Before social death: cultural rule and ethnic expression in 1980s Xinjiang

ABSTRACT

Current scholarship on the Uyghurs eclipses the fact that before the present moment of profound crisis, a robust polite society of the indigenous ethnonational communities existed in Xinjiang in the 1980s. This paper, by uncovering the little-known history of the Urumqi-based Tianshan Film Studio and its cinematic production of the non-Han population as the cultural majority of the region in the 1980s, adds to the academic literature that has firmly pushed against the state tropes of Xinjiang as a restive Muslim backwater with little skill in negotiating modernity. By intersecting institutional history, close reading of concrete filmic texts, and the larger historical context of what I argue as a decade of cultural rule in China’s governance of its ethnic frontiers, this paper presents a fresh look at Uyghurs and their ethnic allies in the polite bargaining with the Chinese state for their cultural majority status in the region.

KEYWORDS:

• Xinjiang
• Uyghurs
• Tianshan Film Studio
• Guang Chunlan
• cultural rule
• eliticide

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Professor Jonathan Lipman, Professor Mark Elliott, Professor Michael Szonyi, Professor David Wang, and Professor Jie Li for commenting on parts of the article in an early stage. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for the journal. Their critical readings and detailed feedback helped improve this manuscript substantially.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I prefer the term “polite society” over the more established term “elite” mostly because in the 1980s, the Uyghur society that was fresh off the turmoil and destructions of the Cultural Revolution simply did not have a social stratification that divided the society into elite and the downtrodden. In many ways, Mao’s revolutions flattened the social distinction by measure of material wealth. Equally poor and struggling in that decade, the most conspicuous marker of social distinction was along the lines of education attainment and professional skills. The notion of a polite society is to suggest that this segment of society was more willing to negotiate for cultural capital and ethnic pride through non-violent expressions of discontent.

2 I take the inspiration of the phrase “cultural rule” from Christine Gross-Loh’s dissertation “Conflict and Accommodation in Taisho Japan: The Formation of Civil Rule (Bunka Seiji) in Colonial Korea, 1910–1925” [2001]. In her work, Gross-Loh seeks the rationale for the Japanese colonial rulers’ shift from martial rule (Jap: budan seiji Chi: wuduan zhengzhi) to civil rule (Jap: bunka seiji Chi: wenzhi zhengzhi) in the second decade of Japan’s governance of Korea as a formal colony (1910–45). Gross-Loh (2001) argues that the Taisho era, during which both liberalism and imperialism thrive in the Japanese metropole, made it possible for the colonial authorities to switch ways and experiment on a more pro-autonomy rule in Korea. For other scholars using the concepts of budan seiji and bunka seiji, see Brudnoy (1970).

3 Guang was born in Qabqal, Ili Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang in 1940. She studied directing at Beijing Film Academy from 1961 to 1966. During the Cultural Revolution, she was forced to experience labour reform due to her family history. She began her directing career with Nanjing Film Studio in 1976 and moved to Tianshan permanently in 1983.

4 Guang’s views were given in two interviews in 2014, predating the current crisis.

5 Tianshan records Memtimin Hezret as a Uyghur scriptwriter who was born in 1950 and a CCP party member. He left Xinjiang for the Soviet Union in February 1989 to visit his relatives. But on May 4 of that year, he left the Soviet Union for Turkey via Romania.