Xinjiang
Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China, in the northwest of the country at the crossroads of Central Asia and East Asia. The largest province-level division of China by area and the 8th-largest country subdivision in the world, Xinjiang spans over and has about 25 million inhabitants. Xinjiang borders the countries of Afghanistan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russia, and Tajikistan. The rugged Karakoram, Kunlun, and Tian Shan mountain ranges occupy much of Xinjiang's borders, as well as its western and southern regions. The Aksai Chin and Trans-Karakoram Tract regions are claimed by India but administered by China. Xinjiang also borders the Tibet Autonomous Region and the provinces of Gansu and Qinghai. The best-known route of the historic Silk Road ran through the territory from the east to its northwestern border.
High mountain ranges divide Xinjiang into the Dzungarian Basin in the north and the Tarim Basin in the south. Only about 9.7% of Xinjiang's land area is fit for human habitation. It is home to a number of ethnic groups, including the Han Chinese, Hui, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Mongols, Russians, Sibe, Tajiks, Tibetans, and Uyghurs. There are more than a dozen autonomous prefectures and counties for minorities in Xinjiang. Many older English-language reference works call the area Chinese Turkestan, Chinese Turkistan, East Turkestan or East Turkistan.
With a documented history of at least 2,500 years, a succession of people and empires have vied for control over all or parts of this territory. In the 18th century it came under the rule of the Qing dynasty, which was later replaced by the Republic of China. Since 1949 and the Chinese Civil War, it has been part of the People's Republic of China. In 1954, the Chinese Communist Party established the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps to strengthen border defense against the Soviet Union and promote the local economy by settling soldiers into the region. In 1955, Xinjiang was administratively changed from a province into an autonomous region. In recent decades, abundant oil and mineral reserves have been found in Xinjiang and it has become China's largest natural-gas-producing region.
From the 1990s to the 2010s, the East Turkestan independence movement, separatist conflict and the influence of radical Islam have resulted in unrest in the region with occasional terrorist attacks and clashes between separatist and government forces. These conflicts prompted the Chinese government to commit a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in the region including, according to some, genocide.
Names
The general region of Xinjiang has been known by many different names, including Altishahr—the historical Uyghur name for the southern half of the region referring to "the six cities" of the Tarim Basin—Khotan, Khotay, Chinese Tartary, High Tartary, East Chagatay, Moghulistan, Kashgaria, Little Bokhara, Serindia and, in Chinese, Xiyu, meaning "Western Regions".Between the 2nd century BC and 2nd century AD, the Han Empire established the Protectorate of the Western Regions or Xiyu Protectorate in an effort to secure the profitable routes of the Silk Road. The Western Regions during the Tang era were known as Qixi. Qi refers to the Gobi Desert and Xi refers to the west. The Tang Empire established the Protectorate General to Pacify the West or Anxi Protectorate in 640 to control the region.
During the Qing dynasty, the northern part of Xinjiang, Dzungaria, was known as Zhunbu and the Southern Tarim Basin as Huijiang. Both regions merged after the Qing dynasty suppressed the Revolt of the Altishahr Khojas in 1759, becoming "Xiyu Xinjiang", later simplified as "Xinjiang". The official name was given during the reign of the Guangxu Emperor in 1878. It can be translated as "new frontier" or "new territory". In fact, the term "Xinjiang" was used in many other places conquered but never ruled by Chinese empires directly until the gradual Gaitu Guiliu administrative reform, including regions in Southern China. For instance, present-day Jinchuan County in Sichuan was then known as "Jinchuan Xinjiang", Zhaotong in Yunnan was named "Xinjiang", Qiandongnan region, Anshun and Zhenning were named "Liangyou Xinjiang", etc.
In 1955, Xinjiang Province was renamed "Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region". The name originally proposed was simply "Xinjiang Autonomous Region" because that was the name of the imperial territory. This proposal was not well received by Uyghurs in the Communist Party, who found the name colonialist since it meant "new territory". Seypidin Azizi, the first chairman of Xinjiang, expressed his strong objection to the proposed name to Mao Zedong, arguing that "autonomy is not given to mountains and rivers. It is given to particular nationalities." Some Uyghur Communists proposed the name "Tian Shan Uyghur Autonomous Region" instead. The Han Communists in the central government denied the name Xinjiang was colonialist or that the central government could be colonialist, both because they were communists and because China was a victim of colonialism. But due to the Uyghur complaints, the administrative region was named "Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region".
