Dru C. Gladney, Ph.D. - House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats

8
The Uighur are an official minority nationality of China, identified as the second largest of ten Muslim peoples
in China, primarily inhabiting the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (see Table 1).
Table 1
Population of Muslim Minorities in China and Xinjiang 22
Minority Location Language 2000 Census Percent in
Ethnonym Family Population Xinjiang
Hui All China, esp. Ningxia, Gansu, Sino-Tibetan 9,816,805 7.9%
Henan, Xinjiang, Qinghai,
Yunnan, Hebei, Shandong*
Uighur Xinjiang Altaic (Turkic) 8,399,393 99.8%
Kazak Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai Altaic (Turkic) 1,250,458 --
Dongxiang Gansu, Qinghai Altaic (Turkic) 513,805 --
Kyrgyz Xinjiang, Heilongjiang Altaic (Turkic) 160,823 --
Salar Qinghai, Gansu Altaic (Turkic) 104,503 --
Tajik Xinjiang Indo-European 41,028 --
Uzbek Xinjiang Altaic (Turkic) 16,505 --
Baonan Gansu Altaic (Mongolian) 14,502 --
Tatar Xinjiang Altaic (Turkic) 4,890 --
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*Listed in order of size. Source: Yang Shengmin and Ding Hong, Editors, 2002, An Ethnography of China
(Zhongguo Minzu zhi), Beijing: Central Nationalities Publishing House
Many Uighur with whom I have spoken in Turfan and Kashgar argue persuasively that they are the
autochthonous people of this region. The fact that over 99.8 per cent of the Uighur population are located in
Xinjiang, whereas other Muslim peoples of China have significant populations in other provinces (e.g. the Hui)
and outside the country (e.g. the Kazak), contributes to this important sense of belonging to the land. The
Uighur continue to conceive of their ancestors as originating in Xinjiang, claiming to outsiders that “it is our
land, our territory”, despite the fact that the early Uighur kingdom was based in what is now Outer Mongolia
and the present region of Xinjiang is under the control of the Chinese State.
Unprecedented socio-political integration of Xinjiang into the Chinese nation-state has taken place in the last 40
years. While Xinjiang has been under Chinese political domination since the defeat of the Zungar in 1754, until
the middle of the twentieth century it was but loosely incorporated into China proper. The extent of the
incorporation of the Xinjiang Region into China is indicated by Chinese policies encouraging Han migration,
communication, education, and occupational shifts since the 1940s. Han migration into Xinjiang increased their
local population a massive 2,500 per cent between 1940 and 1982 compared with the 1940 level (see Table 2),
representing an average annual growth of 8.1 per cent Indeed, many conclude that China’s primary programme
for assimilating its border regions is a policy of integration through immigration. 23 This was certainly the case
for Inner Mongolia, where Mongol population now stands at 14 per cent, and given the following figures may
well be the case for Xinjiang.
TABLE 2
Muslim and Han Population Growth in Xinjiang, 1940 - 1990 24
22 Renmin Ribao [Beijing], “Guanyu 1990 nian renkou pucha zhuyao de gongbao [Report regarding the 1990
population census primary statistics]”, 14 November 1991, p. 3; Dru C. Gladney, Muslim Chinese, p. 21
23 For China’s minority integration program, see Colin Mackerras, China’s Minorities: Integration and
Modernization in the Twentieth Century (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1994)
24 Table based on the following sources: Forbes, Warlords and Muslims, p 7; Judith Banister, China’s
Changing Population (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp 322-3; Minzu Tuanjie [Beijing], No. 2
(1984), p 38; Peoples Republic of China, National Population Census Office, Major Figures of the Fourth
National Population Census: Vol. 4 (Beijing: China Statistical Publishing House, 1991), pp. 17-25