enmao," 572-73.
Lufti, "Blowback: China and the Afghan Arabs,"172.
20
46
June 2007
Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
1979, that followed months of Sino-Vietnamese tension over Cambodia
had significant security and strategic implications that were felt almost
immediately in distant Xinjiang.21 The Chinese anticipated that their attack
on Vietnam would precipitate a Soviet maneuver in Xinjiang and so they
placed Tacheng (塔城) prefecture, near the border with the Kazakh SSR,
under direct PLA control in the final months of 1978. The level of threat
felt by the Chinese authorities in Xinjiang was further illustrated on the eve
of the attack on Vietnam, with the evacuation of the civilian population of
the three districts of Tacheng, Altai (阿勒泰), and Ili (伊犁).22 Although
the foreseen Soviet retaliation did not materialize during the course of the
Sino-Vietnamese conflict that ended on March 5, 1979, the heightened
state of alert in Xinjiang remained. In light of the renewed Sino-Soviet
tensions, the East Xinjiang Military District was created to strengthen the
defense of the PRC's nuclear installation at Lop Nor (羅布泊) and a defensive perimeter around Urumqi (烏魯木齊) was also established.23 Significantly, this episode illustrated that in Chinese perceptions the Soviet threat
was not unidirectional but also potentially emanated from the region's
ethnic minorities, given the possibility that the Soviets could appeal to
the potential ethnic, cultural, and religious linkages between the non-Han
population of Xinjiang and the peoples of Soviet Central Asia. The evacuation of the three districts of Ili, Tacheng, and Altai noted above was
coupled with renewed attempts to strengthen "nationalities unity" and combat "bad elements" within Xinjiang.24 However, tensions along the SinoSoviet frontier remained, with Soviet and Chinese troops clashing in the
vicinity of Tacheng in July 1979.25
21
See Harold C. Hinton, "Reorienting China's Foreign Policy: China and the World," in Kau
and Marsh, China in the Era of Deng Xiaoping, 385-86; and Jonathan D. Pollack, "China
Between the Superpowers: In Search of a Security Strategy," ibid., 357-62.
22
June Teufel Dreyer, "The PLA and Regionalism in Xinjiang," Pacific Review 7, no. 1
(1994): 46.
23
Dreyer, "The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region," 733-34; and Donald H. McMillen,
"The Urumqi Military Region: Defense and Security in China's West," Asian Survey 22, no.
8 (August 1982): 717-18.
24
Dreyer, "The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region," 734.
25
McMillen, "Xinjiang and Wang Enmao," 579.
June 2007
47
ISSUES & STUDIES
The Soviet Union's intervention in Afghanistan late in 1979, largely
as a result of intensified Soviet and U.S. maneuvering regarding the regional alignment of the Persian Gulf,26 reinforced China's rapprochement
with the United States and significantly increased the strategic importance
of Xinjiang. Soviet involvement in Afghanistan reignited, at least in Chinese perceptions, the Soviets' expansionist agenda and added further
weight to the thesis that the Kremlin was intent on making Afghanistan
part of its inchoate system of anti-China alliances in Asia.27 More importantly Soviet activities in Afghanistan since the mid-1970s had attracted
the attention of Washington, and regional powers Pakistan, Iran, and China,
who determined to combat any Soviet attempt to develop a client regime in
Kabul. The most immediate concern, however, for the PRC following the
Soviet invasion was the unresolved border dispute in the Pamir Mountains
in the far southwest corner of Xinjiang. The Chinese reiterated claims
initially made at the height of the Sino-Soviet conflict in 1969 that the
Soviets had occupied 20,000 square kilometers of Chinese territory at the
intersection of the Afghan, Soviet, and Chinese borders in the Pamirs.28
Soviet control of this region threatened China's overland linkage via the
Kashgar-Gilgit highway to Pakistan, with whom China had been developing a substantial strategic and military relationship since the late 1960s.29
The Soviets' offensives in early 1980 targeted the Wakhan corridor that
separated the Soviet Union and Pakistan, and whose "finger" or eastern end
creates an 80km Sino-Afghan border. The Soviet annexation of this territory thus limited the utility of the overland route from China to Pakistan
See, for example, Steven A. Yetiv, America and the Persian Gulf: The Third Party Dimension in World Politics (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1995), 45-65; and John Cooley, Unholy
Wars: Afghanistan, America, and International Terrorism, third edition (London: Pluto,
2002), 1-19.
27
Chi Su, "U.S.-China Relations: Soviet Views and Policies," Asian Survey 23, no. 5 (May
1983): 576.
28
John W. Garver, "The Sino-Soviet Territorial Dispute in the Pamir Mountains Region," The
China Quarterly, no. 85 (March 1981): 107.
29
Rasul B. Rais, "Pakistan in the Regional and Global Power Structure," Asian Survey 31, no.
4 (April 1991): 391; and McMillen, "The Urumqi Military Region," 717.
26
48
June 2007
Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
as a conduit for arms.30 Significantly China, as the Soviet entanglement
in Afghanistan developed, became involved to a much greater extent than
simply as a source of military hardware31 that precipitated a greater alignment with Washington. The visit to Beijing of U.S. Secretary of Defense
Harold Brown in January 1980 initiated a series of high-level visits by
U.S. and Chinese military or defense officials to the respective capitals between January and September 1980.32 These contacts resulted in increased
arms sales and technology transfers to China, and the development of joint
intelligence operations and intelligence sharing.33 With respect to this
latter development, a visit to Beijing by the then CIA director, Stansfield
Turner, late in 1980, resulted in the adoption of a plan to construct two
secret U.S. monitoring installations in Xinjiang at Qitai (奇台) and Korla
(庫爾勒).34 In addition to these closer Sino-U.S. contacts, China agreed
to cooperate in training Muslim volunteers in Pakistan and prospective
mujahideen began to be recruited from among Xinjiang's ethnic minorities. These activities were expanded in 1985 with the establishment of
training camps on Chinese soil near Kashgar (喀什) and Khotan (和闐).35
Chinese support for the development of an international Islamic force
would prove to be a double-edged sword for Beijing in the coming decade.
Although the multi-state supported mujahideen would effectively combat
Soviet expansion, a major goal of Beijing, these states' policies simultaneously created the basis for the diffusion of militant Islamic ideology into
their own states.36
Cooley, Unholy Wars, 57; and Garver, "The Sino-Soviet Territorial Dispute," 118.
According to one source, up to 1984 China was the major, and most reliable, source of arms
and ammunition for the mujahideen. See Cooley, Unholy Wars, 58.
32
Su, "U.S.-China Relations," 566. These included PRC Defense Minister Geng Biao (耿飆,
May 1980), PRC Deputy Defense Minister Zhang Wenjin (August 1980), and U.S. Undersecretary of Defense William Perry (September 1980).
33
Ibid.
34
Ibid,; and Cooley, Unholy Wars, 54-55.
35
Cooley, Unholy Wars, 55-59. Cooley asserts that Uighurs were trained by the Military Intelligence Department of the PLA, also known as the Erbu (二部) or "Second Department."
36
This was particularly accurate for some of the major participants such as Pakistan and
the PRC. In the PRC's case the scope of infiltration of former mujahideen into Xinjiang
30
31
June 2007
49
ISSUES & STUDIES
Contemporaneous with these external developments, Wang Feng
continued to encounter difficulties in implementing Beijing's reformist
program. This was particularly centered on the progress of reform of the
state farms and XPCC units, while increased liberalization of regulations
governing agriculture and animal husbandry did not produce immediate
results.37 The implementation of the new Party leadership's program in
both the economic and political spheres produced contradictory dynamics
in Xinjiang as the various grievances of Han immigrants, the ethnic
minorities, and PCC personnel converged in 1980. Particularly instrumental in this was the responses of the ethnic minorities and the large
number of xiafang (下放) Han youth in Xinjiang to the progress of the new
reformist line. It would appear that it was the pace and scope of "reform"
that provoked ethnic minority and Han immigrant ire. Yet subsequent
developments were to show that this dynamic was also paralleled by ongoing ethnic minority resentment toward both the Chinese state and the Han
population of the region. For the ethnic minorities, the limited liberalization implemented by the Party since 1976 promised much but in practice
delivered little. This state of affairs was mostly due to Wang Feng's limited
success in purging the Xinjiang CCP of residual Maoist cadres and influence. Importantly, Deng Xiaoping had also halted the xiafang movement and had permitted significant numbers of Han youths rusticated during the Cultural Revolution to return to their home provinces, prompting
those rusticates in Xinjiang to expect similar treatment. In April 1980
this frustration boiled over in Aksu (阿克蘇), where the beating of a Uighur
youth by two Han set off an inter-ethnic riot that lasted for two days.38 This
outbreak prompted senior Xinjiang CCP leaders to embark on "inspection
tours" to Aksu and other major centers south of the Tian Shan (天山).39 Hu
remains a moot point, but the least that could be said is that the success of the mujahideen
in Afghanistan would serve as a powerful example for China's Muslim minorities.
37
Dreyer, "The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region," 733-34.
38
Michael Dillon, Xinjiang: Ethnicity, Separatism, and Control in Chinese Central Asia
(Durham East Asian Papers #1, University of Durham, Department of East Asian Studies,
1996), 18; and Dreyer, "The PLA and Regionalism in Xinjiang," 47.
39
McMillen, "Xinjiang and Wang Enmao," 575.
50
June 2007
Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
Yaobang's (胡耀邦) May 1980 tour of Tibet (Xizang, 西藏) and the sixpoint program he outlined to redress the situation there, raised expectations
among the ethnic minorities that a similar program would soon be extended
to Xinjiang.40 Hu's program proposed the institution of genuine autonomy
for Tibet, economic policies consistent with local conditions, investment
in agriculture and animal husbandry, the revival of culture and education,
and the phased transfer of Han officials out of the Tibetan Autonomous
Region.41 Within Xinjiang the two key points that resonated with the ethnic
minorities and the Han immigrants were those referring to the question of
substantive autonomy and the transfer of Han officials. Hu's proposition to
withdraw Han from Tibet combined with Deng's cessation and criticism of
the xiafang or "sending down" of Han youth, provoked demonstrations by
both ethnic minorities and Han immigrants in Xinjiang over the subsequent
months.
