The Tibetan and Uyghur Struggle Against Chinese Imperialism

The following is an essay I wrote several days ago, in response to the riots in Urumqi. It deals mostly with the historical background of the region, rather than the riots themselves. The truth about the riots is not suprisingly disputed between the Chinese and the Uyghurs, and exactly what happened will probably never be known exactly (another instance of the problem discussed in my previous essay). No doubt there are guilty and innocent parties on both sides, and the legitimacy of the Uyghurs' grievances against the Chinese government does not justify violence against innocent Han Chinese (though I suspect there is some truth to the Uyghurs' assertions that the Chinese government has exaggerated Uyghur violence against the Chinese and minimized Chinese violence against the Uyghur, just as happened with the riots in Lhasa last year). This essay has already been published in a shorter form elsewhere on the web. At the end of the essay I have added a few paragraphs I wrote in response to a reader's comments on the published version.

The news that large-scale rioting has taken place in Urumqi is a reminder that the Tibetans are not the only people who are not happy with Chinese rule. But to understand the situation in either place it is necessary to be clear on a few background facts. Historically, Tibet and the Central Asian region sometimes known as East Turkestan (known to the Chinese as "Xinjiang") have been inhabited by the Tibetans and Uyghurs (sometimes spelled "Uighur") respectively. Neither of these peoples is Chinese; their languages, customs, cultures and religions are completely distinct from China's. So why does China rule them now? First it might be helpful to get an idea of the extent of China proper. The easiest way to do this is to look up a historical map of Ming dynasty China. You'll notice that Chinese territory in the Ming dynasty did not include Tibet, Turkestan, Mongolia, or the lands north of the Korean peninsula that now make up northeast China . This is because these lands were not inhabited by Chinese. But in the 17th century, China was conquered by the Manchus, a non-Chinese people from the northeast, who set up the Qing dynasty. The Manchus were regarded by the Chinese as foreigners, though over time they eventually were assimilated by their subjects. In the first decades of Manchu rule, they expanded their empire far beyond China, conquering Mongolia, East Turkestan and Tibet. These territories were imperial possessions, just as India was an imperial possession of the British, Central America was an imperial territory of Spain, and so forth. In most cases, the Manchu did not run these territories the same way they ran China, as neither they nor the people of these regions was Chinese. The main thing these regions had in common with China was that they were all part of the same empire.

In 1912, after a long period of decline under pressure both from foreign imperialists and domestic rebels, the Qing dynasty fell and the Republic of China was proclaimed. The ROC laid claim to all the territory of the Manchu empire, despite the fact that much of it was not Chinese. The new government was unable to enforce its claims, so most of the non-Chinese regions became independent (for that matter, the central government did not even effectively control all of China proper, as most of it was ruled by autonomous warlords). However, they maintained their questionable claims of sovereignty over all the empire, so when the ROC government was forced out of China to Taiwan and the People's Republic of China was set up, the PRC in turn claimed all of the same empire (except part of Mongolia, which their Soviet allies forced them to recognize as independent). Unfortunately for places like Tibet, which had been a de facto independent country for several decades by this time, the PRC was able to enforce its claims militarily, conquering all of the non-Chinese areas that had once been part of the Manchu empire except outer Mongolia (ironically enough, before they actually gained power, Mao and other communist leaders had at times supported full independence for all these outlying regions, only to change their minds once they had the power to take them over).

Are the Chinese claims to sovereignty over these places justifiable? One way to answer that is to ask whether other imperial claims are justifiable. Did Britain have the "right" to rule India, Malaysia, east Africa, and all its other imperial possessions? Did the French have the "right" to its colonies in West Africa, Indochina, and so on? Did Russia have the "right" to rule Poland, which it did throughout the 19th century? Most people now would agree that imperialism and colonialism as practiced by the Europeans was wrong, and all of those countries were justified in struggling for independence. So is Chinese rule in historically non-Chinese areas justified? China runs these places, which they "inherited" as part of an empire, in exactly the same exploitative fashion that the Europeans ran their colonies. In some ways Chinese rule is even worse, as the Chinese government have actively tried to suppress local culture (the Europeans did this in some places, but not everywhere) and it is using the vast population of Chinese to swamp the local people by encouraging the Han (as the ethnic Chinese are called) to move to these places in large numbers to make money. Most of the money from economic development in place like Tibet and East Turkestan goes into the pockets of Han Chinese, so the local people see that not only have they lost their independence, but their homeland is being turned into a Han-majority region in which they will be an impoverished minority with a culture that is slowly withering away. It's no wonder that some of them are inclined to riot.

In the case of Tibet, China tries to blame any rioting on the Dalai Lama, despite the fact that he has bent over backwards to emphasize his opposition to violence and his willingness to settle for autonomy rather than independence. In East Turkestan ("Xinjiang"), China blames all violence on Islamic fundamentalists and "terrorists". This is a particularly disingenuous effort to lump Muslims struggling for independence for their own homeland with al-Qaeda terrorists like Osama bin Laden. Some Uyghurs were indeed captured by American troops in Afghanistan and Pakistan and imprisoned in Guantanamo, but the US has since determined that they were not a danger to it. It should surprise no one that Uyghurs who chose to turn to violence in their struggle against Chinese rule went to camps associated with al-Qaeda for training; Afghanistan and Pakistan are just across the border from East Turkestan, and it's not like they had any other options. They can be faulted for choosing violence in their struggle, but to consider them the same as anti-Western militants like bin Laden just because they went to the only place they could for weapons and training is foolish and even counterproductive, as they may conclude that as Western countries are helping China to oppress them, they might as well consider Westerners their enemies along with the Chinese. In fact their only enemies are the Chinese military and government, which will happily torture and execute them if it gets its hands on them. But the point to remember is that both the Nobel Peace Prize-winning advocate of non-violence the Dalai Lama and the Uyghurs in Guantanamo, as well as those who rioted in Urumqi, have something in common -- they are all victims of old-fashioned imperialism and colonialism at the hands of China.

