China : on Uyghur Separatism and China's cultural and political pogrom

 

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Too often, we have used the selfsame standards by which we are judged and marginalised to judge and separate.  Too often, whilst insecurely fixated on the shared history of an insulated past, we have abjured the sharing of the history of the globalised present.    

~ ed

 

The Uyghur and the Chinese – in brief

The Uyghur (pronounced, ‘wee-ghur’) are Muslims.  Their languages are related to Turkish and they commonly regard themselves as central Asians.  Given their biological lineage, they may be considered, ‘Indo-Europeans’.

The region, known as Xinjiang, or ‘new territories’, was completely absorbed into China in 1949 by the ‘communist’ leadership of the newly formed state.

Beijing’s main concern with the Uyghur is with their desire to form a separate state - which is spearheaded by the East Turkestan Independence movement.  Since, 11/9, China has been attempting to portray their separatist body as being affiliated with al-Qaeda to justify global silence in the face of their actions against them.

The grievance of the Uyghur is founded on Chinese attempts to curtail their religious, commercial and cultural activities whilst importing ‘Han Chinese’ into Xinjiang.  Whilst the population of the Han Chinese in the region in 1949 was 6%, it rose to 40% by the year 2000.  This, exacerbated by Chinese economic marginalisation, served to found the basis for the separatist initiative.

 

Ed’s take on the matter

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My heart goes out to not only the Uyghur, but the 'Han Chinese' as well, as the latter are victims of the Chinese government's monocultural stand on things that sees the 'Han Chinese' defending themselves against the consequences.

~ ed 

Just as I do not support the separation of ‘Pakistan’ from India; or the past exclusion of the British from India, amongst other colonial states; or the formation of a separate Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka; or the eviction of the Jews from Palestine and vice versa, I cannot support Uyghur separation from China despite the fascism of the latter.

 

What China needs to do is to make a break with its age-old ‘middle kingdom’ perspective and seek to embrace difference for a change – perhaps, besides bringing in ‘foreign talent’ for the IT industry, they could consider bringing in cultural theorists from nations with histories of multiculturalism and whom can be of aid in helping China transition from the Third to the First World of multiculturalism.  The separation of the Uyghur from China would, in essence, be a validation of cultural fascism.  It is most unfortunate that cultural fascism is often unwittingly utilised as a response to cultural fascism.  In the past, amongst a host of other instances, we saw the Indians evicting the British on the grounds of them being ‘foreign’ – which was a thoroughly un-Indian thing to do given their history of accommodating difference;  Malcolm X liked his coffee ‘black’ and had initially called for black separation from the whites – till he very wisely changed his mind after his universalist experience in Mecca whilst on pilgrimage; we saw some Arab nations wanting to ‘push the Israelis into the sea’ after the west illegitimately handed over Palestinian lands to the Jews; and we saw Pakistan being formed along religious lines.  Too often, we have used the selfsame standards by which we are judged and marginalised to judge and separate.  Too often, whilst fixated on the shared history of an insulated past, we have abjured the sharing of the history of the present.  In this, we feed the generic notion that if we aren’t similar, we can’t live together in respect of difference, and in hope for mutual integration and accommodation.

 

But, I have to add, we cannot view both defensive and offensive cultural fascism as equal lest this detracts us from appreciating the root cause of the problem.  The fascism of the Uyghur can be perceived as self-defensive fascism as opposed to China’s offensive brand of fascism that seeks to dilute the culture of another whilst simultaneously lauding its own, and whilst doing similarly with the ethnic make-up of the region with the importation of ‘Han Chinese’ – just as it is doing with Tibet with the traditional aid of the apathetic acquiescence of a population accustomed to tragically taking pride in following the lead of the few.  In that, my heart goes out to not only the Uyghur, but the 'Han Chinese' as well, as the latter are victims of the Chinese government's monocultural stand on things that sees the 'Han Chinese' defending themselves against its consequences. 

 

I suppose, if one was to go back into history, and acknowledge the fact that the China that Shih Huang Ti ‘united’ was only a fraction of the size of the China of today, and that for China to occupy the lands that is now perceived to be ‘China’ by its inhabitants and the global populace, it can only be due to the success of its authorities in the imposition of cultural fascism on newly acquired territories in the historical past.  Unfortunately, since there is already a perceived racial division in China, instead of incorporating the new into the identity of ‘Han Chinese’, we might just see a perpetuation of their marginalisation on the basis of ethnic difference.  And with the underdevelopment of a people that ensues with such marginalisation, their incorporation into a thus created ‘superior race’ of people would be forestalled.