Significantly, the centers of ethnic minority unrest were south of the
Tian Shan in Aksu, Yarkand (莎車), and Kashgar, where ethnic minority
demonstrators not only demanded greater autonomy for Xinjiang and the
removal of Han immigrants but also, as Millward has noted, expressed
clearly anti-Chinese and pro-separatist sentiments:
The participants in these incidents, in Aksu, Yarkand, and Kashgar, attacked
Han persons and property and shouted slogans that left little doubt about their
sentiments: ... "Beat the Khitays to death," "Drive out the Khitays," and "Down
with the scum of the nationalities." And in Yarkand (where a suspicious fire
burned down a mosque brought on the riot): "To burn a mosque is to burn
Islam," "Long live the Islamic Republic," "Defend to the death the independent
banner of Islam," and "Down with the infidels."42
These disturbances prompted Beijing to dispatch Politburo member, Wang
Zhen (王震)43 to Xinjiang in October to assess the situation and exhort the
40
Lilian Craig Harris, "Xinjiang, Central Asia, and the Implications for China's Policy in the
Islamic World," The China Quarterly, no. 133 (March 1993): 117; and Dillon, Xinjiang:
Ethnicity, Separatism, and Control in Chinese Central Asia, 4.
41
Ibid.; and Mackerras, China's Ethnic Minorities, 28.
42
James A. Millward, "Violent Separatism in Xinjiang: A Critical Assessment," Policy
Studies #6 (Washington, D.C.: East-West Center, 2004), 9.
43
Wang Zhen had been the top CCP and PLA figure in Xinjiang from 1949 to 1955.
June 2007
51
ISSUES & STUDIES
Xinjiang authorities to maintain "nationalities unity."44 Barely a month
after Wang Zhen's visit significant numbers of Han youth petitioned the
local authorities for permission to return to intra-mural China, generally to
Shanghai, but to little effect. Demonstrations subsequently broke out in
Aksu, Kashgar, and Korla, and the local authorities relented and transferred
the protestors' residence permits. The Shanghai authorities, however, with
Beijing's backing refused to recognize this unilateral measure, further
exacerbating the tensions between the Xinjiang authorities and Han immigrants.45 The issue of the transfer of xiafang Han out of Xinjiang was
further complicated by the latent support of local CCP cadres and PLA
units for their cause, as both realized that the xiafang's continued presence
would make it exceedingly difficult to stabilize the situation.46 Beijing obviously viewed such tendencies with alarm and dispatched PLA units from
Lanzhou (蘭州) to disperse demonstrations and prevent the unauthorized
return of Han to China proper.47 This situation once more prompted a visit
from Wang Zhen in November-December, who ordered that "strict measures" were to be implemented to deal with the unrest. Moreover, the regional authorities reiterated warnings about "Soviet revisionism's" designs
on Xinjiang and maintained that the Han should remain to defend and
develop the region.48 In light of the recent events in China's foreign relations detailed above, Wang Zhen's warning could be taken as more than
mere rhetoric and illustrative of the Chinese perception that such regions
south of the Tian Shan were susceptible to emergent Islamic revival initiated by Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
The response of Xinjiang's authorities to these manifestations of
unrest was to address the socioeconomic conditions of the region and
permit the revival of ethnic minority cultural and religious practices. In
44
McMillen, "Xinjiang and Wang Enmao," 575.
See Dreyer, "The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region," 737-38; and Dreyer, "The PLA
and Regionalism in Xinjiang," 47.
46
Dreyer, "The PLA and Regionalism in Xinjiang," 47.
47
Ibid.
48
McMillen, "Xinjiang and Wang Enmao," 576.
45
52
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Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
effect the Chinese perceived that the ability of external forces or dynamics
to infiltrate and encourage ethnic minority unrest was a function of internal
political and socioeconomic conditions. A number of symbolic compromises with ethnic minority sentiment were implemented in the latter
half of 1980. First, the authorities reinstated the Xinjiang Islamic Association in June. The association was charged with the organization and
conduct of Islamic education, enhancing "unity" between Muslim and nonMuslim, and establishing contacts with Muslims abroad.49 Simultaneously,
the association was warned to be patriotic and not to use religion to foment
the undermining of "nationalities unity." Second, the use of the Arabic
script for the Uighur and Kazakh languages was also reinstated in place
of the Latinized script introduced in 1958. These two measures could be
seen as finalizing the Party's turn away from the policies of the Cultural
Revolution in Xinjiang and a means of reassurance to the ethnic minorities
as to the longevity of the Party's new reformist agenda. Third, the Xinjiang
CCP endeavored to expedite the rehabilitation of ethnic minority cadres
purged during the Cultural Revolution and accelerate the training of new
ethnic cadres. Fourth, the Party determined to alleviate the economic
malaise of southern Xinjiang via the allocation of a US$4.3 million state
aid package. Moreover, agricultural and pastoral taxes were also reduced
and the availability of commodities targeted at minorities was increased.
As a corollary of this effort to alleviate the economic situation in the south,
major infrastructure projects were undertaken to facilitate the linkage of
the south with the rest of Xinjiang. These included the upgrading of the
main highway linking Urumqi and the Tarim Basin (塔里木盆地), and the
resumption of the construction of the southern spur of the LanzhouXinjiang railway from Turfan (吐魯番) to Korla.50 Of course, these infrastructure developments not only facilitated the transport of produce and
commodities, and hence the economic development of the south, but also
49
Ibid., 577; and Gaye Christofferson, "Xinjiang and the Great Islamic Circle: The Impact of
Transnational Forces on Chinese Regional Economic Planning," The China Quarterly, no.
133 (March 1993): 136.
50
McMillen, "Xinjiang and Wang Enmao," 576-78.
June 2007
53
ISSUES & STUDIES
had the higher goal of integration through facilitating the movement of
Han in-migrants and PLA troops throughout the region.
The overall strategy encapsulated in these developments was the
coupling of a limited and controlled revival of ethnic minority religious
and cultural practices with renewed emphasis on instruments of integration. In a sense it was a return to the major themes of the period 1949-55.
That the CCP in Xinjiang had to "retreat" to such a position is indicative
of the similarity between the challenges confronting Chinese rule in the
early 1980s and those immediately following "liberation" in 1949. After
the dislocations of the Cultural Revolution in Xinjiang, Chinese authority
and legitimacy had to be re-established to some extent. This imperative
was clearly evident, for example, in the authorities' attempts to rehabilitate
ethnic minority victims of the Cultural Revolution and revive the toleration
of ethnic minority religious and cultural practices. Moreover, the emphasis
placed on the de-collectivization of agriculture and the regeneration of
private ownership and local markets echoed the general contours of the
Party's economic policies during the consolidation of Chinese power in the
early 1950s.51 The key divergence from the strategy of the post-liberation
and early post-Mao period was the decreased importance of ideology in
terms of both determining and justifying Party policy. The development
of this tendency throughout the remainder of the decade, as in the rest of
China, increasingly determined that the Party's legitimacy rested primarily
on its ability to ensure and promote economic development. Within the
context of Xinjiang, however, the inherent tensions created by the two
key imperatives of Chinese policy— economic reform/growth and political
control— combined with China's foreign policy in Central Asia to facilitate
challenges to Chinese rule which these same policies were implemented
to prevent.
McMillen, Chinese Communist Power and Policy, 25-30.
51
54
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Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
Xinjiang 1981-85: The Return of Wang Enmao
and the Management of Emergent Problems
The progress of the reformist program in Xinjiang had, as noted
above, provoked some significant opposition from Han immigrants, the
XPCC/PLA, and the ethnic minorities over the period 1979-80. The uneasy situation created by the episodes of unrest throughout 1980, despite
the efforts of the regional government, contributed to the poor performance
of the region's economy.52 Moreover, 1981 also saw the continued manifestation of problems within the Xinjiang CCP, including residual factionalism and Han-ethnic minority conflict. The ongoing inability of Wang
Feng to deal with the situation in Xinjiang prompted a visit by no less an
individual than Deng Xiaoping in August 1981.53 Deng's visit obviously
prompted a reorganization of the Xinjiang CCP, with Wang Feng being removed as head of the XUAR the following month.54 The man who replaced
him as first secretary of the Xinjiang Uighur Regional Party Committee
and first political commissar of the Urumqi Military Region suggested that
the central leadership in Beijing wanted to press on with the reform agenda
in Xinjiang while simultaneously maintaining tight Party control. Thus
October 1981 saw the return of no less a figure in Xinjiang's post-1949
history than Wang Enmao (王恩茂).55 During his previous tenure in Xinjiang between 1955 and 1969, Wang Enmao had often selectively implemented central policy directives when he perceived them to be potentially
counter-productive to the major goals of control and integration. That is
to say, he was aware of and receptive to the complex internal conditions of
the region, and in effect attempted to reconcile the imperatives flowing
from the ethnic minorities, Han immigrants, and the PLA with those of
52
Dreyer, "The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region," 738.
Ibid. 739; and McMillen, "Xinjiang and Wang Enmao," 581.
54
McMillen, "Xinjiang and Wang Enmao," 581-82.
55
Dillon, Xinjiang: Ethnicity, Separatism, and Control in Chinese Central Asia, 27. Wang
Enmao had been the highest-ranking Party and military official in Xinjiang from 1955 to
1969.
53
June 2007
55
ISSUES & STUDIES
Beijing— a skill that would be called upon during the remainder of the
1980s.
It was this previous and relatively successful handling of this balancing act from 1955 to 1969 that the central authorities perceived to be
necessary in the Xinjiang of the 1980s. The need for such a handling of
Xinjiang was underlined by the outbreak of further inter-ethnic tension and
unrest in Kashgar in October 1981.56 Not surprisingly, the major tasks
identified as requiring Wang's immediate attention reflected the major dilemmas confronted by his predecessor— Han-ethnic minority relations,
economic stagnation, factionalism within the CCP, and the continued
Soviet threat. Thus Wang's focus at the beginning of his second period
as top Party and PLA man in Xinjiang was fourfold: the strengthening of
"unity," economic stabilization and construction, rectification of the
Xinjiang CCP's organization and "work style," and the consolidation of
border defense.57 In April 1982 Wang oversaw the reorganization and consolidation of CCP control at all levels throughout Xinjiang. The focus of
this effort was to entrench the Dengist line in the regional Party and root
out any remaining "ultra-leftist" tendencies. As a corollary of this process,
1982 also saw the return to positions of authority of senior cadres purged
during the Cultural Revolution.58 In rhetoric reminiscent of the 1950s,
Wang asserted that the key to strengthening "unity" (i.e., Han-ethnic minority relations) was respect for the ethnic minorities and the rigorous application of the Party's "nationalities policy."59 This was of course in line with
the entrenchment of the gradualist approach since the return of Deng
Xiaoping. In 1980-81 the CCP had, in the context of "nationalities policy,"
returned to the major themes outlined by Mao in 1956-57 that maintained
that Han chauvinism was more dangerous than local nationalism. Overall
it returned to the theme of affirming the "correctness" of the notion of
56
Ibid., 18; Dreyer, "The PLA and Regionalism in Xinjiang," 47; and Millward, "Violent
Separatism in Xinjiang," 9.
