Riots in East Turkestan: Future of Uighurs

Koji

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why would China organize these riots? but the chinese get a good excuse to send troops.
As far as I know, they're sending troops into their own territory. Why has this been construed as going "deeper" into Central Asia?
 

youngindian

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Chinese Muslim protests spread to 2nd city

Last Updated: Monday, July 6, 2009 | 9:27 AM ET


Protesters from the Uighur ethnic group took to the streets in a second city in northwestern China on Monday, a day after a demonstration in the provincial capital turned into a riot that left 140 dead.

A Uighur man in the city of Kashgar in Xinjiang province said he was among more than 300 protesters who demonstrated outside the Id Kah Mosque late Monday afternoon, The Associated Press reported.

He said police surrounded them, and the two sides were yelling at each other but there were no clashes.The Uighurs — an ethnically Turkic, predominantly Muslim group — make up the majority in the Xinjiang region and their relations have often been tense with the ethnic Han Chinese who predominate in the country as a whole. Many Uighurs feel they're discriminated against by the government in Beijing and a Uighur separatist movement has existed for decades.

The latest protests started in the provincial capital of Urumqi on Sunday, when demonstrators gathered to demand justice for two Uighurs killed in June during a fight with their Han co-workers at a factory in southern China.

The protests turned into the deadliest ethnic unrest to hit the region in decades.

Photos and video posted on the internet showed the city in flames, as rioters went on a rampage, clashing with police and rolling over police cars.

Chinese television showed pictures of severely beaten women with blood gushing from their faces, CBC's Anthony Germain reported.

The state media reported large mobs carrying knives, wooden batons and bricks gathered last night and started to attack passersby. The reports claimed the mob started to torch businesses and shops in the area.

"There are no details of the police response to the violence but in Xinjiang, the Chinese police often react swiftly and with deadly force," Germain said.

Some streets remained blockaded and armed police were on patrol attempting to restore order.

Many Uighur organizations claim Beijing persecutes Muslims with the aim of wiping out their religion and allege none of the jobs in the region’s lucrative oil industry ever go to Muslims.

The Communist government has said it is trying to snuff out terrorist activities in the region and is blaming the riots on what they call "Muslim traitors," who the government claims are trying to destabilize the country.


Chinese Muslim protests spread to 2nd city
 

Daredevil

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DD, I was addressing LF's claim that this stuff doesn't happen in India.

Do you have proof that the state is deliberately causing these riots?
I didn't say riots were arranged by CCP. I said they have hanised Xinjiang and supressed their voice and so the riots ensued as a vent to Uighurs frustration. Though, it has to be see that if the number of people killed in the riots that CCP is claiming is true or not. There is no independent verification of this, so we can't believe official reports of CCP mouthpiece.

One thing is sure, the Uighurs will be suppressed or even cleansed to a higher degree using riots as a reason. As you can see below, the twitter and internet is already blocked in China. If it has not done anything wrong, why to suppress the independent reports that might come out from the ground zero.

Internet, Twitter Blocked in China City After Ethnic Riot

Monday, July 06, 2009 5:00 AM PDT
China appeared to block Twitter across the country and Internet access in a western province on Monday, after ethnic riots killed at least 140 people in the remote region.

The moves were an apparent bid to stanch the flow of information out of Xinjiang province and to prevent further rioting there. Over 800 other people were injured and the official death toll is likely to rise, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.

The government actions added to long-standing efforts to control online discussion of sensitive topics, especially at times of crisis.

"They cut off the Internet to shut down communications," said Wu'er Kaixi, an ethnic Uighur who fled China after helping lead pro-democracy protests there twenty years ago. The Uighurs are a minority concentrated in Xinjiang province that China has struggled to assimilate.

Beijing did not want Internet users to upload pictures and videos like they did after deadly riots last year in Tibet, Wu'er said.

China locked down communications much faster this time, he said.

Twitter became inaccessible in China around 3 p.m. local time Monday, according to complaints posted by users on the site. Users of Twitter and similar Chinese sites had been posting messages about the riots through the services. The Chinese sites were not blocked on Monday afternoon.

