Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang

"Yes, it’s called Eurasian Crossroads and it’s by James Millward who is, I think, the preeminent American scholar of Xinjiang, certainly among historians. He’s also, since we were talking about short books before, written a beautiful slim history of the Silk Road for the OUP VSI series . He’s done a lot of different work, but this is a classic work of putting Xinjiang into historical perspective that came out in 2007 and he has just updated. He is one of the historians of China who, while his heart is in periods of the past, is continually looking at contemporary issues that you just can’t turn away from if you work on a place that’s undergoing new kinds of repression. So, I was very pleased when this very accessible, well written history of Xinjiang came out with a new section on the rise of this massive network of camps into which Uyghurs—especially Muslim Uyghurs, but also members of other Turkic ethnic minorities—have been disappearing in Xinjiang. This year actually has seen a burst of good writing on Xinjiang: a lot of journalism and scholarly work and a couple of other very good books have come out. The reason this one stood out for me is that there are others that focus on the present or on specific earlier periods. But this one combines a smart discussion of history with a close look at what’s happening now. It presents the camps as both linked to the moves against the Uyghurs in earlier periods, but also points out the novelty of things during a period when there’s more emphasis on forced assimilation and also moves towards what Millward refers to as ethnocide, of trying to blot out the Uyghurs as a clearly defined, separate cultural group. Things got considerably worse a few years ago. This is something that Millward shows very well. There have been long-term tensions between the centre and Xinjiang. Xinjiang means new frontier or new territory and it didn’t really become part of the political Chinese state until the 19th century, when it was essentially conquered by the Qing. Then, periodically, there were tighter or looser forms of control there, more or less willingness for there to be a flourishing of a separate Uyghur identity, culturally. When Millward did the first edition of the book, he ended it with a chapter on balancing acts. We can see this in Hong Kong too, but he talks about the effort by Beijing to balance the desire to have a very different kind of place be part of the country, while realizing there needs to be some ability for it to go in a different direction. He also talked about figures like Ilham Tohti, who were also involved in personal balancing acts. He was a professor, a part of the Chinese system, and was trying to carve out a distinctive space by encouraging moderating moves by the centre toward Xinjiang as well as moderate forces within Xinjiang. You could still think of that kind of balancing act up until around 2009, but not since then. 2009 was a very tense moment with all kinds of complicating developments that Millward talks about in the new chapter. But one thing we’ve seen is Tohti, who was this moderate figure, ending up—even for things that in an earlier period might have been seen as balancing—being seen as crossing red lines. He has disappeared into a prison cell, potentially forever. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . To me there’s a parallel with Hong Kong. It’s totally different and in Xinjiang there’s the camp system, which hadn’t been there before and came into existence a few years ago. There are also other forms of repression. But I do see it as of a piece with what’s been happening in Hong Kong, where we’ve also seen even moderate figures being sentenced or driven into exile. Millward ends by saying that a critical stance toward Beijing makes these balancing acts by Uyghurs impossible, at least for now, and I think that would be an apt way to think about the situation of Hong Kong too, as different as it is."