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The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land
For more than half a century many Uyghurs, members of a Muslim minority in northwestern China, have sought to achieve greater autonomy or outright independence. Yet the Chinese government has consistently resisted these efforts, countering with repression and a sophisticated strategy of state-sanctioned propaganda emphasizing interethnic harmony and Chinese nationalism. After decades of struggle, Uyghurs remain passionate about establishing and expanding their power within government, and China's leaders continue to push back, refusing to concede any physical or political ground.
Beginning with the history of Xinjiang and its unique population of Chinese Muslims, Gardner Bovingdon follows fifty years of Uyghur discontent, particularly the development of individual and collective acts of resistance since 1949, as well as the role of various transnational organizations in cultivating dissent. Bovingdon's work provides fresh insight into the practices of nation building and nation challenging, not only in relation to Xinjiang but also in reference to other regions of conflict. His work highlights the influence of international institutions on growing regional autonomy and underscores the role of representation in nationalist politics, as well as the local, regional, and global implications of the "war on terror" on antistate movements. While both the Chinese state and foreign analysts have portrayed Uyghur activists as Muslim terrorists, situating them within global terrorist networks, Bovingdon argues that these assumptions are flawed, drawing a clear line between Islamist ideology and Uyghur nationhood.
Beginning with the history of Xinjiang and its unique population of Chinese Muslims, Gardner Bovingdon follows fifty years of Uyghur discontent, particularly the development of individual and collective acts of resistance since 1949, as well as the role of various transnational organizations in cultivating dissent. Bovingdon's work provides fresh insight into the practices of nation building and nation challenging, not only in relation to Xinjiang but also in reference to other regions of conflict. His work highlights the influence of international institutions on growing regional autonomy and underscores the role of representation in nationalist politics, as well as the local, regional, and global implications of the "war on terror" on antistate movements. While both the Chinese state and foreign analysts have portrayed Uyghur activists as Muslim terrorists, situating them within global terrorist networks, Bovingdon argues that these assumptions are flawed, drawing a clear line between Islamist ideology and Uyghur nationhood.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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May 20, 2021
3.5 ☆
The Uyghurs had been a prominent part of the news from China until the Covid-19 pandemic eclipsed all other issues. To fill our knowledge gap, several members from the Non Fiction Book Club chose this book as our buddy read. I wouldn't have finished this of my own volition otherwise, despite the dearth of books about this Turkic-speaking people in western China or in Central Asia (depending on your political sympathies).
Bovingdon focused upon the Uyghurs for his PhD in political science at Cornell. Published in 2010, Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land was his thinly revised dissertation, which means that it was for a specific audience, ie. not for the general public who is unversed in political science as an academic discipline. If you're looking for a broader history or cultural insight into the Uyghurs, which was my original motivation, then this is not the first book to read.
The author's purpose was to explore the methods and reasons for a large number of Uyghurs' resistance to their incorporation into the Chinese nation-state and, in turn, the Chinese government's attempt to overcome their position. It was difficult for Bovingdon to obtain quality interviews from a broad and representative swath of persons, as many self-censored because they feared repercussions from government officials. But overall, I would say that he had cast an impartial eye over the political history of the Uyghurs since the mid-20th century.
According to the People's Republic of China (PRC), founded in 1949, they have succeeded in uniting a nation of heterogeneous peoples and land that had been conquered by the Qing empire (1644-1911). Although the predominant ethnic group within China is Han, many peoples are recognized as ethnic minorities, such as the Uyghurs. The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) was created in 1955, and it is the largest administrative area of China.
Bovingdon posited that since the beginning, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had organized the governing structure of the XUAR so that it would effectively be a colony as opposed to a province with some political self-determination. A key part of this strategy was for the CCP either to relocate or allow the migration and settlement of Han people into the XUAR, thus diluting the collective voice of the native Uyghurs. The CCP also replicated something similar to gerrymandering of US congressional districts so that Uyghurs would remain divided and eventually become a minority. When the XUAR was formed in 1955, Uyghurs numbered 3.7 million and comprised about 73 percent of the population. Present-day estimates put the Uyghurs at slightly less than half of XUAR's 25 million people.
Bovingdon described the reasons for the Uyghurs' discontent, and how some of whom would still argue that the XUAR should be restored as the independent republic of East Turkestan (1944-1949). In its early history, the PRC had teething problems given the monumental failures and devastation of Mao's Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Many Hans suffered during those times, but the hammer had fallen even harder upon the Uyghurs. The CCP had conducted nuclear weapons research in XUAR despite local objections. The CCP eventually imposed harsh restrictions on the Uyghurs' Muslim beliefs and practices and labeled them as "splittist" conduct. Since the mid-20th century, the CCP's treatment of the Uyghurs has deteriorated from suppression to repression to oppression.
Bovingdon also described how foreign relationships impacted the CCP's domestic governing policies about the Uyghurs. Two crucial events were the collapse of the USSR, the PRC's Communist neighbor and rival, and 9/11 which altered perceptions and attitudes toward Muslims throughout the Western non-Muslim world.