57
McMillen, "Xinjiang and Wang Enmao," 582.
58
Ibid., 587.
59
Ibid.
56
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Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
differential tempos to achieve socialism for China's ethnic minorities.60
Indeed, this harked back to the ideological prescriptions of "nationalities
policy" in the region in the 1950s, when it was deemed that the ethnic, cultural, and religious peculiarities of the non-Han population required a more
gradual implementation of ideological imperatives, such as collectivization
for example, than elsewhere in China.61 A major component of this approach was the toleration and encouragement of ethnic minority cultural
and religious practices which, as we saw earlier, Wang Feng had implemented in Xinjiang. Although under Wang Enmao's leadership these
measures were affirmed, it was emphasized that there was a clear delineation in the Party's view between "legal" and "illegal" religious activities.62
Thus the Party effectively warned Xinjiang's ethnic minorities that the
"revival" of cultural and religious practices, and the content thereof, would
occur within Party-defined parameters. Yet it should be noted that this
delineation between "legal" and "illegal" religious activities was not especially clear. Waite, however, suggests a possible source for the authority's concern regarding the delineation of religious practice by noting that
religious conduct in Kashgar from the late 1950s to the late 1970s, for
example, underwent a process of "domestication." "Domestication" in this
sense meant that households became the site of religious conduct and individuals undertook the tasks that were previously the responsibility of
specialists with the effect that "the household became the primary locus of
religious activity carried out in secret."63 If this example of Kashgar is in
any way representative of the region as a whole, it could be suggested that
the documented revival of public religious practice and expression in the
early 1980s— evidenced through the rebuilding of mosques destroyed or
Connor, The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy, 427.
Ibid., 427-30; McMillen, Chinese Communist Power, 131-32; and June Teufel Dreyer,
China's Forty Millions: Minority Nationalities and National Integration in the People's
Republic of China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), 128.
62
McMillen, "Xinjiang and Wang Enmao," 582-83.
63
Edmund Waite, "The Impact of the State on Islam amongst Uyghurs: Religious Knowledge
and Authority in the Kashgar Oasis," Central Asian Survey 25, no. 3 (September 2006):
254.
60
61
June 2007
57
ISSUES & STUDIES
vandalized during the Cultural Revolution, for example— was paralleled
by the continuation of private, household-based religious observance and
practice beyond the view of the authorities.64 This distinction between
"legal" and "illegal" religious activities would come to be increasingly
proffered in official pronouncements regarding developments in Xinjiang
well into the present period.
Therefore the major problems confronted by Wang Feng on his appointment to Xinjiang— Han-ethnic minority tensions, factionalism within
the Xinjiang CCP, economic stagnation, and a renewed Soviet threat—
largely remained undiminished upon Wang Enmao's return to Xinjiang.
Wang Enmao's leadership, however, did not witness any major alteration
in the general contours of Chinese policy. As noted above, Wang Enmao
pursued the continued "rectification" of the regional Party organization,
extended the liberalization of agricultural policy, and maintained the
moderation of the Party's approach to religious and cultural practices. The
one major departure from his predecessor's policies during Wang Enmao's
tenure (October 1981-85), and one that had important consequences for
the future of the region, was the reconstitution of the Xinjiang PCC on
June 1, 1982. The decision to reconstitute the PCC, which had been disbanded due to the factional conflict of the Cultural Revolution in 1975, was
determined by a number of considerations that primarily concerned the
efficaciousness of integration. The decision to reconstitute the Xinjiang
PCC derived from Deng Xiaoping's August 1981 tour of the region and
was finalized by the CCP Central Committee and Central Military Commission.65 Wang Enmao's elucidation of the PCC's tasks upon its reconstitution suggests that Deng and other senior leaders perceived that the
state's integrationist project in Xinjiang was in the balance. According to
Wang the PCC's tasks circa 1982 were fourfold: to implement the Party's
64
For the revival of religious observance from the early 1980s see, for example: ibid., 256-59;
James A. Millward, Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2007), 277-79; Justin Jon Rudelson, Oasis Identities: Uyghur Nationalism along China's Silk Road (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 45-55; and
Roberts, "A 'Land of Boderlands'," 226-27.
65
McMillen, "Xinjiang and Wang Enmao," 585.
58
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Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
nationality policy and strengthen unity, manage socialist economic enterprises, defend the frontiers, and reinforce Party leadership.66
These functions were essentially identical to those assumed by the
PCC upon its institution in Xinjiang following liberation in 1949.67 Importantly, another central function of the PCC that the authorities neglected
to note was as a conduit and instrument for the absorption of Han in-migration. That Wang failed to note this particular function did not imply that
it was no longer considered central to the organization. In fact, from its
reconstitution the authorities determined that this function was once more
of major importance. Yet Wang's sanguine assertion that a revival of the
PCC and its attendant functions would contribute to "unity" among the
region's ethnic groups ignored the recent incidents of unrest. As noted
above, a key element in generating unrest in the region in 1980-81 was the
long-standing tensions surrounding the issue of Han settlement of the region, with ethnic minorities clearly expressing their wish to "drive out the
Khitay!" while dissatisfaction among Han in-migrants rusticated during
the Cultural Revolution was also evident. Evidently the authorities were
being somewhat disingenuous. The necessity to reestablish the PCC's
Han-absorbing function was due to a number of considerations. The
authorities had attempted to prevent the return of such rusticates to intramural China where surplus labor and overcrowding were already established problems. Despite this, significant numbers of Han rusticates
managed to return to their home regions, such as Shanghai.68 Upon the
re-emergence of the PCC the Xinjiang authorities actually sought not
only to attract new Han settlers but to persuade those who had already left
to return.69 Moreover, Beijing saw the corps, with its administrative or-
Ibid., 586; and Dillon, Xinjiang: Ethnicity, Separatism, and Control in Chinese Central
Asia, 27.
67
See note 11 above.
68
Alan P. L. Liu, "Economic Reform, Mobility Strategies, and National Integration in China,"
Asian Survey 31, no. 4 (April 1991): 406-7; and McMillen, "Xinjiang and Wang Enmao,"
586.
69
Dreyer, "The PLA and Regionalism in Xinjiang," 48; and McMillen, "Xinjiang and Wang
Enmao," 586.
66
June 2007
59
ISSUES & STUDIES
ganization and quasi-military discipline, as the ideal institution to absorb
new Han inmigrants and the substantial numbers of Han rusticates who
remained in Xinjiang. The PCC's economic functions were also expanded
so that by 1983 the regional government claimed that the corps had reclaimed 937,500 hectares of land, constructed 691 factories, and managed
170 state farms.70 Moreover, a year later the PCC accounted for a quarter
of the value of the region's total production.71
The remaining three-year period of Wang Enmao's second tenure
as first secretary of the Xinjiang CCP and first political commissar of the
Xinjiang Military Region witnessed the recovery of the regional economy
and the stabilization of Chinese control. The government's reform of agricultural and pastoral policies had a positive effect with a substantial increase in grain production and livestock by 1985. Progress in the industrial
sector was not as successful, with many state enterprises characterized as
inefficient, unprofitable, and plagued by industrial accidents.72 A major
contributing factor in Xinjiang's modest economic performance between
1981 and 1985 was the place of the region in Beijing's state-wide economic
strategy. The Sixth Five-Year Plan (1981-85), generally associated with
Zhao Ziyang (趙 紫陽), channeled government investment into China's
eastern coastal provinces that were proximate to the successful economies
of East Asia.73 This strategy began the process, which was accelerated
by the Seventh Five-Year Plan (1986-90), whereby the Chinese economy
became spatially differentiated between the eastern, central, and western
regions with a respective differentiation of economic "specialization."74
Thus Xinjiang received minimal government investment and the region's
70
McMillen, "Xinjiang and Wang Enmao," 586.
Rudelson, Oasis Identities, 37.
72
Dreyer, "The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region," 741-42.
73
Christofferson, "Xinjiang and the Great Islamic Circle," 132-33; and Yueyao Zhao, "Pivot
or Periphery? Xinjiang's Regional Development," Asian Ethnicity 2, no. 2 (September
2001): 200.
74
Ibid., 200-201; and Philip H. Loughlin and Clifton W. Pannell, "Growing Economic Links
and Regional Development in the Central Asian Republics and Xinjiang, China," PostSoviet Geography and Economics 42, no. 7 (2001): 476-77.
71
60
June 2007
Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
role in this coastal development strategy was to be as a source of primary
resources. This strategy was bluntly pointed out to the region's authorities
by CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang and Premier Zhao Ziyang upon
their respective tours of Xinjiang in May and August 1983.75 A major consequence of this coastal-oriented economic development strategy was a
growing economic disparity between the eastern and western regions of
the country. As highlighted by a number of scholars, this produced a "disintegrative effect" on the national economy that prompted the regions
that were left "out of the loop," such as Xinjiang, to consider and develop
their own economic strategies.76
Contemporaneous with the visits of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang
noted above, cross-border trade was resumed with the Soviet Union and
facilitated between southern Xinjiang and Pakistan and Afghanistan via the
opening of the Karakhorum Highway (喀喇崑崙公路).77 The following
year Wang Enmao appealed for foreign investment in Xinjiang, noting
China's historical relations with the Muslim lands to the west, and China's
first Muslim stock company was also founded in Urumqi.78 According to
Christofferson, this can be seen as the beginning of the development in
Xinjiang of what Chinese economists referred to as "great international
circles" that were initially planned within the context of the coastal development strategy.79 An "economic circle" was defined as "a regional
bloc linking a border region with contiguous states for the purpose of
trade and economic development," and Beijing's coastal strategy prompted
the "defensive" development of a regional economic circle involving
Xinjiang.80 That the "great Islamic circle," as this was dubbed, was de75
McMillen, "Xinjiang and Wang Enmao," 592.
For Xinjiang see Christofferson, "Xinjiang and the Great Islamic Circle," 132-33; Zhao,
"Pivot or Periphery?" 200-201; and Loughlin and Pannell, "Growing Economic Links and
Regional Development," 476-77.
77
Dreyer, "The PLA and Regionalism in Xinjiang," 48; and Christofferson, "Xinjiang and the
Great Islamic Circle," 142.
78
Dreyer, "The PLA and Regionalism in Xinjiang," 48. The Muslim stock company planned
to accept funds from both domestic and foreign Muslim sources.
79
Christofferson, "Xinjiang and the Great Islamic Circle," 133.
80
Ibid.
