The Xinjiang Emergency: Exploring the Causes and Consequences of China’s Mass Detention of Uyghurs

Edited by Michael Clarke, Manchester University Press, February 2022

This edited volume assembles an interdisciplinary collection of articles examining the experiences of Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang. Chapters discuss the historical trajectory that continues to shape these experiences, a wide array of past and present settler-colonial practices, the discourses that inform these practices, and how these events manifest and intersect on the international stage. As a whole, they contribute to a holistic view of the ongoing crisis and provide the necessary context for the recent system of extrajudicial detentions.

Xinjiang Year Zero

Edited by Darren Byler, Ivan Franceschini, Nicholas Loubere, ANU Press, January 2022

Xinjiang Year Zero takes a decolonial and anti-racist stance in its examination of Xinjiang and argues that the colonization of Xinjiang must be linked to other instances of contemporary colonization in places like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Kashmir, and Palestine, and ongoing settler colonialism in North America and Australia. The struggle against labour malpractice, mass incarceration, corporative land theft, and police brutality globally must be thought of alongside the systems in Xinjiang. Anti-imperialism means standing in opposition to imperialism and all its forms everywhere, and standing with the victims and diasporas produced by these hegemonies.

The Contest of the Fruits

Edited by Guangtian Ha and Slavs and Tatars, MIT Press, October 2021

With half of its contributors being Uyghurs from the region, The Contest of the Fruit is a rare, refreshing book at a time when so much academic publishing on the topic of Xinjiang is done by First World scholars of European descent. This collected volume juxtaposes critical scholarship, creative artwork, and artist interviews as equal knowledge builders for understanding the impact of cultural erasure and racialized violence in the Uyghur and Kazakh homeland. Grounded in thick description of Uyghur epistemologies, symbols, sounds, jokes, literary references and their deep roots in the wider Islamic world, The Contest of Fruit is a feast of Uyghur culture full of what the editors call “rubbery resistance” to Chinese assimilation. Educators can use this book for teaching a wide range of subjects such as decolonizing methodology, ethnic politics, pop culture in China, theatre, and performance studies.

Worse Than Death: Reflections on the Uyghur Genocide

Mantimin Ala, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing, February 2021

In this book, Ala, an Uyghur diaspora scholar, reflects on the increasingly oppressive political climate Uyghurs experience in contemporary Xinjiang. He argues that the autonomous region was made a colony of the PRC in 1949, and that Uyghurs, its dominant ethnic group, have found themselves the targets of a genocidal campaign in the wake of Xi Jinping’s ascendance in 2013. In addition to examining various historical and political contexts of the current crisis, Ala also addresses and condemns the indifference with which these events have been perceived internationally.

Land of Strangers: The Civilizing Project in Qing Central Asia

Eric Schluessel, Columbia University Press, October 2020

Schluessel’s book traces the consequences of the Qing empire’s nineteenth-century project to make Xinjiang’s Turkic-speaking Muslims embrace a culturally Chinese identity. Taking a social history perspective, the book examines the impact of this colonial project on families, on identity, and on current events in the region.

Securing China’s Northwest Frontier: Identity and Insecurity in Xinjiang

David Tobin, Cambridge University Press, September 2020

Tobin analyzes the tense ethnic relations between Han and Uyghur peoples within a Chinese state, and argues that their enmity is further exacerbated due to the PRC Government treating Chinese identity as a matter of security.

The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority

David Tobin, Cambridge University Press, September 2020

Roberts shows how China is using the US-led war on terror to erase the cultural identity of its Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region.

Negotiating Inseparability in China: The Xinjiang Class and the Dynamics of Uyghur Identity

Tim Grose, Hong Kong University Press, 15 January 2020

Tracing the lives of several students from the “Xinjiang Class,” namely Uyghur students who went to boarding school in other parts of China under a state boarding program, Grose’s ethnography reveals the complicated identity formation processes that the students are embedded in. In particular, the forces of economic development, the mastery of the Chinese language, the distance created with their Uyghur heritage, being an ethnic minority in Han-dominated parts of China, and other intersecting issues unfold in the midst of an increasingly authoritarian China. Considering the recent development in Xinjiang, this book might be one of the last ethnographic accounts to be produced in the foreseeable future.

The Great Dispossession: Uyghurs between Civilizations

Ildikó Bellér-Hann and Chris Hann, LIT Verlag, January 2020

Based on their fieldwork in Xinjiang in 2006-2009, Ildikó Bellér-Hann and Chris Hann trace the experiences of Uyghurs as the state has worked to bring them in line with China’s broader national identity. They examine how “macro-level tensions” have manifested in discourses around history, identity, religious practice, and other aspects of everyday life at local and regional levels.

China’s Assistance Program in Xinjiang: A Sociological Analysis

Yuhui Li, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing, 15 August 2018

China’s Assistance Program in Xinjiang closely examines and follows the impact of the partnership assistance program (PAP) in Xinjiang introduced in the 1990s. Yuhui Li notes PAP was expanded in 2010 as a response to the 2009 attack on Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang, noting this as a pivotal moment for the program. Leveraging a sociological perspective, the author highlights the massive industrial expansion in the region along with the push for urbanization that has happened in recent years. However, the book also explores the unintended consequences of this modernization push and the potential exacerbation of racial tensions in Xinjiang as a result.