The Uyghurs was not easy to read as the first half was written in dry somnolent academic-ese. The second half which detailed how the Uyghurs attempted to resist and protest the PRC's enforcement was chilling and eye-opening. Bovingdon had effectively disentangled the misleading rhetoric of the CCP from reality. I would by no means lobby for a secessionist movement as I'd leave that to the international political entities. In light of China's incarceration of about 1 million Uyghurs in "re-education camps," however, it is quite evident that the Uyghurs have been stripped of their human rights and that this has been part of a longterm process.
The Uyghurs had been a prominent part of the news from China until the Covid-19 pandemic eclipsed all other issues. To fill our knowledge gap, several members from the Non Fiction Book Club chose this book as our buddy read. I wouldn't have finished this of my own volition otherwise, despite the dearth of books about this Turkic-speaking people in western China or in Central Asia (depending on your political sympathies).
Bovingdon focused upon the Uyghurs for his PhD in political science at Cornell. Published in 2010, Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land was his thinly revised dissertation, which means that it was for a specific audience, ie. not for the general public who is unversed in political science as an academic discipline. If you're looking for a broader history or cultural insight into the Uyghurs, which was my original motivation, then this is not the first book to read.
The author's purpose was to explore the methods and reasons for a large number of Uyghurs' resistance to their incorporation into the Chinese nation-state and, in turn, the Chinese government's attempt to overcome their position. It was difficult for Bovingdon to obtain quality interviews from a broad and representative swath of persons, as many self-censored because they feared repercussions from government officials. But overall, I would say that he had cast an impartial eye over the political history of the Uyghurs since the mid-20th century.
According to the People's Republic of China (PRC), founded in 1949, they have succeeded in uniting a nation of heterogeneous peoples and land that had been conquered by the Qing empire (1644-1911). Although the predominant ethnic group within China is Han, many peoples are recognized as ethnic minorities, such as the Uyghurs. The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) was created in 1955, and it is the largest administrative area of China.
Bovingdon posited that since the beginning, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had organized the governing structure of the XUAR so that it would effectively be a colony as opposed to a province with some political self-determination. A key part of this strategy was for the CCP either to relocate or allow the migration and settlement of Han people into the XUAR, thus diluting the collective voice of the native Uyghurs. The CCP also replicated something similar to gerrymandering of US congressional districts so that Uyghurs would remain divided and eventually become a minority. When the XUAR was formed in 1955, Uyghurs numbered 3.7 million and comprised about 73 percent of the population. Present-day estimates put the Uyghurs at slightly less than half of XUAR's 25 million people.
Bovingdon described the reasons for the Uyghurs' discontent, and how some of whom would still argue that the XUAR should be restored as the independent republic of East Turkestan (1944-1949). In its early history, the PRC had teething problems given the monumental failures and devastation of Mao's Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Many Hans suffered during those times, but the hammer had fallen even harder upon the Uyghurs. The CCP had conducted nuclear weapons research in XUAR despite local objections. The CCP eventually imposed harsh restrictions on the Uyghurs' Muslim beliefs and practices and labeled them as "splittist" conduct. Since the mid-20th century, the CCP's treatment of the Uyghurs has deteriorated from suppression to repression to oppression.
Bovingdon also described how foreign relationships impacted the CCP's domestic governing policies about the Uyghurs. Two crucial events were the collapse of the USSR, the PRC's Communist neighbor and rival, and 9/11 which altered perceptions and attitudes toward Muslims throughout the Western non-Muslim world.
The Uyghurs was not easy to read as the first half was written in dry somnolent academic-ese. The second half which detailed how the Uyghurs attempted to resist and protest the PRC's enforcement was chilling and eye-opening. Bovingdon had effectively disentangled the misleading rhetoric of the CCP from reality. I would by no means lobby for a secessionist movement as I'd leave that to the international political entities. In light of China's incarceration of about 1 million Uyghurs in "re-education camps," however, it is quite evident that the Uyghurs have been stripped of their human rights and that this has been part of a longterm process.
May 30, 2021
This is an overview of Chinese-Uyghur relations chiefly after CCP came to power in 1949. I read is as a buddy read for May 2021 at Non Fiction Book Club group.
First of all it should be noted that the author is a political scientist and not a historian. Therefore, he doesn’t dwell much on the history of either China or Uyghur states in the past, adhering to the idea that political nations are largely 20th century inventions. So, he mentions that both groups have own historical narratives, but states that none of them are fully in line with available historic evidence and are mostly serving political aspirations.