76
June 2007
61
ISSUES & STUDIES
veloping is alluded to by the fact that two-way trade between Xinjiang and
the Soviet Union by 1985 was worth in the vicinity of US$1.8 billion.81
The coastal-oriented strategy of economic development central to the
sixth and seventh five-year plans thus played a major role in generating
Xinjiang's, albeit fledgling, turn toward Central Asia. Moreover, this development was also critical in the emergence of the "double-opening"
economic strategy that evolved over the remaining years of the decade that
sought to simultaneously integrate Xinjiang with the domestic and Central
Asian economies.82 Importantly, this opening toward the "great Islamic
circle" also opened the region, and especially the major southern oases of
Kashgar and Khotan, to the cultural and religious influence of Pakistan
which would assume major importance in the coming decade. In particular,
Roberts asserts that "given the fairly limited nature of the shuttle trade
with Pakistan," the most significant Pakistani influence on Xinjiang was
through them "the education of Xinjiang's mullahs and imams" in Pakistani
madrasahs.83
"Stepping from Stone to Stone in a Stream":
The Dynamics of Reform and the Ethnic Minority Response to
Dengist Integration, 1985-91
Upon Wang Enmao's replacement as first secretary of the Xinjiang
CCP and first political commissar of the Xinjiang Military Region by Song
Hanliang (宋漢良) in October 1985, the region's economic, inter-ethnic
relations, and security situation had effectively been stabilized. Yet this
stabilization, underpinned by the implementation of Deng Xiaoping's
"reform" agenda, held potentially contradictory dynamics for the state's
ultimate goal of integrating the region. The Chinese cooperation and ac-
81
Dreyer, "The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region," 740.
Christofferson, "Xinjiang and the Great Islamic Circle," 136-37.
83
Roberts, "A 'Land of Borderlands'," 226-27.
82
62
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Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
tive involvement in the U.S.-sponsored covert war against the Soviets in
Afghanistan held the potential to realize the government's long-held fear
of the development of cross-border linkages between Xinjiang's ethnic
minorities and ethnically akin peoples in Central Asia. In concert with
this foreign policy entanglement, Deng Xiaoping's economic reform
agenda had also prompted the development of a dynamic seemingly at odds
with the goal of integration. The implementation of the coastal-oriented
economic development strategy, that required Xinjiang's economy (and
other western and central provinces) be subordinated to the exigencies of
the eastern provinces, had led to the initiation of an outward oriented economic strategy. Moreover, the development of cross-border trade and
economic links also entailed contradictory implications for the state. Although these links would contribute to the economic development of the
region, they would also bring Xinjiang's ethnic minorities into closer contacts with the largely Muslim societies of Soviet Central Asia. With respect to the "nationality question," the Party had returned to the toleration
and encouragement of the ethnic minorities' religious and cultural practices. Simultaneously, however, the ethnic minorities were warned that
the Party would clearly delineate between "legal" and "illegal" religious
activities. Although these contradictions were perhaps not fully developed
by 1985, they nonetheless contained latent threats to not only the region's
security (as perceived from Beijing) but also to the progress of Xinjiang's
political and economic integration. Yet it must be stated that the state's
instruments of integration in Xinjiang— primarily the PCC and Han inmigration— had been strengthened and reinforced in the same period. It
would appear that the Party had embarked upon a mixed strategy characterized by the granting of certain socioeconomic privileges to Xinjiang's
population underpinned by an unrelenting determination to integrate. The
inherent contradiction between the state's goal of integration and the manifestations of socioeconomic externality resulting from the state's new economic development strategy would play an instrumental role in the development of ethnic minority opposition over the coming period 1985-91.
The new regional administration continued to implement the reformoriented socioeconomic policies that had enabled Wang Enmao to stabilize
June 2007
63
ISSUES & STUDIES
the region between 1981 and 1985. As outlined above, however, the
greater freedoms in the economic and cultural spheres held latent threats
to the state's goal of integration for the region. In essence, these potential
threats to the integrationist project stemmed from the reforms' impact on
the orientation of both specific localities and the region as a whole. As
Rudelson, for example, has rightly pointed out, the establishment of Chinese rule, particularly in the communist era, had focused on isolating
Xinjiang from external influences and orienting the region "inward" toward
China proper.84 Moreover, he argues, "Xinjiang's geographic template
produced axes of outside cultural influence that penetrated the region" and
determined that the major oases of Xinjiang were not oriented "inward" toward each other but "outward" toward the proximate external civilizations,
be they Indian, Central Asian, or Chinese.85 Indeed, the post-1949 history
of Xinjiang has arguably been defined by the Chinese state's struggle to
overcome these external orientations.86 Yet, as we shall see, the policies
pursued either under the initiative of Beijing or the regional authorities
during the period 1981-85 clearly had the consequence of re-orienting the
region "outward" to the neighboring regions of Soviet Central Asia and
South Asia. Although the intent of these policies was undoubtedly to
confine such external orientations to economic and trade relations, the
"spin-off" of increased contact carried the possibility of an increase in the
political and cultural orientation of Xinjiang toward external influences.
Such an outcome had many precedents in Xinjiang's history— from the
political and religious influence of the Khanate of Khoqand during the
Qing (清朝) to the Soviet domination of the Ili region in the 1940s.87 As
Rudelson, Oasis Identities, 39-41.
Ibid., 41.
86
See note 1 above.
87
For the Qing period see James A. Millward, Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and
Empire in Chinese Central Asia, 1759-1864 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
1998); and Joseph F. Fletcher, "Ch'ing Inner Asia ca. 1800," in The Cambridge History of
China, vol. 10: Late Ch'ing, 1800-1911, Pt. 1, ed. Denis C. Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). For the 1940s see Andrew D.W.
Forbes, Warlords and Muslims: A Political History of Republican Sinkiang, 1912-1949
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); and David D. Wang, Under the Soviet Shadow:
84
85
64
June 2007
Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
the remainder of the decade and the 1990s would demonstrate, these
precedents would be reaffirmed in Xinjiang to generate dynamics that
would compromise the state's ascendant imperatives of economic development and security in the region.
The retirement of Wang Enmao in 1985 was also coupled with further
significant personnel changes in the regional administration and a restructuring of the Xinjiang Military Region. As previously noted, Song
Hanliang assumed Wang's posts and the Uighur governor, Ismail Amat
(司馬義．艾買提), was transferred to Beijing to head the Nationalities
Affairs Commission and replaced by Tomur Dawamat (鐵木爾．達瓦買
提).88 The Xinjiang Military Region was also downgraded to a "military
district" within the Lanzhou Military Region in a move in equal parts influenced by the stabilization of security within Xinjiang (and along the
Sino-Soviet frontier) and Deng Xiaoping's ongoing efforts to reform the
PLA.89 In Xinjiang the new military commander Liu Huaqing's (劉華清)
task was to oversee the continued reform of the PLA in Xinjiang and to instill a sense of frugality in the PLA's activities.90 PLA morale subsequently
became an ongoing problem throughout the country, no more so than in
Xinjiang where the exigencies of the belt-tightening were compounded by
the perceived hardships of serving on the "frontier." To counter such sentiments the authorities began to urge PLA troops not to view service as a
hardship but as a virtuous and "glorious duty."91 Song Hanliang, however,
continued the policy direction of the early 1980s with border trade expanded and the religious and cultural practices of the ethnic minorities
respected and encouraged. The Karakoram Highway that opened in 1982
The Yining Incident. Ethnic Conflicts and International Rivalry in Xinjiang, 1944-1949
(Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1999).
88
Dreyer, "The PLA and Regionalism in Xinjiang," 48. Tomur Dawamat was also a Uighur.
89
Ibid.; and Richard Baum, "The Road to Tiananmen: Chinese Politics in the 1980s," in
MacFarquhar, The Politics of China, 376-77.
90
Dreyer, "The PLA and Regionalism in Xinjiang," 48-49.
91
Ibid.; and for the effects of Deng's reforms on PLA morale see June Teufel Dreyer, "Reorganizing and Modernizing the Chinese Military," in Kau and Marsh, China in the Era
of Deng Xiaoping, 347-49.
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ISSUES & STUDIES
had, for example, by 1985 developed as an important conduit for trade between southern Xinjiang and Pakistan. With respect to the handling of
religious and cultural practices, two examples indicate that the Party's
more moderate position had continued, with the regional authorities attempting to encourage foreign investment and cross-border trade links
through the activities of the Xinjiang Islamic Association. Moreover, the
authorities began to permit Xinjiang residents to travel more freely to
Soviet Central Asia (mostly for trade purposes) and in order to perform
the hajj to Mecca.92
Toward the close of 1985, China experienced a wave of reformrelated stresses that were manifested in two major trends. First, since the
removal of the conservative Deng Liqun (鄧力群) as Party propaganda
chief in July 1985, there had been a resurgence in intellectual philosophical
debate concerning such issues as "socialist alienation" and the relevance
of Marxist economic theory. A corollary of this was the proliferation of
new academic and professional societies, a revival in literary and artistic
works, and the development of "liberal" newspapers.93 The second trend
to develop during 1985 was an increase in social mobilization among a variety of generally urban social groups. The most prominent of these were
Chinese students, who began what developed into a series of protests in
Beijing between September and December 1986. The protests of September to November largely aired student grievances regarding what they
perceived as the negative aspects of reform, such as rising living costs,
profiteering, and corruption.94 In December, however, a group of Uighur
students at the Central Nationalities University in Beijing protested against
the use of Xinjiang as the base and testing ground for China's nuclear
program.95 Students demonstrating in Urumqi, meanwhile, demanded
the replacement of Han officials with elected ethnic minority candidates,
Rudelson, Oasis Identities, 41; and Felix K. Chang, "China's Central Asian Power and
Problems," Orbis 41, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 408.
93
Baum, "The Road to Tiananmen," 381-83.
94
Ibid., 383.
95
Ibid., 384; Dreyer, "The PLA and Regionalism in Xinjiang," 49; and Dillon, Xinjiang: Ethnicity, Separatism, and Control in Chinese Central Asia, 19.
