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Abstract
This paper examines two contrasting cases of ethnic-group political activism in China – the Uighurs in Xinjiang and the Mongols in Inner Mongolia – to explain the former's political activism and the latter's lack thereof. Given similar challenges and pressures, how can we explain the divergent patterns in these two groups' political behavior? This paper forwards the argument that domestic factors alone are not sufficient to account for differences in the groups' political behavior. Instead, international factors have to be included to offer a fuller and satisfactory explanation. The paper illustrates how three types of international factors – big power support, external cultural ties, and Uighur diaspora community activism – have provided opportunities and resources to make the Uighur political activism sustainable. In Inner Mongolia, its quest for self-determination reached the highest fervor in the early half of the twentieth century, particularly with the support of imperial Japan. However, since the end of WWII, Inner Mongolia has not received any consistent international support and, as a result, has been more substantially incorporated into China's geopolitical body.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program for providing me a one-year postdoctoral fellowship, during which time I finished writing this paper. I also would like to thank Henry Hale, Bruce Dickson, Eric Schluessel, Frederick Solt and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on this paper. Alaric DeArment provides me superb editorial help, for which I am very grateful. All remaining errors and mistakes are simply my own.
Notes
There is no standard spelling for names relating to the Uighurs and East Turkestan. Uighur is sometimes spelled as Uygur or Uyghur. East Turkestan is sometimes spelled as Eastern Turkestan or Eastern Turkistan. In this paper, I use Uighur and East Turkestan unless in direct quotation.
By political activism, I mean either violent or non-violent activities engaged in by an ethnic group to pursue political goals, such as more political rights, more autonomy, or even secession. It can include a range of activities, such as rebellions, riots, demonstrations and so forth.
For example, during the most recent protest movement in Inner Mongolia, nowhere did the sovereignty issue come out during the protests. Instead, Mongol people's grievances were mainly on issues such as environmental degradation and diminishing pastoral way of life.
Most recently in June 2010, the Chinese government introduced a 5% tax that the country's energy companies must pay on oil and natural gas produced in Xinjiang. It indicates that the Chinese government is aiming to address this commonly held local grievance. See “China Launches Energy Tax in Xinjiang.”
For example, at school students are required to be taught atheism and forbidden to perform daily prayers or fast during Ramadan. Many still do despite the official ban.
One difference between the IMAR and XUAR is that the Han Chinese in-migration occurred earlier and in larger numbers. Indeed, the main demand of the student movement in 1981 in IMAR was for the Han Chinese to move out (Jankowiak).
Until the sixteenth century, only the Buddhist Uighurs around Turpan still called themselves Uighurs. However, when local people around Turpan finally converted to Islam in the sixteenth century, “the term Uighur now completely dropped from the region in reference to the local inhabitants” (Gladney 214).
For example, Wahhabism has gradually come into Xinjiang and gained popularity in certain areas (Waite).
Certainly, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization serves China's multiple foreign policy goals as it enables China to make strategic inroads into Central Asia and compete with the United States and Russia for influence in the region. However, the Xinjiang problem still features prominently in its function, as exemplified by series of military exercises among member states aimed at combating “Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism.”
Mehmet Emin Burga was the prime minister as well as the military C\commander of the Turkish Islamic Republic of Eastern Turkestan in 1933. Isa Yusuf Alpetkin was the secretary general in the coalition government between ETR and the KMT provincial government in Xinjiang in 1946.
In response to the Turkish criticism, China released the ethnic breakdown of the riot casualties, as many victims were in fact Han Chinese. Later, Turkish Foreign Ministry officials apologized. See “China Demands Turkish Retraction.”
There is also an Eastern Turkestan Government in Exile based in Washington, D.C.
For example, in 1945 the Soviet Union's first condition for entering the war against Japan was for the Republic of China to accept the independence of the Mongolian People's Republic, which led the Chinese side to agree on a plebiscite in October 1945.
The KMT government passed a “Draft on the Organizational Law of the Mongolian Leagues, Tribes, and Banners” in 1930 that did not protect the feudalistic privileges of the Mongol ruling class. In 1931, the Manchurian Incident led to the Japanese occupation of Jehol province in what is now eastern Inner Mongolia. As a result, various Inner Mongol leaders were pressed to call for a united front to deal with Japanese aggression as well as various Chinese warlord governments (Jagchid, Essays in Mongolian Studies 290).
Eventually, Ulanhu also managed to set up an autonomous region for Inner Mongolia. However, this autonomous region was set up under the premise that it would be incorporated into the PRC.
Alternatively, one can argue that the Uighurs do not have such a specific external kin state as the Mongols. Thus, there is no “Outer Uighurstan” for Xinjiang in the way that there is an Outer Mongolia and an Inner Mongolia. However, historically, there was the so-called division between Chinese Turkestan and Russian Turkestan, which essentially corresponds with the contemporary division between Xinjiang and the Central Asian republics.
The total Mongol population in China is about 5.8 million, but Mongolia's total population is only around 2 million.
The Mongols are traditionally divided along tribal lines. In Mongolia, people are primarily of the Halh tribe; in Inner Mongolia, there are Horchin, Harchin, Chahar, Bagar, etc.
The IMPP was founded on 23 March 1997 in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. According to its constitution, its guiding principles are: “The IMPP upholds the principles of democracy and peace in fighting to end the Chinese Communist Party's colonial rule in Inner Mongolia.” Its ultimate goal is to achieve independence for Inner Mongolia, and the immediate goal is to establish a “confederated union with China in the course of the future social development in China” (“Constitution of the Inner Mongolian People's Party.” The SMHRIC is an organization based in New York with the following principles: “To gather and distribute information concerning Southern (Inner) Mongolian human rights situation and general human rights issues; to promote and protect ethnic Mongolian's all kinds of rights, such as basic human rights, indigenous rights, minority rights, civil rights, and political rights in Southern Mongolia; to encourage human rights and democracy grassroots movement in Southern Mongolia; to promote human rights and democracy education in Southern Mongolia; to improve the international community's understanding of deteriorating human rights situations, worsening ethnic, cultural and environment problems in Southern Mongolia; and ultimately, to establish a democratic political system in Southern Mongolia” (“Main Goals of the SMHRIC”).
One can think of multiple reasons why the set of international factors present in the Uighurs' case is absent from the Mongols' case. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that communist revolutionaries in Inner Mongolia had close ties with the CCP, so one can argue that Inner Mongolia was willingly incorporated into the PRC. This probably explains why the Mongols at the time did not actively seek international support for their cause. Furthermore, the contemporary demographic balance in Inner Mongolia greatly favors the absolute majority Han Chinese, which perhaps leads to the opinion that Inner Mongolia is already a lost cause, so international support should instead go to causes that might have a reasonably good chance of success, such as in Xinjiang or Tibet. These are of course speculative conjectures, which should be addressed in a different paper.