 

China ought to utilise this opportunity to include difference, just as it has an opportunity to do so with Tibet.  What the west is doing politically via, amongst others, the European Union, China can do culturally.  But, given an extremely ingrained view borne of two millennia of practice - that difference signals the weakness of the government, or that it threatens the political longevity of the party in power - it would predictably not have formed the formulae necessary to contend with difference and avoid eradicating or discounting difference reflexively.  Just because monoculturalism had been paired with a ‘united’ nation-state of China for over 2000 years, it ought not to be perceived as the only means via which it may be delivered.  In truth, whilst monoculturalism can deliver stability, it will inevitably deliver perspectival docility as well – one of the reasons why India is at the forefront of the IT industry and not China.  Whilst difference may be more difficult to manage, it can deliver far more than that which is (easy to manage).  And if difference is difficult to manage, it just serves to indicate that the rules and perspectives one utilises to make sense of things has yet to undergo a change that would render it easy to manage.

 

Hence, after 2000 years of perspectival stability, I won’t be surprised if China views difference as ‘chaotic’ or ‘cannot be controlled’.  In that, it is not that difference is ‘chaotic’ or ‘cannot be controlled’, but a history that is used to assimilating or marginalising difference, as opposed to accommodating it, would necessarily render them perspectivally disabled when it comes to contending with difference as the learning curve is greater with accommodation as opposed to assimilation.  And when one fuses this with the phenomenon of ‘cultural pride’, it can render the authority and population resistant to the influence of ‘foreigners’ in this respect or anything that is not competition-based.  I can quite understand that, as those who fall prey to cultural pride will frequently only adopt the ways of others when it can feed this cultural pride.  And in that, it will generally only be in terms of competition or the adoption of recuperative or compensatory elements of other cultures – such as pop culture.

 

So how long are the Uyghur supposed to put up with this offensive brand of cultural and political fascism? 

 

I can’t answer that. 

But I can say that the world, by standing by and allowing this to take place, as it did in Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, Palestine, amongst others, is that which significantly contributes to the basis upon which separatism emerges.  And when this happens, given that the fragmentation of the world via nation-states is perceived to be a good, they tend to stand by and do nothing as one state, amongst a fraternity of states, steps in with guns-blazing to prevent its dissolution - for to support the dissolution of one state is to unwittingly afford a thumbs-up to separatist tendencies amongst its respective populations. 

 

I suppose the world’s apathy in the face of cultural fascism in Xinjiang can, in part, be put down to their waiting for the situation to resolve itself as it had in the historical past when states were relatively insulated and cultural pogroms could be conducted without global scrutiny.  In other words, if China has a problem with its Uyghur population, it is not because it is a new problem but because it cannot do what it does without the world noticing it ‘real time’.  As I had stated above, when we see a large population who perceive themselves as, for instance, one race and abiding by one culture, it can either be due to cultural fascism in the past that has been concluded successfully, or because people of relatively undeveloped cultures have been exposed to a relatively developed one. i.e. the nomadic Mongols largely adopting Chinese culture during the Yuan dynasty.  Hence, the rest of the world’s elite might be waiting for the Tibet and Xinjiang situation to peter out with time as it had with other parts of China in the past. 

 

And let us not forget that western nation-states with their allegedly different ‘French’, ‘English’, ‘Germans’, etc, were created through a similar fashion. (ref. Benedict Anderson’s, ‘The Imagined State’).  So perhaps, under the guise of respecting the sovereignty of another state by not ‘interfering in internal affairs’, the world is sitting by and hoping that the Chinese would be able to quietly assimilate new lands and peoples into their state.  Unfortunately, this hope is scuppered by the Chinese doing unto the Uyghur that which was done unto the Jews by the Nazis – minus the extermination camps – and in full view of the world wide web of humanity. I suppose the western population is subconsciously aware that a pogrom is a pogrom, be it racial or cultural given their experience with Nazism.  Except that since a cultural pogrom is not as overtly destructive, they are empathetically disabled from doing anything significant about it – which indicates a deficiency in their perspective that compromises empathy in such a manner.

 

It is about time that the world takes a serious view of cultural pogroms so that violent tendencies, as manifested in the Uyghur separatist tendencies, or that of the Tamil Tigers, or that of the Hezbollah or Hamas, or IRA in the past, can be countered in its pre-conceptional stage. 

 

I cannot, because of the world’s failure to do this, move on to support separatist tendencies.  That is compensation for not doing the right thing earlier.  In that, greater evils may be unleashed as the developmental trajectory of humanity has its launching point permanently positioned where further along its development, other evils inevitably arise.  Hence, what we can do is to put pressure on the elite of the world to do the right thing despite more accessible separatist or assimilationist solutions that simply makes two wrongs of a wrong. 

And let's not forget Tibet

 

Ed