Twitter and other foreign Web sites, including Flickr and Microsoft's Bing search engine, were blocked for several days last month. The period included the date when China brutally suppressed the 1989 protests that Wu'er helped lead, an anniversary the government hoped would pass quietly.

China's telecommunications operators also appeared to block Internet access in Urumqi, the provincial capital where the riots occurred.

Wu'er said he had to use his parents' landline to reach them in Xinjiang on Tuesday.

"I normally call them on Skype but you can't get through now because the Internet is off," he said.

An employee reached by phone at an Urumqi hotel said Internet access in the building had been down since Sunday evening. Broadband users elsewhere in the city were also unable to get online, he said, declining to give his surname. The hotel gets its broadband service from China Telecom, one of China's three state-owned operators, the man said.

One Twitter user posted what he said was an explanation of the Internet outage from the provincial branches of China Telecom and China Unicom. Service would remain down indefinitely to prevent growth of the riots, the message said.

Long-distance call service dropped for China Telecom landline customers in Xinjiang after the riots, the same user said.

Calls to the relatively autonomous provincial operators would not connect on Tuesday. A China Mobile spokeswoman said the company's Beijing office had not heard of an Internet blackout in Xinjiang.

Video of the riots posted on YouTube showed buildings burning, police or paramilitary troops running and hundreds of people streaming down streets. YouTube has been blocked in China for months.

China has long sought to restrict the expression of views that contradict official lines on and off the Internet. Chinese state media last month criticized Western cheering for Iranian activists who used Twitter to share information following contested elections.

Twitter is increasingly popular in China, but its user base is confined mostly to well-off urbanites.

The Xinjiang regional government blamed a global Uighur organization it labeled separatist for starting the riots, according to Xinhua. But injured people brought to one hospital included both Uighurs and members of the Han ethnicity, who make up the overwhelming majority in China, according to another Xinhua report.

Uighurs, mostly Muslims, speak a Turkic language and have more cultural similarities to central Asians than to Han Chinese.

The official death toll from the riots outstrips any unrest in China in many years.

"This is very big. The government always alters the death toll but this time the number came in astronomically high," said Wu'er.

"That can only mean one thing," he said. "This time it's brutal."
 

Koji

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Well, there has been reports from a Western Vacationer in the region saying that he observed Uighurs beating on Hans.
 

Daredevil

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Well, there has been reports from a Western Vacationer in the region saying that he observed Uighurs beating on Hans.
He also said this

One American who watched the rioting at its height said he did not see people being killed or corpses in the streets, though he said he did see Uighurs shoving or kicking a few Han Chinese.

http://www.defenceforum.in/forum/36388-post14.html
It seems he didn't see any corpses, so, the claims of killing of 140 people are nothing but baloney by CCP.:wink:
 

Koji

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He also said this



It seems he didn't see any corpses, so, the claims of killing of 140 people are nothing but baloney by CCP.:wink:
Just because ONE witness did not see corpses, does not mean others did not as well.
 

Daredevil

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Just because ONE witness did not see corpses, does not mean others did not as well.
same applies to your assertion.

Well, there has been reports from a Western Vacationer in the region saying that he observed Uighurs beating on Hans.
Just because a western vacationer sees a bunch of guys beating another bunch of guys doesn't mean its a riot, it might be just a small skirmish.
 

badguy2000

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just as India does with low castes,chinese government also provides many privileges to ethnics minorities like Uighurs.

For example, when applying to universities, Uighuers candidates can get additional points.

when running for government jobs, Uighuers also can got addtional points.

besides, Uighiers are allowed to have long knives on in public, while Han-chinese are not allowed--------that is why Han-Chinese are always in bad postion when Han clashed against Uighurs ,unless policemen get involved.
 

badguy2000

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He also said this



It seems he didn't see any corpses, so, the claims of killing of 140 people are nothing but baloney by CCP.:wink:
it is official data.

although I don't think CHinese government needs lie here, it still need some independent resource to prove .