Description
Xinjiang consists of two main geographically, historically, and ethnically distinct regions with different historical names, Dzungaria north of the Tianshan Mountains and the Tarim Basin south of the Tianshan Mountains. Qing China unified them into one political entity, Xinjiang Province, in 1884. At the time of the Qing conquest in 1759, Dzungaria was inhabited by steppe-dwelling, nomadic Tibetan Buddhist Dzungar people and the Tarim Basin by sedentary, oasis-dwelling, Turkic-speaking Muslim farmers, now known as the Uyghurs, who were governed separately until 1884.The Qing dynasty was well aware of the differences between the former Buddhist Mongol area in the north and the Turkic Muslim area in the south, and ruled them in separate administrative units at first. But Qing people began to think of both areas as part of a single region called Xinjiang. The very concept of Xinjiang as a single geographic identity was created by the Qing. During Qing rule, ordinary Xinjiang people had no sense of "regional identity"; rather, Xinjiang's distinct identity was given to the region by the Qing, since it had distinctive geography, history, and culture, while at the same time it was created by the Chinese, multicultural, settled by Han and Hui, and separated from Central Asia for over a century and a half.
In the late 19th century, some people were still proposing that two separate regions be created out of Xinjiang, the area north of the Tianshan and the area south of the Tianshan, while it was being debated whether to make Xinjiang a province.
Xinjiang is a large, sparsely populated area, spanning over 1.6 million km2, about a sixth of China's territory. Xinjiang borders the Tibet Autonomous Region and India's Leh district in Ladakh to the south, Qinghai and Gansu provinces to the east, Mongolia to the east, Russia's Altai Republic to the north, and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, Afghanistan's Badakhshan Province, and Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan to the west.
The east–west chain of the Tian Shan separates Dzungaria in the north from the Tarim Basin in the south. Dzungaria is a dry steppe and the Tarim Basin contains the massive Taklamakan Desert, surrounded by oases. In the east is the Turpan Depression. In the west, the Tian Shan split, forming the Ili River valley.
History
Early history
The earliest inhabitants of the region encompassing modern day Xinjiang were genetically of Ancient North Eurasian and Northeast Asian origin, with later geneflow from during the Bronze Age linked to the expansion of early Indo-Europeans. These population dynamics gave rise to a heterogeneous demographic makeup. Iron Age samples from Xinjiang show intensified levels of admixture between Steppe pastoralists and northeast Asians, with northern and eastern Xinjiang showing more affinities with northeast Asians, and southern Xinjiang showing more affinity with central Asians.Between 2009 and 2015, the remains of 92 individuals in the Xiaohe Cemetery were analyzed for Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA markers. Genetic analyses of the mummies showed that the paternal lineages of the Xiaohe people were of almost all European origin, while the maternal lineages of the early population were diverse, featuring both East Eurasian and West Eurasian lineages, as well as a smaller number of Indian / South Asian lineages. Over time, the west Eurasian maternal lineages were gradually replaced by east Eurasian maternal lineages. Outmarriage to women from Siberian communities, led to the loss of the original diversity of mtDNA lineages observed in the earlier Xiaohe population.
The Tarim population was therefore always notably diverse, reflecting a complex history of admixture between people of Ancient North Eurasian, South Asian and Northeast Asian descent. The Tarim mummies have been found in various locations in the Western Tarim Basin such as Loulan, the Xiaohe Tomb complex and Qäwrighul. These mummies have been previously suggested to have been Tocharian or Indo-European speakers, but recent evidence suggest that the earliest mummies belonged to a distinct population unrelated to Indo-European pastoralists and spoke an unknown language, probably a language isolate.
Although many of the Tarim mummies were classified as Caucasoid by anthropologists, Tarim Basin sites also contain both "Caucasoid" and "Mongoloid" remains, indicating contact between newly arrived western nomads and agricultural communities in the east. Mummies have been found in various locations in the Western Tarim Basin such as Loulan, the Xiaohe Tomb complex and Qäwrighul.
Nomadic tribes such as the Yuezhi, Saka and Wusun were probably part of the migration of Indo-European speakers who had settled in Tarim Basin of Xinjiang long before the Xiongnu and Han Chinese. By the time the Han dynasty under Emperor Wu wrested the western Tarim Basin away from its previous overlords, it was inhabited by various peoples who included the Indo-European-speaking Tocharians in Turfan and Kucha, the Saka peoples centered in the Shule Kingdom and the Kingdom of Khotan, the various Tibeto-Burmese groups as well as the Han Chinese people. Some linguists posit that the Tocharian language had high amounts of influence from Paleosiberian languages, such as Uralic and Yeniseian languages.