For example, contemporary Chinese nationalists prefer not to admit that the various Central Plains dynasties were not, properly speaking, “China.” There is a record of the continuous habitation of the Central Plains by Chinese-speaking and -writing people from before the common era, and a series of states governed by Chinese-speakers ruled many of those people for much of the intervening two thousand years. Yet as the historian Victor Mair pointed out, there were no state names or names for human groups that outlasted a single dynasty in the Central Plains. William Kirby argues that “there was no ‘China’ in a formal sense under dynastic rule,” nor was there an idea of the nation. Therefore, the author says about Qing dynasty control over Xinjiang:
Three features of the Qing conquest and subsequent administration of Xinjiang are important. First, the acquisition of territory was a by-product of the emperor’s attempt to rid himself of a troublesome foe. During the military campaign, there was not a word about “unification” or “reunification”; it was later Qing historians who painted the conquest as a fulfillment of imperial destiny, a legacy left by the Han and Tang dynasties but overtopped by the Manchus (Perdue 2005a:500–501, 509).29 Second, the Qing imperial house regarded Xinjiang as a colony and saw its Muslim inhabitants as a discrete population in an empire of culturally distinct parts (Millward 1998:197–203; see also Crossley 1999). Third, far from thinking of it as an “inseparable” part of the empire, on numerous occasions both the imperial house and much of the Qing policy elite seriously contemplated abandoning the colony before finally deciding to make it a province. Both the events in Xinjiang during the Qing period and the Qing Empire itself ill fit the national frame that was later imposed on them (see, e.g., Esherick 2006).
Both China and Uyghur narratives try to present own group of autochthonous inhabitants of the region even if history shows that Uyghurs came in the 9th century and even Chinese own name of the region means “new border”, so statements “we always were here” are tenuous on both sides.
China tries to could depict its conquest of Xinjiang as the “reunion” of the nation with a long-alienated part. They worked tirelessly to strengthen the Chinese “national narrative” and undermine Uyghurs’ counternarrative. Their colleagues in the field of “minzu theory” sets the idea that China is one people [“Chinese nation” (zhonghua minzu) ] – hundred ethnicities.
Chinese approach differs from Soviet: there are no national republics and Han Chinese are the only choice for the first secretary (in the USSR it had to be the same nationality as the republic, while the second secretary was Russian). Moreover, the combination of a strict limit on Xinjiang’s total population growth and policies not just allowing but encouraging Han immigration led to demographic changes that are similar to pushing Crimean Tartars by Slav population after 1783 conquest of the Crimea. Now Han Chinese are more than 1/3 of Xinjiang’s total population.
Chinese narratives about Xinjiang are full of devious plotters, servants of foreign imperialism, and religious extremists, as well as innocent masses hoodwinked into marching or shouting along with these dangerous people. After 9/11 it is forcedly pushed that Uyghurs are terrorists, linked to Taliban and bin Laden. Sadly, a lot of Western reporters bought it.
The book has a lot of info about ‘everyday resistance’ often through art as well as descriptions of Chinese policies and a situation with Uyghur groups/activists aboard. A nice overall intro even if a bit ‘academic’ prose with a lot of details not very important to an ordinary reader.
First of all it should be noted that the author is a political scientist and not a historian. Therefore, he doesn’t dwell much on the history of either China or Uyghur states in the past, adhering to the idea that political nations are largely 20th century inventions. So, he mentions that both groups have own historical narratives, but states that none of them are fully in line with available historic evidence and are mostly serving political aspirations.
For example, contemporary Chinese nationalists prefer not to admit that the various Central Plains dynasties were not, properly speaking, “China.” There is a record of the continuous habitation of the Central Plains by Chinese-speaking and -writing people from before the common era, and a series of states governed by Chinese-speakers ruled many of those people for much of the intervening two thousand years. Yet as the historian Victor Mair pointed out, there were no state names or names for human groups that outlasted a single dynasty in the Central Plains. William Kirby argues that “there was no ‘China’ in a formal sense under dynastic rule,” nor was there an idea of the nation. Therefore, the author says about Qing dynasty control over Xinjiang:
Three features of the Qing conquest and subsequent administration of Xinjiang are important. First, the acquisition of territory was a by-product of the emperor’s attempt to rid himself of a troublesome foe. During the military campaign, there was not a word about “unification” or “reunification”; it was later Qing historians who painted the conquest as a fulfillment of imperial destiny, a legacy left by the Han and Tang dynasties but overtopped by the Manchus (Perdue 2005a:500–501, 509).29 Second, the Qing imperial house regarded Xinjiang as a colony and saw its Muslim inhabitants as a discrete population in an empire of culturally distinct parts (Millward 1998:197–203; see also Crossley 1999). Third, far from thinking of it as an “inseparable” part of the empire, on numerous occasions both the imperial house and much of the Qing policy elite seriously contemplated abandoning the colony before finally deciding to make it a province. Both the events in Xinjiang during the Qing period and the Qing Empire itself ill fit the national frame that was later imposed on them (see, e.g., Esherick 2006).
Both China and Uyghur narratives try to present own group of autochthonous inhabitants of the region even if history shows that Uyghurs came in the 9th century and even Chinese own name of the region means “new border”, so statements “we always were here” are tenuous on both sides.