92
66
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Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
greater autonomy for Xinjiang, an end to coercive family planning, an end
to the sending of criminals to Xinjiang's "reform-through-labor" camps,
and the replacement of Governor Tomur Dawamat by Ismail Amat.96 The
Xinjiang authorities did not make any concessions to these demands, but
simply reiterated that the international situation required the continued
nuclear tests at Lop Nor. Moreover, the Party had appropriately relaxed
family planning for ethnic minorities and pointed out that it had trained
numerous minority cadres.97
The unrest of late 1986 did, however, play a key role in strengthening
the conservative elements of the central leadership in Beijing against the
reformist general secretary of the CCP, Hu Yaobang, who in January 1987
was relieved of all his posts and had his alleged "misdeeds" publicized.98
In essence these criticisms of the general secretary charged him with an
ideological laxity that had fostered "bourgeois liberalization," thus precipitating the student "turmoil" of September-December 1986.99 The reaction of the central leadership thus served to re-illustrate the delicate balance
between the contradictory elements of Deng's reform strategy that predicated continued economic reform and development on the continued
political preeminence of the CCP. Early the following year the Xinjiang
authorities, however, made an ostensibly trivial but highly symbolic compromise regarding regional sentiments. Since the founding of the PRC in
1949, the CCP had determined that the country should constitute one Beijing-indexed time zone. The authorities decreed that from February 1986,
however, Xinjiang would observe Urumqi time— two hours behind Beijing.100 Although the importance of such a compromise should not be
underestimated, Smith also notes that it was primarily Uighurs that observed "Xinjiang time," while official workplaces continued to observe
"Beijing time." The compromise was thus a limited one, although it
96
Dreyer, "The PLA and Regionalism in Xinjiang," 49.
Ibid.
98
Baum, "The Road to Tiananmen," 399-401.
99
Ibid.
100
Ibid.
97
June 2007
67
ISSUES & STUDIES
nonetheless served to underpin for Uighurs a symbolic boundary between
Xinjiang, as a region, and the rest of China.101
Thus although the incidence of social unrest/protest in Xinjiang took
place within a period of state-wide social ferment, the protests in Xinjiang
were provoked by purely regional grievances and had regional implications. The demands of protestors focused upon some major elements of
the state's integrationist program in Xinjiang. The demand to replace
Han officials with ethnic minority cadres, for example, echoed the expectations of the ethnic minorities in the early 1980s that the government
would transfer significant numbers of Han out of the region. Moreover, the
questioning of Tomur Dawamat's governorship reflected a challenge to
the co-opted ethnic minority elites that the Party relied upon to help legitimatize its rule in the region. The government's response to these challenges
was to basically ignore those demands focused on the state's preeminent
strategic and security prerogatives (for example, the Lop Nor nuclear site),
and the political domination of the regional administration by Han. Yet
with respect to those demands that were deemed not to directly threaten
these security and political imperatives, certain degrees of compromise
were considered to be permissible— such as manifestations of cultural
identity or representation. For example, the authorities permitted the
development and expansion of Uighur-language journals and newspapers
so that by 1986 there were twelve published in Urumqi alone.102
Economically, 1985-86 saw the re-assertion of state control over the
economic activities of the region's agricultural population. The implementation of the "household responsibility" system in Xinjiang, as elsewhere in China, produced major increases in agricultural production, but
by 1985-86 it had also regenerated some problems that socialism had partially alleviated.103 Between 1978 and 1984, for example, the value of
farm output grew at three times the rate achieved over the period 1957-
101
Joanne N. Smith, "'Making Culture Matter': Symbolic, Spatial, and Social Boundaries between Uyghurs and Han Chinese," Asian Ethnicity 3, no. 2 (September 2002): 161.
102
Ibid., 160.
103
Madsen, "The Countryside under Communism," 670.
68
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Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
78.104 The success of the reform of agricultural policy could also be seen
in Xinjiang where the average per capita peasant income by 1984 was
363 yuan as compared to the 1978 figure of 198 yuan.105 Yet along with
this spectacular response to the reform policies came emergent problems.
Throughout China a growing economic disparity between peasants, with
references to "new rich peasants" with incomes of 10,000 yuan a year, held
the possibility of a return to the pre-1949 stratification of China's agricultural population. The "new rich peasants," however, unlike the pre-1949
landlords, did not generate income through land rents but from side-line
commercial activities.106 The situation in Xinjiang was congruent with
this general trend, with peasants not generating additional income through
agricultural activities but through handicrafts and other "household specialization" encouraged by the government.107 In fact, Beller-Hann argues
that peasants in southern Xinjiang did not view agriculture as an incomegenerating activity.108 Moreover, by 1985-86 agricultural production had
begun to plateau, suggesting that the state-wide gains in agricultural
productivity over the period 1978-84 were "one-off" gains and not harbingers of a transition to a higher trend of growth.109 The combination of a
plateau in agricultural growth and the emergent issue of greater economic
disparities among the peasantry played a role in what Kelliher terms the
state's agrarian "backlash" of 1985.110 Although the state had theoretically
"freed" peasant households from collective and state control111 with the
104
Lardy, "Recasting of the Economic System," 106.
Peter Nolan, The Political Economy of Collective Farms: An Analysis of China's PostMao Rural Reforms (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1988), 164-65.
106
Ibid.
107
Beller-Hann, "The Peasant Condition in Xinjiang," 90-91.
108
Ibid.
109
Lardy, "Recasting of the Economic System," 107; and Dwight H. Perkins, "China's Economic Policy and Performance," in MacFarquhar and Fairbank, Revolutions within the
Chinese Revolution, 529.
110
Daniel Kelliher, Peasant Power in China: The Era of Rural Reform, 1979-1989 (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), 132-33.
111
See Mark Selden, The Political Economy of Chinese Development (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E.
Sharpe, 1993), 26-38; and Oi, State and Peasant in Contemporary China, 155-57.
105
June 2007
69
ISSUES & STUDIES
reforms initiated under Deng Xiaoping's leadership, the "responsibility
system" by the mid-1980s entailed a number of significant obligations
owed to the state by the peasants. Nolan, for example, notes that the Party
at the local level was far from separated from the management of the economy by the mid-1980s.112 The Party still possessed a number of important
economic channels through which it could exercise power at the village
level— the allocation of grain purchase quotas, administration of family
planning policies, allocation of business licenses, and provision of technological inputs such as fertilizers and petroleum.113 In the context of
Xinjiang, Beller-Hann identified a number of peasant obligations to the
state that reflected the general reassertion of Party influence and control
over the peasantry such as the obligation to grow an industrial crop (generally cotton), compulsory grain procurement by the state, and the imposition of family planning policies.114 Therefore, although the reforms had
aided economic development in Xinjiang and initially relaxed the state's
control over the economic activities of the peasantry, the years 1985-87
saw a reassertion of the state's prerogatives in the rural sector. The political
ferment of the same period, both across China and in Xinjiang, undoubtedly contributed to the state's imperative to narrow the opportunities for independent economic decision-making and political mobilization.
This period also witnessed further development in Xinjiang's industrial sector and an increase in foreign trade and investment. An important
part of this was the exploration and development of Xinjiang's hydrocarbon
resources that prior to the reform period had been under-utilized. These
efforts focused on the Tarim Basin that yielded results with the discovery
of the Yakela (雅克拉) oil field in October 1984 and an oil and gas field
100km south of Korla in September 1987.115 These discoveries took on
greater significance with the State Planning Commission's admission late
in 1986 that China would no longer be self-sufficient in oil. The focus of
Nolan, The Political Economy of Collective Farms, 85.
Ibid.
114
Beller-Hann, "The Peasant Condition in Xinjiang," 92-93.
115
Felix K. Chang, "Chinese Energy and Asian Security," Orbis 45, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 220.
112
113
70
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Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
China's energy policy was now to be on the simultaneous development of
domestic reserves and diversification of foreign sources.116 Sino-Soviet
trade was facilitated by negotiations between the Xinjiang Import-Export
Trading Company and Vostok Xinjiangintor, which resulted in annual trade
fairs alternating between Urumqi and Soviet Central Asia.117 Improved
relations with the Soviet Union were also evident with the re-opening of
Soviet consulates in Xinjiang and the establishment of Chinese consulates
in the contiguous Soviet Central Asian republics.118 Tensions along the
Sino-Soviet frontier, however, continued with an isolated incident between
Soviet and PLA troops in "a remote Xinjiang border area" in 1986.119 Yet
such incidents were not permitted to derail the further development of
closer Sino-Soviet economic relations. The Kazak foreign minister, on a
visit to Xinjiang in August 1987, proposed a further expansion of economic
cooperation between Xinjiang and Central Asia. Moreover, in October
1987 the Soviet and Xinjiang authorities began negotiations regarding the
joint development of twenty-nine agricultural and industrial projects in
Xinjiang.120 The growth in Xinjiang's foreign trade that resulted from these
developments can be seen in the fact that the total value of foreign trade,
mainly with Soviet Central Asia, had by 1987 grown to around US$250
million from a figure of US$17.1 million in 1980.121
The subsequent period 1988-91 in Xinjiang was characterized by
economic crisis and growing social and political unrest that was the product
of the convergence of the contradictory dynamics inherent in the government's economic development strategy and approach to the region's ethnic
Gaye Christofferson, "China's Intentions for Russian and Central Asian Oil and Gas," National Bureau of Asian Research (1998), 6.
117
Christofferson, "Xinjiang and the Great Islamic Circle," 143.
118
Dreyer, "The PLA and Regionalism in Xinjiang," 49.
119
Keith Martin, "China and Central Asia: Between Seduction and Suspicion," RFE/RL Research Report 3, no. 25 (June 24, 1994): 27.
120
Christofferson, "Xinjiang and the Great Islamic Circle," 143.
121
"Progress Seen in Xinjiang's Foreign Trade," Beijing guoji shangbao, April 19, 1990, 2,
translated in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report: China (hereafter
FBIS-CHI)-90-091 (May 10, 1990): 92.
116
June 2007
71
ISSUES & STUDIES
minorities. Moreover, this period also saw the increasing impact of external developments in Xinjiang, mainly emanating from Soviet Central
Asia. The sixth and seventh five-year plans, it will be recalled, essentially
relegated Xinjiang to providing primary resources for the coastal regions
and this in turn had played an instrumental role in prompting the regional
authorities to re-orient Xinjiang's economy "outward" to a certain degree.
By 1988 this trend, manifested across a number of peripheral provinces
such as Xinjiang, had resulted in the "regionalization" of the national economy. This prompted the central government to implore regional authorities
to have the "nation's interests in mind" when implementing the government's macroeconomic policies.122 Compounding this problem, and particularly detrimental given the focus on advanced industries in the coastal
provinces, was the gap between energy demand and production. China's
industrial growth between 1980 and 1988 averaged between 12 and 14
percent, while the expansion of energy supply averaged just 4 percent, thus
precipitating an energy crisis.123 The extent of this problem is illustrated
by the fact that in the latter half of 1988 numerous state enterprises had to
operate with only a two-day supply of energy.124 Moreover, the Chinese
economy had become plagued by wage-price inflation, surging consumer
demand, and official corruption and overinvestment in capital construction.125 Therefore, in September 1988 the central government initiated retrenchment policies, recentralizing economic authority to reign in demand,
stabilize growth and inflation, and re-establish the center's regulatory imperatives.126
In line with its imperative to reassert macroeconomic control, the
central government also granted other provinces, in addition to those con-
122
For example, see Lardy, "Recasting of the Economic System," 113; and Christofferson,
"Xinjiang and the Great Islamic Circle," 144.