Yuezhi culture is documented in the region. The first known reference to the Yuezhi was in 645 BC by the Chinese chancellor Guan Zhong in his work, Guanzi. He described the Yúshì, 禺氏, as a people from the north-west who supplied jade to the Chinese from the nearby mountains in Gansu. The longtime jade supply from the Tarim Basin is well-documented archaeologically: "It is well known that ancient Chinese rulers had a strong attachment to jade. All of the jade items excavated from the tomb of Fuhao of the Shang dynasty, more than 750 pieces, were from Khotan in modern Xinjiang. As early as the mid-first millennium BC, the Yuezhi engaged in the jade trade, of which the major consumers were the rulers of agricultural China."
Crossed by the Northern Silk Road, the Tarim and Dzungaria regions were known as the Western Regions. At the beginning of the Han dynasty the region was ruled by the Xiongnu, a powerful nomadic people. During the 2nd century BC, the Han dynasty prepared for war against Xiongnu when Emperor Wu of Han dispatched Zhang Qian to explore the mysterious kingdoms to the west and form an alliance with the Yuezhi against the Xiongnu. As a result of the war, the Chinese controlled the strategic region from the Ordos and Gansu corridor to Lop Nor. They separated the Xiongnu from the Qiang people on the south and gained direct access to the Western Regions. Han China sent Zhang Qian as an envoy to the states of the region, beginning several decades of struggle between the Xiongnu and Han China in which China eventually prevailed. During the 100s BCE, the Silk Road brought increasing Chinese economic and cultural influence to the region. In 60 BCE, Han China established the Protectorate of the Western Regions at Wulei, to oversee the region as far west as the Pamir Mountains. The protectorate was seized during the civil war against Wang Mang, returning to Han control in 91 due to the efforts of general Ban Chao.
The Western Jin dynasty succumbed to successive waves of invasions by nomads from the north at the beginning of the 4th century. The short-lived kingdoms that ruled northwestern China one after the other, including Former Liang, Former Qin, Later Liang and Western Liáng, all attempted to maintain the protectorate, with varying degrees of success. After the final reunification of Northern China under the Northern Wei empire, its protectorate controlled what is now the southeastern region of Xinjiang. Local states such as Shule, Yutian, Guizi and Qiemo controlled the western region, while the central region around Turpan was controlled by Gaochang, remnants of a state that once ruled part of what is now Gansu province in northwestern China.
File:Westerner on a camel.jpg|thumb|upright=.80|alt=Ceramic statue of a small amn riding a large camel|A Sogdian man on a Bactrian camel. Sancai ceramic statuette, Tang dynasty
During the Tang dynasty, a series of expeditions were conducted against the Western Turkic Khaganate and their vassals: the oasis states of southern Xinjiang. Campaigns against the oasis states began under Emperor Taizong with the annexation of Gaochang in 640. The nearby kingdom of Karasahr was captured by the Tang in 644 and the kingdom of Kucha was conquered in 649. The Tang Dynasty then established the Protectorate General to Pacify the West or Anxi Protectorate, in 640 to control the region.
During the Anshi Rebellion, which nearly destroyed the Tang dynasty, Tibet invaded the Tang on a broad front from Xinjiang to Yunnan. It occupied the Tang capital of Chang'an in 763 for 16 days, and controlled southern Xinjiang by the end of the century. The Uyghur Khaganate took control of Northern Xinjiang, much of Central Asia and Mongolia at the same time.
As Tibet and the Uyghur Khaganate declined in the mid-9th century, the Kara-Khanid Khanate controlled Western Xinjiang during the 10th and 11th centuries. After the Uyghur Khaganate in Mongolia was destroyed by the Kirghiz in 840, branches of the Uyghurs established themselves in Qocha and Beshbalik. The Uyghur state remained in eastern Xinjiang until the 13th century, although it was ruled by foreign overlords. The Kara-Khanids converted to Islam. The Uyghur state in Eastern Xinjiang, initially Manichean, later converted to Buddhism.
Remnants of the Liao dynasty from Manchuria entered Xinjiang in 1132, fleeing rebellion by the neighboring Jurchens. They established a new empire, the Qara Khitai, which ruled the Kara-Khanid and Uyghur-held parts of the Tarim Basin for the next century. Although Khitan and Chinese were the primary administrative languages, Persian and Uyghur were also used.