China tries to could depict its conquest of Xinjiang as the “reunion” of the nation with a long-alienated part. They worked tirelessly to strengthen the Chinese “national narrative” and undermine Uyghurs’ counternarrative. Their colleagues in the field of “minzu theory” sets the idea that China is one people [“Chinese nation” (zhonghua minzu) ] – hundred ethnicities.
Chinese approach differs from Soviet: there are no national republics and Han Chinese are the only choice for the first secretary (in the USSR it had to be the same nationality as the republic, while the second secretary was Russian). Moreover, the combination of a strict limit on Xinjiang’s total population growth and policies not just allowing but encouraging Han immigration led to demographic changes that are similar to pushing Crimean Tartars by Slav population after 1783 conquest of the Crimea. Now Han Chinese are more than 1/3 of Xinjiang’s total population.
Chinese narratives about Xinjiang are full of devious plotters, servants of foreign imperialism, and religious extremists, as well as innocent masses hoodwinked into marching or shouting along with these dangerous people. After 9/11 it is forcedly pushed that Uyghurs are terrorists, linked to Taliban and bin Laden. Sadly, a lot of Western reporters bought it.
The book has a lot of info about ‘everyday resistance’ often through art as well as descriptions of Chinese policies and a situation with Uyghur groups/activists aboard. A nice overall intro even if a bit ‘academic’ prose with a lot of details not very important to an ordinary reader.
May 9, 2021
This history of the Uyghurs and their relationship to China was more scholarly than I was prepared for. I learned a great deal but did not catch even more than I learned.
August 21, 2026
I think I stopped keeping up with world politics and international news after my admission test. Now that I am almost done with my graduation, I have been feeling like I should go back and understand the world a little better, especially the countries and political conflicts I only knew about through scattered news headlines.
That is how I ended up reading this book. I first became curious about the Uyghurs after discovering Wumuti. He is from the kpop group XLOV, and a Uyghur. So one day I was just randomly scrolling down their contents and saw a few comments comments claiming that Uyghurs cannot reveal their blood groups because of alleged organ harvesting by the Chinese state. I honestly found the claim disturbing.
The Uyghur topic itself was not completely unfamiliar to me. I vaguely remembered reading about the treatment of Uyghurs in China in 2017ish. But I had never really understood what the conflict was about. Was it mainly about Islam? Was it terrorism? Was it ethnic discrimination? Or was there something much bigger behind it?
This book helped me understand that the answer is much more complicated.
The Uyghurs are a Turkic-speaking, predominantly Muslim people whose homeland is in what is now China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. They have their own language, cultural traditions, historical memory and sense of identity.
Many Uyghurs do not see themselves simply as one of China's many ethnic minorities. They see themselves as a distinct people with a historical homeland, which many refer to as East Turkestan.
That immediately creates the central political problem. Cause China considers Xinjiang an inseparable part of the Chinese state. Many Uyghurs, on the other hand, have a very different understanding of their history. They see their homeland as having been incorporated into China through imperial conquest and subsequent political control.
And this disagreement over history affects how both sides understand the present. The history of the region is complicated because Xinjiang has been ruled by different peoples and states over many centuries. There were earlier Uyghur political entities, including the Uyghur Khaganate and the Kingdom of Qocho.
The Qing dynasty conquered the region in the eighteenth century, and in 1884 it formally made Xinjiang a province. After the Communist revolution in 1949, the region came under the control of the People's Republic of China. In 1955, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region was established.
The region has its own formal institutions, but ultimate political authority remains with the Chinese Communist Party. The most important political positions are controlled by the Party, and the central government has enormous influence over security, education, economic policy, population policy and public life.
This is where the conflict becomes much more than a religious issue. Xinjiang is strategically extremely important to China. It is enormous, making up roughly one-sixth of China's territory and it borders several countries in Central and South Asia.
It contains oil, gas, coal and other mineral resources. It is also important for agriculture, particularly cotton, and for China's connections with Central Asia and the wider Belt and Road network.
So from Beijing's perspective, losing control of Xinjiang would not simply mean losing a piece of land. It would have major economic, military and geopolitical consequences.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, several Central Asian peoples who shared linguistic, cultural and historical connections with the Uyghurs gained independent states of their own. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and others became independent countries. For some Uyghurs, this naturally raised a question: if these peoples could have their own states, why could the Uyghurs not have political independence or meaningful self-government?
For the Chinese government, however, the possibility of Uyghur separatism is a direct threat to territorial integrity. Beijing also worries that successful separatism in Xinjiang could encourage similar movements among other ethnic groups, including Tibetans and Mongols.
This helps explain why the Chinese government has treated Uyghur nationalism as a security issue.
The situation became even more complicated after September 11, 2001. China increasingly presented Uyghur resistance as part of the global fight against terrorism and Islamic extremism. The United States designated the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or ETIM, as a terrorist organization in 2002, which gave Beijing an additional framework through which to describe Uyghur militancy.