123
Chris Bramall, Sources of Chinese Economic Growth, 1978-1996 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 29-33; and Christofferson, "Xinjiang and the Great Islamic Circle,"
144.
124
Christofferson, "Xinjiang and the Great Islamic Circle," 144-45.
125
Baum, "The Road to Tiananmen," 415-17.
126
Christofferson, "Xinjiang and the Great Islamic Circle," 144-45.
72
June 2007
Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
tiguous with the Soviet border, permission to trade with the Soviet Union,
thereby creating three levels of trade— government-to-government, border,
and regional trade. The opening of Soviet trade to all provinces can be seen
as an attempt to extend China's opening-up policy to the economy as a
whole. The importance of this measure for the central government's integrationist imperatives is clear when it is recalled that Xinjiang, for example, had begun to integrate with the Soviet Union to become part of
the "great Islamic circle" without generating similar integration with the
Chinese domestic economy.127 The central government's emphasis on
reasserting control of macroeconomic policy was further progressed in
1989 through the formulation of the Eighth Five-Year Plan (1990-94),
whereby the economic development of Xinjiang was given priority. The
central government subsequently announced that it would construct a
US$600 million petrochemical plant in Xinjiang's Dushanze (獨山子) oil
field, intimating that Xinjiang's role in the economic development strategy
had been "upgraded" from a supplier of primary resources.128 This undoubtedly had much to do with the further discoveries of oil in the Tarim
Basin some 400km south of Korla in mid-1989.129 Soon after the Chinese
National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) had some 10,000 workers dispatched to Xinjiang to develop the Tarim's potential energy reserves.130
The following year also saw an increase in state investment and aid to
Xinjiang. Notable projects included the construction of a power plant at
Manas, the development of a polyester production capability at the Urumqi
petrochemical plant, and the "Dushanze Ethyl Project" with a total investment of 2.575 billion yuan.131
Xinjiang experienced renewed social and political unrest over the
period 1988-91 that reflected the growing nationalist sentiment of the
127
Ibid., 145.
Ibid., 147.
129
Chang, "Chinese Energy and Asian Security," 220.
130
Ibid., 221; and "Tarim Basin Oil Reserves in Xinjiang Exploited," Xinhua, June 27, 1989,
in FBIS-CHI-89-124 (June 29, 1989): 58.
131
"State Aid Boosts Xinjiang Economic Development," Xinhua, March 8 1990, in FBISCHI-90-047 (March 9, 1990): 53.
128
June 2007
73
ISSUES & STUDIES
region's ethnic minorities. Uighurs and Kazaks demonstrated in Urumqi
in June 1988 against the publication of a book, The White House in the
Distance, which they argued contained racial slurs against them, and after
racist graffiti had been found in the toilets at Xinjiang University.132 The
region's largest incident of ethnic minority unrest of the 1980s took place
between May and June 1989, simultaneously with the student protests
in Beijing. The incident began when approximately 3,000 students from
Xinjiang University marched to Party headquarters in Urumqi on May
17-18 to demonstrate their support of the Beijing protestors.133 "Fundamentalists" from the Urumqi Koranic Studies Institute and "several
thousand" of their supporters apparently joined these demonstrators the
following day. This group's agenda, which differed from that of the university students, was to protest the publication of a book, Sexual Customs,
which allegedly asserted among other things that Muslims perform the
hajj to Mecca for sexual indulgence.134 The situation degenerated into a
riot as public security personnel attempted to disperse the demonstrators.
The official account asserts that: "The very small number of plotters of the
May 19 incident took advantage of the confusion to incite people who did
not know the truth to storm the Party and government organs, and beat,
smash, and loot in a big way."135 This, and the subsequent arrest of several
of the Uighur protestors, Gladney notes, not only stood in contrast to the
state's lenient response to simultaneous Hui (回族) protests in other parts
of China, such as Xi'an (西安), Xining (西寧), and Kunming (昆明), but
also reinforced the impression that the authorities remained on edge regarding unrest and political mobilization in Xinjiang.136
Michael Dillion, "Central Asia: The View from Bejing, Urumqi, and Kashgar," in Security
Politics in the Commonwealth of Independent States: The Southern Belt, ed. Mehdi Mozzafari (London: Macmillan, 1997), 137.
133
Dreyer, "The PLA and Regionalism in Xinjiang," 50.
134
Ibid.; and Dru C. Gladney, Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern
Subjects (London: Hurst, 2004), 231-32.
135
"Xinjiang Newspaper Cited on Ethnic Problems," Urumqi Xinjiang Regional Service,
June 15, 1989, in FBIS-CHI-89-116 (June 19, 1989): 61-62.
136
Gladney, Dislocating China, 232.
132
74
June 2007
Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
According to this official account, more than 150 soldiers, police, and
cadres were injured and over 40 vehicles destroyed in what was termed
"political rioting."137 That the authorities viewed this incident as an outburst of ethnic nationalist "splittism" and the product of heightened religious fervor is apparent from official statements and responses in the
following months. At a regional Party committee meeting on June 16,
1989, Song Hanliang, for example, demanded that the Party at "all levels"
crack down on "illegal organizations" and deal with those spreading rumors
"designed to damage nationality solidarity and advocate separatism."138
The remainder of 1989 in Xinjiang was, according to XUAR chairman, Tomur Dawamat, characterized by "an extremely difficult political
fight" against those advocating "separatism."139 The authorities increasingly linked calls for greater political or cultural autonomy with what they
defined as "illegal" religious activities; that is, activities that took place
beyond state-constructed and legitimatized parameters. Thus in March
1990 the deputy secretary of the regional Party committee, Hamudun Niyaz
(阿木冬．尼亞孜), exhorted "religious personages" to "correctly implement" the Party's religious policy.140 Moreover, he reminded his audience
that "no one is allowed" to use religion to disrupt the social order, obstruct
administrative and judicial functions of the state, undermine the unity of
the nationalities, or encourage separatism or place religion above the
state.141 The general tenor of the regional authorities had substantially
changed from that of the mid-1980s with the Party now emphasizing the
need to "deal strongly" with manifestations of "disunity." Such an orientation did not bode well for further progress toward the moderation of "na-
"Seven Held for 'Political Rioting' in Xinjiang," Hong Kong AFP, June 25, 1989, in FBISCHI-88-112 (June 27, 1989): 79.
138
"Xinjiang Leaders Discuss Deng Speech, Tasks," Urumqi Xinjiang Regional Service, June
16, 1989, in FBIS-CHI-89-119 (June 22 1989): 61-62.
139
"Xinjiang Prepares for Crackdown on Separatists, Leaders' View," Hong Kong AFP,
March 13, 1990, in FBIS-CHI-90-049 (March 13, 1990): 50.
140
"Forum Held," Urumqi Xinjiang Regional Service, March 10, 1990, in FBIS-CHI-90-049
(March 13, 1990): 50.
141
Ibid., 51.
137
June 2007
75
ISSUES & STUDIES
tionality" policy in Xinjiang in the coming year. Perhaps just as significant
in this regard was the authorities' perception of the impact of external influences on Xinjiang's internal situation. By 1990 ethnic nationalist
movements were underway in various parts of the Soviet Union, including
the neighboring Central Asian republics, and the victory of the mujahideen
in Afghanistan posed the possibility of the infiltration of similar politicoideological dynamics into Xinjiang. Indeed, it would appear that this
consideration played an instrumental role in prompting the authorities'
crackdown on "illegal" religious and political activities in Xinjiang. Tomur
Dawamat, in an interview with Chinese and foreign journalists on March
25, 1990, made a number of explicit references to "some antagonistic
forces from abroad" in answering questions concerning the separatist threat
in the region.142 Moreover, after noting the potential threat from Central
Asia, the chairman also explicitly accused Isa Yusuf Alpetikin, the exiled
former secretary-general of the Kuomintang (KMT, 國民黨) Xinjiang government between 1946 and 1948, of rallying "social scum" to the separatist
cause from his base in Turkey.143 The convergence of internal and external
instability thus prompted the regional authorities not only to tighten Chinese control in Xinjiang but also increasingly to perceive the external challenge to this control as deriving from hitherto dormant sources. Therefore
the threat was no longer perceived as emanating from the Soviet state
but rather from the revival of Islam as a political force in Central Asia.
Yet it is interesting to note Tomur Dawamat's reference to Uighur exiles
in Turkey, as it suggests the Chinese authorities' acknowledgment that
the ethnic nationalist challenge need not derive from religious imperatives
alone, but also from political and cultural ones as well. That is to say the
possibility of a pan-Turkist renewal in Central Asia and Xinjiang had begun to be perceived by the Chinese as a threat to its position in Xinjiang,
comparable to that of an overtly Islamic-inspired movement.
"Xinjiang Chairman Views Secessionism, Stability Cited," Hong Kong Ta Kung Pao,
March 25, 1990, in FBIS-CHI-90-058 (March 26, 1990): 49-50.
143
Ibid.
142
76
June 2007
Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
The new decade did not begin propitiously for Xinjiang's regional
government. As we have seen, the regional authorities increasingly linked
internal unrest with external influences after the unrest of 1989. The
government's March 1990 crackdown on "illegal" religious and political
activities, however, combined with the instability in the neighboring regions of Soviet Central Asia to precipitate the largest outbreak of ethnic
minority and anti-Han unrest in Xinjiang since the Cultural Revolution.
Once again the epicenter of unrest was south of the Tian Shan, around the
major oases of Kashgar, Khotan, Artush (阿圖什), and Aksu, although it
was to spread north to Urumqi.144 The largest incident, and the apparent
catalyst for the wave of unrest, occurred in the town of Baren in Akto
County of the Kizilsu Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture (克孜勒蘇柯爾克
孜自治州阿克陶縣巴仁鄉) near Kashgar.145 A group of Uighur and
Kyrgyz men allegedly led a mass protest on April 5-6, 1990, that called for
the removal of the Chinese from Xinjiang and the formation of an independent East Turkestan state.146 Just days beforehand, it was reported that
a group of masked Uighurs had raided a military base near Kashgar,
stealing an unspecified quantity of weaponry.147 According to the official
account of this incident, "a very small number of reactionary elements" had
formed an "Islamic Party of East Turkistan" that then assembled 200 people
before the township government building and recited "sacred war oaths ...
and made deliberate efforts to create trouble."148 Apparently, the authorities then dispatched two Han cadres to the township to negotiate with the
144
Robert MacPherson, "AFP Reports Ethnic Rioting," Hong Kong AFP, April 11, 1990, in
FBIS-CHI-90-071 (April 12, 1990): 47-48; and Dreyer, "The PLA and Regionalism in
Xinjiang," 50.