I will try to qq with some of my friends in Urumqi . if there are some news, I will post them here.
 

Daredevil

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just as India does with low castes,chinese government also provides many privileges to ethnics minorities like Uighurs.

For example, when applying to universities, Uighuers candidates can get additional points.

when running for government jobs, Uighuers also can got addtional points.

besides, Uighiers are allowed to have long knives on in public, while Han-chinese are not allowed--------that is why Han-Chinese are always in bad postion when Han clashed against Uighurs ,unless policemen get involved.
Some links will be appreciated for your claims, otherwise it is, what it is, another baloney.
 

Vinod2070

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it is really a shock to me!

I thought that such a mass-violence would never happened in china today.

140 dead! that is beyond my imagination! how could this happen??


where were the policeman and troops, when people were killed ?
It is a shock to all of us I guess. No one knew there was so much anger suppressed among the Uighurs.

troops and policeman should not hesitate to shoot mobs, because iron fists are the only way what mob understands.
That may be a bit too heavy handed. There are non-lethal ways for crowd control that need to be employed first. It is Chinese citizens you are talking of!

Would you recommend the same for Han Chinese too? What if they are CCP supporters and are still agitating for some genuine issue?
 

Vinod2070

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just as India does with low castes,chinese government also provides many privileges to ethnics minorities like Uighurs.

For example, when applying to universities, Uighuers candidates can get additional points.

when running for government jobs, Uighuers also can got addtional points.

besides, Uighiers are allowed to have long knives on in public, while Han-chinese are not allowed--------that is why Han-Chinese are always in bad postion when Han clashed against Uighurs ,unless policemen get involved.
Why is that? Is it a religious requirement for Uighurs to carry long knives?
 

youngindian

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Beijing crushes Uighur dissent

By Richard McGregor and Kathrin Hille in Beijing

Published: July 7 2009 03:00 | Last updated: July 7 2009 03:00

Only hours after the weekend's bloody clashes in Urumqi and well before the authorities had announced the horrendous death toll, Beijing had named the perpetrators of the unrest in the capital of its northwestern region of Xinjiang.

Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, blamed the "pre-meditated and organised violence" on exiled leaders of the Uighurs, the region's predominant Muslim people.

Xinhua, quoting an anonymous official, singled out as the mastermind Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman jailed for alleged separatist activities in 1999 and exiled to the US six years later.

Branding the violence as foreign-instigated, with the aim of splitting off the region from China to form an independent state, has sinister echoes of Beijing's handling of the Tibetan riots last year.

"If it follows the Tibet pattern, at this stage the Chinese media will only release figures of those allegedly killed by protesters," said Robert Barnett, a lecturer on Tibet at Columbia University in New York. "We're seeing again the same news management method, which is to try and pre-empt foreign press reports by rapidly releasing news that is damaging to government critics, especially any images of violence by protesters and any evidence of foreign links."

Beijing yesterday took down the internet in Urumqi and restricted outgoing mobile phone calls to limit information flowing out of the region.

Xinjiang, like Tibet, has a population ethnically distinct from the country's Han Chinese majority. In both regions, indigenous residents rail against strict controls over religious expression and growing Han Chinese dominance of the economy.

The charge from Beijing that the violence was caused by outsiders seeking independence has the short-term effect of killing any discussion within China about possible grievances.

"Everything is framed through the sovereignty issue," said Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong. "No expression of dissent is legitimate. It is all seen as part of a plot."

The protesters marching in Urumqi on Sunday were demonstrating against the deaths of two Uighurs in clashes with Han Chinese at a factory in Guangdong province near Hong Kong late last month.

But the Uighurs have long been hostile to the ruling Communist party, which they say restricts families worshipping together at mosques, stifles their culture and ensures most of the benefits of economic development go to Han Chinese.

Xinjiang is a strategically and economically important region for China, rich in resources, with productive farmland. It is also the transit point for a growing number of gas and oil pipelines from central Asia.