This does not mean that every act of Uyghur resistance was peaceful or that violence never occurred. There have been attacks and militant movements associated with Uyghurs, and the Chinese state has legitimate security concerns like any government facing political violence.
But one of Bovingdon's most important arguments is that reducing the entire Uyghur question to terrorism or Islamism is inadequate.
The deeper conflict is about nationalism, political representation, cultural identity, demographic change and control over land.
That distinction became particularly important after 2016. Bovingdon's book was published in 2010, so it predates the massive security campaign that followed. To understand the present situation, I had to look beyond the book and read about what happened afterward.
Since 2016, the Chinese government has built an enormous system of surveillance and political control in Xinjiang. Hundreds of thousands, and according to some estimates more than a million, Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim Turkic minorities have been detained in what the Chinese government describes as vocational education and training centers.
Researchers, journalists and human rights organizations have documented widespread allegations of forced political indoctrination, restrictions on religious practice, family separation, forced labor and other abuses.
The Chinese government says these policies are necessary to combat terrorism, extremism and separatism and to promote economic development and stability.
This is where the issue becomes particularly difficult to understand if we approach it only through one side's narrative.
From Beijing's perspective, the policies are about security, national unity and preventing terrorism. From the perspective of many Uyghurs and international human rights organizations, the same policies represent an attempt to suppress an entire ethnic and cultural identity.
There are also serious controversies surrounding allegations of forced sterilization, coercive birth-control policies, forced labor and cultural destruction.
Uyghurs are not newcomers who suddenly arrived in China. They have deep historical roots in the region. Yet they live inside a modern Chinese state that regards the territory as unquestionably Chinese and expects its population to identify with that national framework.
This creates a constant struggle over identity. A Uyghur can be a citizen of China while still feeling that their ethnic and historical identity is different from the identity promoted by the Chinese state. The government can officially recognize Uyghurs as a minority while simultaneously trying to create a stronger common Chinese national identity.
The tension between those two ideas is at the heart of the conflict. Religion matters. Islam is an important part of Uyghur identity, and restrictions on religious practice have therefore had a particularly significant impact. But religion alone does not explain the conflict.
For me, the biggest takeaway from the book is that the Uyghur conflict cannot be understood simply as a religious conflict or a story about terrorism. At its core, it is a struggle over identity, political power, history and the right to determine the future of a homeland.
That is how I ended up reading this book. I first became curious about the Uyghurs after discovering Wumuti. He is from the kpop group XLOV, and a Uyghur. So one day I was just randomly scrolling down their contents and saw a few comments comments claiming that Uyghurs cannot reveal their blood groups because of alleged organ harvesting by the Chinese state. I honestly found the claim disturbing.
The Uyghur topic itself was not completely unfamiliar to me. I vaguely remembered reading about the treatment of Uyghurs in China in 2017ish. But I had never really understood what the conflict was about. Was it mainly about Islam? Was it terrorism? Was it ethnic discrimination? Or was there something much bigger behind it?
This book helped me understand that the answer is much more complicated.
The Uyghurs are a Turkic-speaking, predominantly Muslim people whose homeland is in what is now China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. They have their own language, cultural traditions, historical memory and sense of identity.
Many Uyghurs do not see themselves simply as one of China's many ethnic minorities. They see themselves as a distinct people with a historical homeland, which many refer to as East Turkestan.
That immediately creates the central political problem. Cause China considers Xinjiang an inseparable part of the Chinese state. Many Uyghurs, on the other hand, have a very different understanding of their history. They see their homeland as having been incorporated into China through imperial conquest and subsequent political control.
And this disagreement over history affects how both sides understand the present. The history of the region is complicated because Xinjiang has been ruled by different peoples and states over many centuries. There were earlier Uyghur political entities, including the Uyghur Khaganate and the Kingdom of Qocho.
The Qing dynasty conquered the region in the eighteenth century, and in 1884 it formally made Xinjiang a province. After the Communist revolution in 1949, the region came under the control of the People's Republic of China. In 1955, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region was established.
The region has its own formal institutions, but ultimate political authority remains with the Chinese Communist Party. The most important political positions are controlled by the Party, and the central government has enormous influence over security, education, economic policy, population policy and public life.
This is where the conflict becomes much more than a religious issue. Xinjiang is strategically extremely important to China. It is enormous, making up roughly one-sixth of China's territory and it borders several countries in Central and South Asia.
It contains oil, gas, coal and other mineral resources. It is also important for agriculture, particularly cotton, and for China's connections with Central Asia and the wider Belt and Road network.
So from Beijing's perspective, losing control of Xinjiang would not simply mean losing a piece of land. It would have major economic, military and geopolitical consequences.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, several Central Asian peoples who shared linguistic, cultural and historical connections with the Uyghurs gained independent states of their own. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and others became independent countries. For some Uyghurs, this naturally raised a question: if these peoples could have their own states, why could the Uyghurs not have political independence or meaningful self-government?