We can also expect to hear numerous complaints from Chinese that the Western media is biased against China and is distorting the truth to make the government look bad, just as the Iranian government has done with regard to the post-election violence there. The irony, of course, is that while they claim that Westerners don't know the true situation in their country and so make up lies about it, they won't let anyone actually go and see for themselves. After the rioting in Tibet, foreigners were kicked out of the region and barred from entering it, particularly if they were journalists (much as Iran banned journalists from leaving their offices to do news reports). In Urumqi, there are already reports that an American academic who happened to be in Urumqi was arrested after being caught taking pictures of the riot and forced to delete the pictures he'd taken. Selective use of footage of the incident is also apparent, with Chinese media showing violence by rioters rather than clips of peaceful marchers or police violence against protestors. Whether foreign journalists will be allowed completely free access to Urumqi (rather than being taken on tours by the government) is still open to question, but it is already clear that the government will try to control reporting of the incident. The Chinese also like to claim that most people in Tibet and East Turkestan are happy with Chinese rule. If that is the case, why are they so afraid of letting people speak their minds about it? If a desire for independence is indeed a minority opinion, then they have no more to fear from it than the US government has to fear from the Alaskan Independence Party. More likely, the Chinese know or at least fear that, given the chance to speak freely, most Tibetans and Uyghurs would support independence.

So the question for the rest of the world is, should we support or acquiesce in Chinese colonial rule in Tibet and East Turkestan, or should we support the Tibetans and Uyghurs in their desire for the same independence that has been granted to most European colonies around the world? Will we be bamboozled by Chinese assertions that these areas are historically part of China (which is no more true than saying, for example, that India is historically part of the UK) and so their colonial rule is justified? Will we be fooled by claims that the rioting Uyghurs are al-Qaeda-allied Islamic terrorists instead of fighters for independence? Will we just sit back and watch as the Chinese government once again crushes a challenge to its rule? Or will we call on the Chinese to let the Tibetans and Uyghurs decide their own future and the future of the lands that were theirs long before the Chinese came? As individuals, if enough of us speak out against Chinese colonialism in Tibet and Turkestan and call on our elected leaders to take a similar stand, perhaps we can put enough pressure on China for it to see that it cannot continue to maintain its empire through repression, and that if it truly wants to be a world leader, it has to respect the rights of all the people in its territory.

One of my purposes here is to counter the incessant Chinese propaganda insisting that China has a legitimate and indisputable historical claim to the region, and to make clear that both the Uyghurs and Tibetans have very legitimate reasons for advocating independence. However, that does not mean that instantly granting these places independence (if that were possible) would solve all the problems they have. The fact that there are already many Han Chinese in these places (particularly in East Turkestan, where there are almost as many Han as Uyghur) means that an independent Turkestan would face a situation similar to that of Baltic states such as Estonia, which after independence from Russia were left with sizable Russian minorities (in fact East Turkestan's Han minority would be even bigger). So a theoretical independent East Turkestan would have to be able to guarantee the rights of the Han as well. Whether relations are so bad that a situation like that would be unworkable, I can't say for certain; I'm afraid it's quite possible. This problem of course arises all the time all over the world; Kosovo has its Serb minority, Georgia has its breakaway regions, an independent Quebec would have a very large population of non-French origin, etc.

Secondly, there is unfortunately no chance that the current Chinese government would grant East Turkestan independence. Probably the only way that could happen is is China underwent a political collapse (usually the best opportunity for borderlands to break away). A more realistic near-term solution is real autonomy, such that the local people have real power in their region. This doesn't just mean appointing Uyghurs (or, in Tibet, Tibetans) to high government positions; the Chinese do this already. It would ideally mean that Beijing would relinquish control over everything but a few key things (foreign policy, the military, trade with other parts of China, etc.) and these regions would have their own laws and be free to practice their own culture (as it is, there are many restrictions on for example the practice of religion; see this article in Time) In fact a situation similar to this (local autonomy under overall Chinese control) existed in central Tibet in the 1950s, where initially the Tibetan government was left in place. Unfortunately the Chinese did not honor their promises to keep out of local affairs, which ultimately led to the uprising in Lhasa in 1959 and the flight of the Dalai Lama to India.

In a way, advocating independence for East Turkestan and Tibet is a bargaining position. As I said, the first thing is for everyone to acknowledge that there are legitimate grounds for a pro-independence stance. That doesn't mean independence is the only solution. While in principle I would consider it ideal, I think both the Uyghurs and Tibetans should be willing to consider a compromise, which would be real autonomy (and restrictions on migration to their regions) under Chinese rule (this is in fact the Dalai Lama's position). The problem is that at this point China isn't willing to give them anything at all, and even refuses to acknowledge they have any legitimate rights. If the Chinese can be forced to acknowledge the true history of the regions and the real current situation, then maybe a compromise can be reached.