Struggle at the Center of Asia: China vs. the Uighurs. Mike Jeffers Reports

Ethnic Strife in China
The proximity of Pakistan and Afghanistan reminds visitors of the Islamic underpinning in the region — and the fact that religion and faith might be the biggest problems for the Chinese to address.

Turkey, because of its democratic government, thriving economy, Muslim culture and linguistic ties to the Uighur, is a promised land of sorts. The central Asian states, although less prosperous, are examples of Eurasian Muslims living free — in Uighur eyes at least — from outside control. In the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Uighurs saw the rise of Islamic states in former Soviet republics that border Xinjiang, and some wondered why they were still under Beijing’s control.

Despite their grievances, though, most Uighurs I talked to did not want to separate from China, saying they would be content with more fairness and autonomy. One Uighur told me Uighur culture, religion and language are at risk of disappearing as more and more choose to educate their children in Chinese schools to give them a better chance at finding work and better social status in China.

Beijing has made efforts to accommodate the Uighurs in recent years. For example, the in-flight meals served on flights to and from Xinjiang only serve halal food. The same was true on buses and at most restaurants in Xinjiang. Uighur-language television and radio is widely available throughout Xinjiang, and every business and public sign must be in Uighur as well as Chinese.

More significantly, the Uighurs are exempt from China’s one-child-per-family policy.

Since reporting this story the government has demolished most of old Kashgar. Paired with an equally aggressive program of bolstering its security forces in the region, it is likely that the rocky pattern will continue as Beijing’s double policy of economic development and strong-handed dealing with dissent will force some Uighurs to further extremism while simultaneously making their movement less potent within China’s borders at the same time.

Those who are further radicalized will likely continue to turn up in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the end Beijing will likely meet its goals of a secure western frontier.

On my second visit to Urumqi in December and January, I stopped by a foreign-owned bar and Internet café called Fubar. Fu means “lucky” in Chinese, so the bar’s name could be loosely translated to “lucky bar.” The bar itself was comfortably lit, with wide booths, couches, an expansive selection of foreign reading material left by travelers, a large flat-screen TV with a satellite connection, and hookahs — water pipes for smoking tobacco.

Jazz and rock music played in the background while Chinese, Uighurs, Russians, Kazakhs and the occasional Australian, European or American bellied up to the bar, getting along but also eyeing one another. It was a microcosm of Xinjiang, where ideas and goods are traded, but not without disputes.

I met a young, handsome Uighur man who had recently graduated from a university in eastern China and had come back to Xinjiang. Full of passion and creativity, he spoke positively of finding a way to get along with the Chinese. He took me to visit his home, a high-rise apartment that overlooked the urban Urumqi skyline. He got out a bottle of local wine and a piece of nan, the local flat bread.

He played me a hip-hop song he recorded in Uighur and told me how he met and had gone home with a “beautiful Han girl” only two nights before after having too much to drink at a local bar. His sincerity and youth were touching. He told me how the girl hadn’t returned his calls since their initial meeting, and said he was depressed by what he called the impossibility of the two having a future together. She told him that even though she really liked him, there was too much in the way and her family wouldn’t allow her to date, much less marry, a Uighur.

“We will never be free of China,” he said. “They will continue to move here. They are already too strong.”

When I boarded the train in Kashgar to start my long journey back to Beijing and eventually Texas, I was left meditating on the people who have inhabited this harsh region for thousands of years, as well as those who have navigated this terrain to conquer it. I realized the future of this beautiful ancient city, teeming with the life, tradition, cuisine and odors that have aged over several millennia, depends on Beijing’s ability to gently usher it into the modern world without sacrificing its soul.

Kashgar has survived the rise and fall of all the Chinese empires and maintained its own culture in the center of Asia for centuries, but the challenges it is facing now are unprecedented. Before I left I took one last walk through the maze of adobe buildings dotted by small neighborhood mosques. Old, bearded Uighur men peered out of their doorways with a watchful eye as their grandchildren played in the winding alleyways. I wondered if these children will be the last generation to grow up on these ancient streets.

During the last few hours on the way to Urumqi, the train crosses open deserts much broader than those of Death Valley. To travel Xinjiang is to experience the desolate, liberating freedom of the old American West.

This rugged geography made it impossible for Xinjiang to fall under the control of any single authority. Until now.