For the Chinese government, however, the possibility of Uyghur separatism is a direct threat to territorial integrity. Beijing also worries that successful separatism in Xinjiang could encourage similar movements among other ethnic groups, including Tibetans and Mongols.
This helps explain why the Chinese government has treated Uyghur nationalism as a security issue.
The situation became even more complicated after September 11, 2001. China increasingly presented Uyghur resistance as part of the global fight against terrorism and Islamic extremism. The United States designated the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or ETIM, as a terrorist organization in 2002, which gave Beijing an additional framework through which to describe Uyghur militancy.
This does not mean that every act of Uyghur resistance was peaceful or that violence never occurred. There have been attacks and militant movements associated with Uyghurs, and the Chinese state has legitimate security concerns like any government facing political violence.
But one of Bovingdon's most important arguments is that reducing the entire Uyghur question to terrorism or Islamism is inadequate.
The deeper conflict is about nationalism, political representation, cultural identity, demographic change and control over land.
That distinction became particularly important after 2016. Bovingdon's book was published in 2010, so it predates the massive security campaign that followed. To understand the present situation, I had to look beyond the book and read about what happened afterward.
Since 2016, the Chinese government has built an enormous system of surveillance and political control in Xinjiang. Hundreds of thousands, and according to some estimates more than a million, Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim Turkic minorities have been detained in what the Chinese government describes as vocational education and training centers.
Researchers, journalists and human rights organizations have documented widespread allegations of forced political indoctrination, restrictions on religious practice, family separation, forced labor and other abuses.
The Chinese government says these policies are necessary to combat terrorism, extremism and separatism and to promote economic development and stability.
This is where the issue becomes particularly difficult to understand if we approach it only through one side's narrative.
From Beijing's perspective, the policies are about security, national unity and preventing terrorism. From the perspective of many Uyghurs and international human rights organizations, the same policies represent an attempt to suppress an entire ethnic and cultural identity.
There are also serious controversies surrounding allegations of forced sterilization, coercive birth-control policies, forced labor and cultural destruction.
Uyghurs are not newcomers who suddenly arrived in China. They have deep historical roots in the region. Yet they live inside a modern Chinese state that regards the territory as unquestionably Chinese and expects its population to identify with that national framework.
This creates a constant struggle over identity. A Uyghur can be a citizen of China while still feeling that their ethnic and historical identity is different from the identity promoted by the Chinese state. The government can officially recognize Uyghurs as a minority while simultaneously trying to create a stronger common Chinese national identity.
The tension between those two ideas is at the heart of the conflict. Religion matters. Islam is an important part of Uyghur identity, and restrictions on religious practice have therefore had a particularly significant impact. But religion alone does not explain the conflict.
For me, the biggest takeaway from the book is that the Uyghur conflict cannot be understood simply as a religious conflict or a story about terrorism. At its core, it is a struggle over identity, political power, history and the right to determine the future of a homeland.
April 19, 2022
I quite enjoyed this book.
Not at all for the content, as the book was admittedly very upsetting and sad to read. In fact, there were times when I needed to take a break reading.
But what I did like is Bovingdon's ability to shine a light on what is happening and things going on, to bring more eyes and more awareness to the activities in Xinjiang.
Would recommend giving it a read to learn more about the Uyghurs.
4.1/5
Not at all for the content, as the book was admittedly very upsetting and sad to read. In fact, there were times when I needed to take a break reading.
But what I did like is Bovingdon's ability to shine a light on what is happening and things going on, to bring more eyes and more awareness to the activities in Xinjiang.
Would recommend giving it a read to learn more about the Uyghurs.
4.1/5
December 29, 2016
My review as published in China Economic Review, December 2010:
A coastal viewpoint of China - no matter how well-intended or informed - inevitably casts the country implicitly as a single political and racial entity. Better commentary attempts to recognize the vast political and economic disagreements within the Party and state apparatus, but ethnic issues are typically ignored - or covered one-dimensionally in both Chinese and Western media.
In The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land, Gardner Bovingdon, an assistant professor at Indiana University's Department of Central Eurasian Studies, provides a welcome antidote to this eastern bias by turning his attention to one of China's more politically charged minority groups.
It is a fascinating book, delving into the historical identity of the Uyghurs and their position within the modern Chinese state. Through careful research and interviews with both Han and Uyghur sources in and outside of China, Bovingdon presents a painstakingly constructed argument with a typically understated conclusion: "It is difficult to be optimistic about a resolution of the long-brewing contention between Uyghurs and the Chinese state."
Bovingdon's understatement supports his argument and reveals him to be as disinterested an observer as one could hope for. His first chapter, on the historiography of Xinjiang and the Uyghur people, illustrates the need for such cool-headed impartiality: Chinese and Uyghur histories are not just different, they are mutually exclusive.
