| Publication |
2013.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
The disquiet in Xinjiang province of the People's Republic of China
(PRC) is becoming acute. A series of events in the recent past attest to
the gravity of the situation and are suggestive of the tenuous Chinese
control in this 'new' frontier province of China. The trajectories of
contest in Xinjiang or Sinkiang appear to be inherent in the frontier
areas of any vast country wherein race, religion, culture and historical
memories impinge. The frontier area, Xinjiang, is a zone "in which all
possible boundaries of geography, race and culture cross and overlap
to form a broad transitional area of great complexity".
1
Xinjiang has
been continually remote from the power centre, with visible patterns of
'incomplete authority' or 'legitimacy crisis' from the central authority.
In addition, the depiction that inhabitants of the frontier areas are
"ethnically different from each empire's ruling elite or majority and
that there was little identification with the central regimes"
2
has
relevance in the case of Xinjiang. An avid writer notes, the history of
Xinjiang is a story of many interactions¯people, cultures and politics¯not
of a single nation but of many overlapping political and social groupings
before the racial or the national categorisation of 'Turkic,' 'Uyghur'
and 'Chinese', which became evident in the twentieth century.
3
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