Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. x, 286 pp. (B&W photos.) US$99.99, cloth. ISBN 978-1-108-48840-2.
This book is a much-needed study of the social and political dynamics that led to the violent riots in Xinjiang in July 2009 and the official promotion of a shared Chinese identity as a national security matter. The author, David Tobin, poses the question: When China views Uyghurs’ Turkic identity as a threat to its nation-state, do intensified identity-security narratives help secure China on the northwest frontier? Tobin argues that they do not, because the state-promoted identity exacerbates insecurity and hardens ethnic boundaries in the region.
The book makes a valuable contribution by highlighting a vicious cycle of identity and insecurity that besieges the Chinese party-state in a volatile borderland. While the Zhonghua minzu (Chinese nation) is promoted as a multiethnic identity, Tobin argues that in reality it heightens insecurity by positioning groups as cultural insiders or outsiders. That is, the Han category is the cultural nucleus of China’s national identity, and as a result Uyghurs are left feeling excluded and insecure. Language and cultural assimilation, in particular, are deeply resented as an existential threat to Uyghurs as a people. For local Han residents, the idea of a multiethnic identity also creates insecurity, as it threatens the centrality of their Han identity. The insecurity stemming from these interethnic fractures makes the party-state more insecure. It then tries to secure Han loyalty and Uyghur conversion with more ethnocentric nation building, thus intensifying the cycle of identity promotion and insecurity. These findings shed a fresh light on the stalemate in Xinjiang.
Centering on identity to explain the politics of insecurity, nevertheless, turns out to be a narrow view and devoid of complex social contexts. Tobin’s argument cannot explain why the party-state was able to align closely with Uyghur masses during the Mao era, and without forceful assimilation. Contrary to Tobin’s assertion, a native Uyghur (Säypidin Äzizi) did serve at the helm in Xinjiang from 1972 to 1978. Most importantly, Tobin fails to consider economic displacement as the root cause of Uyghurs’ insecurity in the post-Mao era: the demise of social safety nets and competition from Han migrants posed an unprecedented existential threat to Uyghur communities, which found expression in the Uyghur protests discussed by Tobin. The state’s coping strategy, developmentalism that included language and cultural assimilation, was intended to make Uyghurs more “competitive” in the market economy. But the unintended consequence has been to create another existential threat, this time in the linguistic and cultural sense.
For Han residents as well, insecurities were rooted beyond contentious identities. Many harboured frustration with the post-Mao policy of disparate law enforcement (liangshao yikuan), by which ethnic lawbreakers were held to more lax legal standards. Everyday experiences nurtured their identities, rather than just the official narratives that Tobin details: official documents and education texts. For example, in the major Uyghur protests Tobin discusses, police delayed responses to violence because they involved ethnic offenders so that officers had to wait for orders from above. Han residents’ resort to violence on July 7, 2009, contrary to Tobin’s characterization, was motivated more by their frustration with the state’s inept responses to perceived ethnic violence.
Tobin’s empirical work, based on semi-structured interviews of Uyghur and Han residents in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, has limitations in terms of source and site selection. The majority of his interviewees were getihu, or the self-employed. Often poorly educated, getihu may not have had much exposure to nation-building education in school, especially if they had left school for some time already or had attended regular (or Han) schools. Moreover, without a danwei (workplace) in the state sector, getihu are outside the reach of official documents delivered through political education sessions for public employees. Finally, migrants from interior provinces have never been exposed to the type of “ethnic unity” education common in Xinjiang’s schools. Even if getihu had been exposed to political propaganda and security practices in the streets, it would still be a stretch to attribute their attitudes largely to the effects of official nation-building narratives.
Another problem is a lack of informed differentiation between interviewees who were raised locally and those who were not. This differentiation makes a significant difference in terms of interethnic understanding and security. Although the author provides information about whether a Han interviewee was locally born or a migrant, he lumps them together in the Han category without elaboration of their differences. For both Han and Uyghur, if they were locally raised by parents who worked in the state sector in the Mao era, they would have grown up in danwei assigned housing where they usually formed interethnic friendships and acquired bilingual skills. Compared with migrants from interior regions, local Han and Uyghur would both be more “laid back” and have less savvy in the new market economy, and when probed, possibly share identities as “losers” relative to migrants from kouli (a local derogatory term for interior provinces). But this group of Han was missing in Tobin’s sampled population.
In terms of site selection, doing fieldwork in Urumqi limited Tobin’s appreciation of important regional differences. Urban Uyghurs in northern Xinjiang may themselves look down on rural co-ethnics in the south, where the Uyghur population is concentrated. Some would blame the violence of July 5, 2009 on poorly educated, young rural migrants from the south. This group is characterized in various Chinese sources as the main source of so-called “talibes” in underground madrassas, the main perpetrators of state-defined terrorism and the main targets of “reeducation and vocational training” in the infamous conversion centres. Unfortunately, Tobin did not seek out this group to research and understand, but simply dismisses the presence of terrorism on the basis of secondary sources.
In all, this book is a useful critique of the ethnocentrism inherent in China’s official identity project that makes it insensitive to non-Han nationals with ascriptive distinctions.
Yan Sun
The City University of New York, New York