Chinese scholars argue Uyghurs had always and will always be a part of China, while Uyghur histories hold that the Uyghur people have existed for thousands of years in a land that was not historically part of China. There is good reason to dismiss some claims on both sides - even the word "Uyghur" as it is used today is arguably a Soviet construct - and Bovingdon does so.
In subsequent chapters detailing the political structure of the optimistically named Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, everyday acts of resistance, collective action and Uyghur transnational organizations, Bovingdon brings the same measured approach to considering the actions of Uyghurs and the Han-dominated Party organs - and, increasingly, the Han residents of Xinjiang. Chinese and Uyghur explanations of these actions are all predictably incompatible.
But this is not simply a book about finding the truth hidden underneath posturing from both sides. Such posturing is neither a distraction from the political struggle in the region, nor is it a distortion, Bovingdon argues. Rather, "these various modes of representational politics are crucial components of the contention."
It is a contention that has led to an intensified sense of identity among the Uyghurs, one strengthened and even created by a Beijing fearful, variously, of Western imperialism, Soviet-style disintegration and terrorism. It has contributed to social and economic stratification along ethnic lines and created such paranoia about Islam among regional authorities that Uyghur students and Party members are explicitly denied the right of freedom of belief guaranteed to them in the Chinese constitution. This last requirement has even led to cases of open resistance, as Uyghur Party cadres have publicly renounced their memberships in favor of their faith.
The result is a uniquely dysfunctional relationship in which the threshold of Beijing's tolerance to resistance is set at such absurdly low levels that large robberies and attacks on livestock are classified as acts of terrorism.
As "mass events" erupt across China in ever-larger numbers, Xinjiang has actually seen a sharp decline in protests since 1998; yet this decline has been accompanied by a ratcheting up of official rhetoric condemning terrorist and "splittist" activities in the region.
It was against this backdrop that the Urumqi riots of 2009 took place; Bovingdon addresses the protests and violence in an epilogue, noting that they "indicated, and surely exacerbated, mutual misunderstanding and hostility between Uyghurs and Hans in Xinjiang." While the scale of the protests and violence were newsworthy, nothing about its causes was at all remarkable.
If the book's structure and language tend toward the academic at times - it grew out of Bovingdon's dissertation - his argument is no less clear, convincing or sad.
A coastal viewpoint of China - no matter how well-intended or informed - inevitably casts the country implicitly as a single political and racial entity. Better commentary attempts to recognize the vast political and economic disagreements within the Party and state apparatus, but ethnic issues are typically ignored - or covered one-dimensionally in both Chinese and Western media.
In The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land, Gardner Bovingdon, an assistant professor at Indiana University's Department of Central Eurasian Studies, provides a welcome antidote to this eastern bias by turning his attention to one of China's more politically charged minority groups.
It is a fascinating book, delving into the historical identity of the Uyghurs and their position within the modern Chinese state. Through careful research and interviews with both Han and Uyghur sources in and outside of China, Bovingdon presents a painstakingly constructed argument with a typically understated conclusion: "It is difficult to be optimistic about a resolution of the long-brewing contention between Uyghurs and the Chinese state."
Bovingdon's understatement supports his argument and reveals him to be as disinterested an observer as one could hope for. His first chapter, on the historiography of Xinjiang and the Uyghur people, illustrates the need for such cool-headed impartiality: Chinese and Uyghur histories are not just different, they are mutually exclusive.
Chinese scholars argue Uyghurs had always and will always be a part of China, while Uyghur histories hold that the Uyghur people have existed for thousands of years in a land that was not historically part of China. There is good reason to dismiss some claims on both sides - even the word "Uyghur" as it is used today is arguably a Soviet construct - and Bovingdon does so.
In subsequent chapters detailing the political structure of the optimistically named Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, everyday acts of resistance, collective action and Uyghur transnational organizations, Bovingdon brings the same measured approach to considering the actions of Uyghurs and the Han-dominated Party organs - and, increasingly, the Han residents of Xinjiang. Chinese and Uyghur explanations of these actions are all predictably incompatible.
But this is not simply a book about finding the truth hidden underneath posturing from both sides. Such posturing is neither a distraction from the political struggle in the region, nor is it a distortion, Bovingdon argues. Rather, "these various modes of representational politics are crucial components of the contention."
It is a contention that has led to an intensified sense of identity among the Uyghurs, one strengthened and even created by a Beijing fearful, variously, of Western imperialism, Soviet-style disintegration and terrorism. It has contributed to social and economic stratification along ethnic lines and created such paranoia about Islam among regional authorities that Uyghur students and Party members are explicitly denied the right of freedom of belief guaranteed to them in the Chinese constitution. This last requirement has even led to cases of open resistance, as Uyghur Party cadres have publicly renounced their memberships in favor of their faith.
The result is a uniquely dysfunctional relationship in which the threshold of Beijing's tolerance to resistance is set at such absurdly low levels that large robberies and attacks on livestock are classified as acts of terrorism.
As "mass events" erupt across China in ever-larger numbers, Xinjiang has actually seen a sharp decline in protests since 1998; yet this decline has been accompanied by a ratcheting up of official rhetoric condemning terrorist and "splittist" activities in the region.