145
Becquelin, "Xinjiang in the Nineties," 69; and David Chen, "Killings Reported in Riot
Suppression," South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), April 11, 1990, in FBIS-CHI-90070 (April 11, 1990): 48.
146
See Robert MacPherson, "Xinjiang Paper Says Muslims Open, Close School," Hong
Kong AFP, April 18, 1990, in FBIS-CHI-90-075 (April 18, 1990): 49; and Dillon, "Central
Asia: The View from Beijing, Urumqi, and Kashgar," 137.
147
See Robert MacPherson, "Traveler Reports Unrest in Xinjiang Region," Hong Kong AFP,
April 20, 1990, in FBIS-CHI-90-077 (April 20, 1990): 52.
148
"'Rebellion' Quelling Detailed," Urumqi Xinjiang Television Network, April 22, 1990, in
FBIS-CHI-90-078 (April 23, 1990): 62-65.
June 2007
77
ISSUES & STUDIES
demonstrators, but when negotiations broke down the two Han cadres
were killed.149 Thereafter armed police and public security personnel were
dispatched to the township, where they fared little better than the unfortunate negotiators, and were besieged in the environs of the government
building by the insurgents. The following morning of April 6, the police
and public security personnel came under fire from automatic weapons and
grenades, causing serious damage to the government building and injuring
a number of police.150 The besieged security personnel "counter-attacked
in a restrained manner" and were reinforced by up to one thousand PLA
troops that afternoon.151 The counter-attack was successful and the authorities reported that they had killed 10 insurgents, including the "commander" of the rebels, Zahideen Yusuf.152 Foreign press reports, however,
placed the number of casualties in the vicinity of 60 "civilian" and 8 police
deaths.153 Nonetheless, ethnic minority unrest quickly spread from here
to the nearby oases of Kashgar and Khotan, and in the subsequent week to
the regional capital Urumqi where ethnic minorities protested in front of
the city's mosque against the reports of violence in the major southern
centers.154 Following the suppression of the Baren unrest, it was reported
that the authorities airlifted up to 100,000 PLA troops from Lanzhou to the
affected areas south of the Tian Shan, especially Kashgar and Khotan.155
The reasons behind this widespread, and often violent, unrest appear
from available sources to have been twofold: the government crackdown
on religion since March 1990 and the penetration of external influences
from Central Asia. Among the various press sources cited above, the gov-
See "Foreign Travel Banned," Tokyo Kyodo, April 10, 1990, in FBIS-CHI-90-070 (April
11, 1990): 47; and Chen, "Killings Reported in Riot Suppression," 48.
150
See note 148 above.
151
Ibid.; and Lufti, "Blowback: China and the Afghan Arabs," 193.
152
"'Rebellion' Quelling Detailed," 64; and Michael Winchester, "China vs. Islam," Asiaweek
23, no. 42 (October 24, 1997): 31.
153
For example, MacPherson, "Traveler Reports Unrest in Xinjiang Region," 52; and Chen,
"Killings Reported in Riot Suppression," 48.
154
"Protest Spreads to Urumqi," Hong Kong AFP, April 11, 1990, in FBIS-CHI-90-070 (April
11, 1990): 47.
155
Chen, "Killings Reported in Riot Suppression," 48.
149
78
June 2007
Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
ernment's continued attempts to shut down or prevent the construction of
"illegal" mosques and Islamic schools in early 1990 are often cited as a
major source of ethnic minority grievances.156 In fact, the authorities had
stepped up their attempts to reassert Party control over both religious institutions and practices in the major oases below the Tian Shan early in March
1990. In Khotan County, for example, the authorities launched a campaign
to "encourage people to become patriotic religious figures," "oppose separatism," and "accept the supervision of the masses."157 The major targets
of this, and analogous campaigns throughout the region, were imams that
established Islamic schools without state approval and imams involved in
political mobilization of ethnic minorities.158 The fact that the leader of the
rebellion at Baren, Zahideen Yusuf, is reported to have declared a jihad or
holy war against the Chinese state with the express purpose of establishing
an independent "East Turkestan Republic" (ETR) suggests that the incident
was at least partially influenced by the Islamic revival in Soviet Central
Asia159 and Afghanistan. That ethnic minorities were calling for an ETR
should not have been any surprise, given the precedent of two such selfstyled republics in the region's twentieth-century history.160 Nor should the
call for a jihad against the Chinese state have been cause for surprise, given
that both the ETR of 1933 and that of 1944-49 are generally regarded as
exhibiting both significant Islamic and pan-Turkist or nationalist components.161 What perhaps gave this incident such great weight in the
156
For example, see MacPherson, "Xinjiang Paper Says Muslims Open, Close School," 49;
and MacPherson, "Traveler Reports Unrest in Xinjiang Region," 52.
157
"Xinjiang Conducts Clergy 'Discipline' Campaign," Urumqi Xinjiang Television Network, April 12, 1990, in FBIS-CHI-90-074 (April 17, 1990): 50.
158
Ibid.
159
See Mehrdad Haghayeghi, Islam and Politics in Central Asia (New York: St. Martin's,
1995), 62-70.
160
The two are the 1933 ETR initially established in Khotan and the 1944-49 ETR established
in the Ili region in northwest Xinjiang.
161
For the 1933 ETR, see Millward, Eurasian Crossroads, 201-6; and Forbes, Warlords and
Muslims, 113-27. For the 1944-49 ETR, see Wang, Under the Soviet Shadow, 50-61;
Linda Benson, The Ili Rebellion: The Moslem Challenge to Chinese Authority in Xinjiang,
1944-1949 (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1990); and Millward, Eurasian Crossroads, 21530.
June 2007
79
ISSUES & STUDIES
perception of the authorities was the apparent confluence of internallygenerated dynamics (Uighur dissatisfaction with policy toward religion)
and externally-generated dynamics (the Islamic revival in Central Asia and
Afghanistan). Clearly the unrest initiated in Baren raised the specter of
a religiously inspired political and ideological challenge to the Chinese
state. The Chinese reported that they had captured a dossier of documents
written in Uighur during the Baren unrest that allegedly detailed the purpose of the jihad declared by the "Islamic Party of East Turkistan." According to this report the document stated: "The purpose of the sacred war is
to kill the heathens, oppose the heathens, and use our hands and language
to rebuff them. For the sake of struggling against your enemy, we should
use weapons and horses to deal with Allah's and your enemy."162 Millward, citing Chinese sources, states that the weapons and equipment confiscated from the Baren insurgents consisted of 16 firearms (15 of which
were taken from police during the unrest), 470 bullets, 243 homemade
grenades, 53 kilograms of "blasting powder," 180 knives, 3 motorcycles,
and 5 horses.163 He thus concludes that Zahideen Yusuf's organization "apparently launched its attack with few if any firearms," somewhat belying
Chinese claims as to the scale and seriousness of the "uprising."164
The Chinese government's greatest fear in Xinjiang, the convergence
of internal unrest and external influences, had, at least in its perception,
come to pass with the events of April 1990. That the regional authorities
perceived the unrest as emanating from political and ideological influence
from abroad was borne out in a number of official statements made in the
weeks following the April 5-6 incident. Song Hanliang, while reiterating
that the insurgents had called for a jihad to "wipe out Chinese rule,"
stressed the "political nature" of the struggle against separatists, and asserted that this struggle was "not a problem of nationalism or region."165
162
See note 148 above.
Millward, Eurasian Crossroads, 327.
164
Ibid.
165
"Song Hanliang Blames 'Separatists'," Hong Kong AFP, April 25, 1990, in FBIS-CHI90-080 (April 25, 1990): 67.
163
80
June 2007
Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
This rather oblique statement raises an important question: if it was not a
question of "nationalism or region," what then, in the authorities' view, was
behind these events? Ismail Amat, chairman of the Nationalities Affairs
Commission, provided the answer in an interview with Turkish journalists,
in which he asserted, "Certain elements are using religion as an instrument
to create regional discord. Meanwhile, a number of foreigners are engaged
in provocative activities."166
Moreover, a Uighur official addressing 70,000 people at the Idkah
Mosque in Kashgar during Friday prayers called on his audience to ignore
the separatist movement and claimed that trouble had been stirred up by
the infiltration of armed groups into Xinjiang from Pakistan and the
Kyrgyz SSR.167 Further reports also suggested that the insurgents around
Baren had been supplied with weapons by mujahideen units in neighboring Afghanistan.168 It should be recalled in this context that the Chinese government had in fact recruited and trained an unspecified number
of Uighurs to fight with the mujahideen in Afghanistan. The possibility
therefore existed that some elements of this group had returned to Xinjiang to extend the jihad against Soviet "Marxism-Leninism" to its Chinese
variant.169 Therefore, in the authorities' perception, the "separatists" had
in effect hijacked the Party's moderate stance regarding the ethnic minorities' cultural and religious practices to politically mobilize dissent,
aided and abetted by the infiltration of hostile elements from Central
Asia. The government's response following these events suggests that
this indeed was the conclusion reached by the Chinese. Immediately
following the unrest, the authorities implemented a "three no's" policy
toward "national splittists"— no concessions, no compromises, and no
"Turkish Press on Developments," Istanbul Milliyet, April 21, 1990, in FBIS-CHI-90-080
(April 25, 1990): 69-70.
167
"Eyewitness Accounts of Xinjiang Riots Cited," Hong Kong AFP, May 3, 1990, in FBISCHI-90-086 (May 3, 1990): 88.
168
He Pin, "Why Do Rebellions Occur So Frequently in Xinjiang," Nanbeiji (Hong Kong),
November 18, 1991, cited in China Report JPRS-CAR-92-011 (December 18, 1991).
169
See note 152 above. Winchester asserts that the leader of the Baren unrest, Zahideen
Yusuf, was inspired by the victory of the Afghan jihad against the Soviets.
