dogu-turkistan-sempozyumu

The Role of the International Community in East Turkestan / Prof Dru C. Gladneypublished just prior to the 50 th anniversary of the PRC in October 1999, argued thatreligious freedom was guaranteed for all minorities, but acknowledged continuingproblems in minority regions, in particular vast economic inequities. 9 The WhitePaper surveyed minority problems and accomplishments and concluded:China has been a united, multi-ethnic country since ancient times... Althoughthere were short-term separations and local divisions in Chinese history, unity hasalways been the mainstream in Chinese history… In China, all normal religiousactivities…are protected by law… By 1998 the state had offered 16.8 billion yuan[2.2 billion USD] of subsidies to minority areas… The Chinese government iswell aware of the fact that, due to the restrictions and influence of historical,physical geographical and other factors, central and western China, where mostminority people live, lags far behind the eastern coastal areas in development. 10Despite on-going tensions and frequent reports of isolated terrorist acts, therehas been no evidence that any of these actions have been aimed at disrupting theeconomic development of the region. Not a single incident has been directedat the infra-structure (railways, bridges, power stations, airports), which is whatone would expect from a well-organized terrorist or separatist conspiracy. Mostconfirmed incidents have been directed against Han Chinese security forces,recent Han Chinese émigrés to the region, and even Uighur Muslims who areperceived as collaborating to closely with the Chinese government. Unlike ournovelist above, most analysts agree that China is not vulnerable to the same ethnicseparatism that split the former Soviet Union. But few doubt that should Chinafall apart, it will divide, like the USSR, along centuries old ethnic, linguistic,regional, and cultural fault lines. 11 If China were to break apart, Xinjiang wouldsplit in a way that would resemble the tumult experienced in neighboring regions,like modern Kashmir, or the mid-1990s violent civil war in Tajikistan.The historical discussion of the Uighur in a later section of this paper willattempt to suggest why there have been on-going tensions in the area and whatthe implications are for future international relations and possible refugee flows.The ethnic and cultural divisions showed themselves at the end of China’s lastempire, when it was divided for over 20 years by regional warlords with local andethnic bases in the north and the south, and by Muslim warlords in the west.Ethnicization has meant that the current cultural fault lines of China and Central459