It was against this backdrop that the Urumqi riots of 2009 took place; Bovingdon addresses the protests and violence in an epilogue, noting that they "indicated, and surely exacerbated, mutual misunderstanding and hostility between Uyghurs and Hans in Xinjiang." While the scale of the protests and violence were newsworthy, nothing about its causes was at all remarkable.
If the book's structure and language tend toward the academic at times - it grew out of Bovingdon's dissertation - his argument is no less clear, convincing or sad.
February 25, 2020
In this scholarly, detailed account of the Uyghurs’ recent history in what is now the far west of China, Gardner Bovington uses a wide range of sources and interviews with Uyghurs in Ürümqi and elsewhere. He explores both the historical background of Uyghur and Han settlement in the region, examine how the very history of the land has been used and abused to justify different political beliefs. Then he catalogues the public and private acts of resistance Uyghurs take against the oppressive government as well as how the Chinese have silenced resistance at home and abroad.
It makes for sobering reading as Bovington outlines the systematic oppression Uyghurs have undergone, when every man, woman, and child are suspected terrorists, where demands to respect local culture and to advocate for increased Uyghur and Kazakh representation are deemed separatist demands. There is no accommodation with Uyghurs in any way in Beijing’s plans for the region.
Written in a scholarly and objective tone, the book sometimes makes the situation in the region an abstraction, so disinterested is Bovington’s tone, but by maintaining that tone, he is not hysterically buying into either side’s propaganda. The injustices the Uyghurs suffer speak even through the academic prose.
The main issue with this book is its age: published after the Ghulja massacre but before the Ürümqi riots (the riots are a postscript to the book), there is much in the intervening decade regarding the ongoing militarisation of the region, the widespread surveillance targeting Uyghurs in and outside China, the continued suppression of ethnic culture and the ongoing resistance at home and abroad. And yet, all of those somber additions would only support Bovington’s thesis: the Uyghurs are strangers in their own land.
It makes for sobering reading as Bovington outlines the systematic oppression Uyghurs have undergone, when every man, woman, and child are suspected terrorists, where demands to respect local culture and to advocate for increased Uyghur and Kazakh representation are deemed separatist demands. There is no accommodation with Uyghurs in any way in Beijing’s plans for the region.
Written in a scholarly and objective tone, the book sometimes makes the situation in the region an abstraction, so disinterested is Bovington’s tone, but by maintaining that tone, he is not hysterically buying into either side’s propaganda. The injustices the Uyghurs suffer speak even through the academic prose.
The main issue with this book is its age: published after the Ghulja massacre but before the Ürümqi riots (the riots are a postscript to the book), there is much in the intervening decade regarding the ongoing militarisation of the region, the widespread surveillance targeting Uyghurs in and outside China, the continued suppression of ethnic culture and the ongoing resistance at home and abroad. And yet, all of those somber additions would only support Bovington’s thesis: the Uyghurs are strangers in their own land.
December 1, 2020
Bovingdon does a wonderful job of upending decades of propaganda that the Chinese government has put out about the Uyghur people. Loads of well done research and primary sourced information.
December 2, 2021
A very good, thorough historical account of the Chinese (Han) drive to claim the right to rule over the non-Han/Chinese peoples of Xinjiang--specifically the Uyghurs/Uighurs, who are the largest "minority" group in Xinjiang. Bovington does an excellent job painting the background to the People's Republic of China (PRC) hooks into this far-flung section of modern China and the consistent lies, deceit, and historical revisionism they put forth to the world in rationalizing their claims.
This book does not include the more recent history of the PRC's blatant incarceration of millions of Uighurs (& other Muslim minorities who make Xinjiang their homeland) in detention/reeducation centers. It well-documented that the Chinese have detained between 1-2+ million Uighurs in camps in order to wipe out their cultural & religious heritage: https://uyghurnextgen.org/learnmore
This book does not include the more recent history of the PRC's blatant incarceration of millions of Uighurs (& other Muslim minorities who make Xinjiang their homeland) in detention/reeducation centers. It well-documented that the Chinese have detained between 1-2+ million Uighurs in camps in order to wipe out their cultural & religious heritage: https://uyghurnextgen.org/learnmore
April 11, 2021
After reading this scholarly book, I can confidently explain who the Uyghurs are. I also now know more about Turkestan and Central Asian history. It wasn’t an easy read, but it was important so I can understand this region better.
Want to Read
February 28, 2022Paper under the same name can be found at: https://www.eastwestcenter.org/system...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 22, 2019
Solid brief intro to the Uyghurs, even though a little old.
January 17, 2016
Interesting read that gives an account of the situation in the Xinjiang province of China up to 2010. Very well balanced and wary of exaggerations and hyperbole from both sides of the argument for independence.
December 21, 2013
This book provides a real description of the circumstance in Xinjiang. Really worth reading……
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