166
June 2007
81
ISSUES & STUDIES
mercy.170 The PLA presence in the region was also significantly stepped
up, with Vice President Wang Zhen rumored to have been dispatched to
Xinjiang to oversee the suppression of rebellion and the tightening of the
region's borders.171 In relation to the Party's approach to the ethnic minorities' cultural and religious practices, the Party's preeminent position was
reinforced by the initiation of a thorough "rectification and screening" of
religious institutions. By December 1990 it was clear that the Party had
instituted a hard-line stance against possible manifestations of ethnic minority unrest, with Song Hanliang declaring that the PLA was a "great wall
of steel and iron safeguarding the motherland."172 Furthermore, according
to Song, the greatest contemporary threat to Xinjiang was "national
splittism" and this would remain the case for the foreseeable future.173
Contemporaneously, the authorities maintained their efforts to reassert
state control over the practice of religion in the region. For example,
Xinjiang ribao (新疆日報) reported that in Akto County the authorities
had halted the construction of 153 mosques, shut down 50 "religious facilities," and undertaken a "full-scale rectification and screening of religious
facilities."174
The unrest of April 1990 had therefore served to reinforce the state's
basic perceptions as to the major threats to continued Chinese rule of the
region— the politicization of Islam within Xinjiang and the penetration of
external influences. The overall strategy implemented to combat the development of these tendencies was in effect a variation of the policies
pursued in the immediate post-liberation period, albeit with a greater emphasis on the state supervision of religion. The greater emphasis on state
control, however, was coupled with further undertakings to facilitate the
Chang Chuan, "CPC Criticizes Regional Leadership," Cheng Ming (Hong Kong), May 1,
1990, in FBIS-CHI-90-084 (May 1, 1990): 50.
171
Ibid., 50-51.
172
"Song Hanliang on Unity of Nationalities," Xinjiang ribao, November 29, 1990, in FBISCHI-90-241 (December 14, 1990): 55.
173
Ibid.
174
"Akto County Screens Religious Activities," Xinjiang ribao, November 25, 1990, in FBISCHI-90-241 (December 14, 1990): 56.
170
82
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Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
economic development of the region. Yet this in turn created further dilemmas for the regional authorities in the management of the delicate relations
between the ethnic minorities and Han in Xinjiang. The months following
the Baren uprising also saw an increase in Han in-migration to Xinjiang
with the government's increased investment in various developmental
projects in the region attracting an influx of Han, both officially sanctioned
and illegal.175 According to the 1990 census figures there were 5,695,626
Han compared to 7,194,675 Uighur, representing 37.5 percent and 47 percent, respectively, of the region's total population.176 Once these figures
are broken down by prefecture, however, it is clear that Han dominated
the population of key industrial centers such as Urumqi, Hami (哈密), and
the oil towns of Karamay (克拉瑪依) and Shihezi (石河子).177 This trend
would continue in the subsequent decade prompting charges from the
ethnic minorities that the government's economic strategy only benefited
the Han. This trend would be generated more by virtue of the economic
opportunities created by increased government investment in Xinjiang
than by state ideological campaigns, as during the Maoist era. The state's
integrationist project had by the beginning of the 1990s been reinforced
by the challenges precipitated from the Soviet Union in the 1980s and the
emergence of greater ethnic minority unrest. Yet the task was incomplete
and fraught with contradictions as the authorities attempted to balance
the economic imperatives of the reform era with the security implications
that flowed from greater openness to Central Asia. Moreover, as we have
seen, the state's attempts to placate ethnic minority sentiment throughout the 1980s by allowing greater freedom in the sphere of religious and
cultural expression had in the state's perception "backfired" in April 1990.
Those events intensified Chinese perceptions as to the level of threat to
ongoing control of the region posed by the congruence of internal instabil-
175
Dreyer, "The PLA and Regionalism in Xinjiang," 51; and Liu, "Economic Reform,
Mobility Strategies, and National Integration in China," 406-7.
176
"Xinjiang Bureau Issues Statistics on 1990 Census," Xinjiang ribao, November 17, 1990,
in FBIS-CHI-90-250 (December 28, 1990): 52-55.
177
Ibid., 55.
June 2007
83
ISSUES & STUDIES
ity and external influences. Although the origin of these external influences remained the same as during the Maoist period (i.e., from across the
western frontier), their form had changed dramatically. The Soviet state
was no longer a threat to Xinjiang but the rising tide of ethnic nationalism within its constituent republics, including the Central Asian republics,
posed an emergent threat to the region. In fact, 1990 saw the emergence
and proliferation of pan-Turkic and Islamic political parties and organizations in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.178 With the
disintegration of the Soviet Union between August and October 1991, and
the subsequent independence of the Central Asian republics, these dynamics gathered momentum and threatened to spill over into Xinjiang.
Xinjiang 1978-91:
The Problematic Progress of Integration
Chinese rule of Xinjiang over the period 1978-91 thus exhibited a
number of key elements or themes of continuity and transformation regarding the strategies, techniques, and tactics of rule employed by the state
to achieve its central goal of integration. The central dilemma for the CCP
since the "peaceful liberation" of Xinjiang in 1949 had been how best to
facilitate the integration of the region into the Chinese state. This question,
as we have seen, had not been resolved by the close of the Maoist era. In
fact, the various fluctuations and turbulence that characterized Chinese
policy in Xinjiang during the Maoist era had, by the dawn of Deng Xiaoping's ascendancy, resulted in a questioning of the rationale that had underpinned Chinese rule. The state's goal of integration, however, regardless
of the turbulence of the Maoist era, remained firmly entrenched within the
perceptions of the post-Mao leadership as not only the correct normative
course of action but the only possible direction of Chinese rule in Xinjiang.
Although the CCP leadership following the death of Mao ultimately re-
Haghayeghi, Islam and Politics in Central Asia, 85-95.
178
84
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Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
evaluated the central tenets of the Maoist political, economic, and social
order, in practice it reaffirmed the state's imperative to integrate Xinjiang.
Thus, as we have seen, the Dengist program of reform in Xinjiang, especially during the period 1978-82, generated social unrest as the major
political "actors" in the region— the ethnic minorities, Han settlers, the
PCC, and PLA— responded to the new dynamics emanating from Beijing.
This period of unrest in Xinjiang was an explicit challenge to the new central leadership in Beijing in many respects, not least as the key pillars of
Chinese rule in the region— the Xinjiang CCP and the PLA— responded
adversely to the quest to negate Maoist influence. Moreover, the authorities, by explicitly criticizing the policies pursued during the late Maoist
period, ultimately raised questions regarding the legitimacy of Chinese
rule in Xinjiang in the perception of the ethnic minorities. The policies
implemented during the period 1978-82 questioned the rationale that had
underpinned Chinese rule— that is, it explicitly questioned and undermined
the Maoist techniques and tactics of rule upon which Chinese political
power had been based since the PLA "liberated" the region in October
1949. This dynamic must have been evident to the central authorities, as
the policies implemented after the unrest of 1981-82 under the regional
leadership of Wang Enmao returned to the general themes and contours of
the consolidatory policies implemented during the early 1950s. As noted
earlier, this return to the basic techniques and tactics of rule of the 1950s
was no coincidence but was determined by the nature of the challenges
posed to the continuation of Chinese rule in Xinjiang in the immediate
post-Mao period.
The tasks confronting the authorities in the early 1980s were mainly
concerned with re-establishing the CCP's political legitimacy. This required the authorities to re-create or revive specific techniques and tactics
of rule that permitted the representation and expression of ethnic minority
political, socioeconomic, and cultural diversity. That is to say, it appeared
to be based on the premise that the provision of a certain amount of political
space for the region's ethnic minorities would contribute to restoring the
legitimacy of the CCP in Xinjiang. Under Wang Enmao's leadership the
CCP in Xinjiang implemented policies reminiscent of the "united front"
June 2007
85
ISSUES & STUDIES
era, whereby emphasis was placed upon training and development of ethnic
minority cadres and the toleration and encouragement of ethnic minority
religious and cultural practices. Moreover, under Wang's 1981-85 tenure
renewed emphasis was also placed upon reviving the region's economy
through the implementation of de-collectivization in agriculture and increased regional government investment. The place of Xinjiang within
the Chinese economy also underwent an important transformation due to
the priorities of the central government in this period. Under the rubric of
the Sixth Five-Year Plan (1981-85), central government investment was
channeled toward China's eastern coastal provinces, thus accelerating the
spatial differentiation of China's economy between eastern, central, and
western regions. This economic development strategy prompted neglected
regions such as Xinjiang to develop their own economic development
strategy. By 1985 Xinjiang had embarked on a tentative opening to the
economies of Soviet Central Asia that was somewhat at odds with the
state's integrationist imperatives.
This divergence from the themes of the Maoist era was, however,
coupled with a re-invigoration of two key instruments of Chinese rule in
Xinjiang— the Xinjiang PCC and Han in-migration— that had been emblematic of the Maoist period. Thus the reevaluation of the techniques
and tactics of rule, and the subsequent "moderation" of policy that flowed
from this, was paralleled by a renewed emphasis on the major instruments
of integration. During the period 1985-91, however, the coupling of this
strategic "retreat" from the Maoist model with reinforced instruments of
integration produced a number of contradictory dynamics in the region
that ultimately came to a head at the beginning of the 1990s. The development of greater contacts between Xinjiang and the contiguous regions of
Soviet Central Asia, that were the consequence of the authorities' outward oriented economic strategy and relaxation of religious and cultural
restraints, held the potential to counteract the state's integrationist imperatives. This process threatened to reinvigorate the historical linkages between Xinjiang and Central Asia that had in the past seen specific regions
of Xinjiang become oriented "outward" toward the proximate external
civilizations. The Party's moderation of its restrictions on ethnic minority
86
June 2007
Xinjiang in the "Reform" Era, 1978-91
religious and cultural practices combined with the greater contacts across
the Sino-Soviet frontier to generate a revival of religious practices which
often took place outside of state-prescribed parameters. As the latter
sections of this paper have demonstrated, these dynamics converged from
1986 onward and resulted in a more forceful expression of ethnic minority
identity than had been seen in Xinjiang since its "peaceful liberation" in
1949. The major dilemma for the Chinese authorities from 1986 onward
was to maintain the delicate balance between the greater religious and
cultural freedoms, which they perceived as contributing to social stability,
and the major instruments of integration— Han in-migration, the PCC, and
economic development— that underpinned continued Han dominance of
Xinjiang. The social unrest of the late 1980s and the explosion of violent
ethnic minority opposition to Chinese rule in April 1990 suggested that
the authorities had not foreseen the inherent contradictions between the
two major aspects of their strategy in the region. Moreover, the unrest of
April 1990 also highlighted the re-emergence of cross-border linkages
that had been dormant or negated during the Maoist period. Chinese
rule of Xinjiang at the beginning of the new decade was thus precariously
balanced. This situation was to be further complicated late in 1991 with
the collapse of the Soviet state that was to have wide-reaching implications
for Chinese rule of Xinjiang. Thus the integrationist imperatives of the
state would in the coming decade continue to be buffeted by external and
internal dynamics that, as in the past, often converged to form an encompassing politico-ideological challenge to the legitimacy of Chinese rule in
Xinjiang.
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