Xinjiang saw an inflow of 1.2m workers last year alone, according to state media, mainly to its booming oil and resources industry. The region's population of 20m includes some 8.3m Uighurs.

The redevelopment of old towns and the influx of richer Han Chinese radically changed local economic structures, costing many Uighurs their traditional jobs.

This has happened while Xinjiang's economy has been growing at more than 11 per cent a year for the past six years, above the national average. The wealth created by this rapid growth has been concentrated in the pockets of new immigrants, increasing the gap between rich and poor, Han and Uighur, some locals complain.

Adi, a Uighur working in the tourism industry in Kashgar, China's last outpost in Xinjiang before the border with Pakistan, has seen three siblings leave for eastern China for work over the past five years.

"The family used to depend on my father's small trading business, but he had to close it down because there are increasingly larger, newer shops now," Adi, who asked that his full name not be used, said yesterday.

Behind the scenes, the Chinese authorities will be deeply concerned at how the street marches in Urumqi degenerated into murderous clashes.

China has large security forces stationed in Urumqi and around Xinjiang, including units of the People's Liberation Army and the paramilitary People's Armed Police, ordinary police and anti-riot units.

Barry Sautman, an associate professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, cautioned against seeing the riots solely as a reaction against China's ethnic policies.

"In China, there are lots of protests every day, some of them on a large scale, although they don't generally take the form of beating people to death in the streets," he said.

Yesterday, the World Uyghur (sic) Congress, of which Ms Kadeer is president, condemned the crackdown on protesters and poured scorn on claims that the dissent was instigated from outside the country.

"The Chinese authorities should acknowledge that the peaceful protests were sparked by the unlawful mob beating and killing of Uighur workers at a Guangdong toy factory more than a week ago," the group said.

Long battle for recognition

840AD Ousted from Mongolia by the Kyrgyz, the Uighurs move to what later became known as Xinjiang, where they found an empire that lasts until the 13th century. 1759 Manchu armies sent by Emperor Qian Long attack the region, finally establishing control in 1877. 1944-49 The Uighurs enjoy a short period of independence, forming the Republic of East Turkestan. Movement suppressed following the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. 1950s and 1960s The Uighurs are targeted for their ethnicity and religion during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. 1997 Uighurs in the cities of Ghulja, Yining and Urumqi riot following a security crackdown. 2007 Chinese security forces raid what they say is a terrorist training camp, with 18 killed, according to state media. 2008 Xinjiang is hit by attacks before and during the Olympics in Beijing. In mid-August, armed police are killed in a bomb and knife attack in the city of Kashgar. Six days later, suspected Muslim separatists and suicide bombers launch a dozen attacks in Kuqa, killing 11.

Ethnic tensions erupt on ancient trading route

Where is Xinjiang? Xinjiang is a region in north-west China bordering Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Silk Road, the ancient trading route between China and Europe, ran through the region. Xinjiang is also home to the bulk of China's natural resources. According to China's 2000 census, the Uighurs are still Xinjiang's largest ethnic group, accounting for 45 per cent of Xinjiang's population of 20m. Han Chinese account for 37 per cent. Xinjiang accounts for about a sixth of China's territory. Does Xinjiang enjoy autonomy? The Chinese government calls Xinjiang a "Uighur Autonomous Region", but like in other such regions such as Tibet or Inner Mongolia, policies are steered from Beijing, even more so than in Chinese provinces where the Han Chinese dominate.

Nur Bekri, the current chairman of the Xinjiang government, is of Uighur ethnicity. But in China's party state, the regional party secretary tends to hold more power than the government chairman. Wang Lequan, Xinjiang's party secretary, is Han Chinese. Who are the Uighurs? The Uighurs are a Turkic people living in Central Asia on both sides of China's western border. What do the Uighurs want? There are no public opinion data on Uighur people's views on their nation. But internal documents of the Chinese Communist party mention that the Uighur people have "difficulty identifying with the Chinese nation". Outside China's borders, a large number of organisations advocate independence.

This includes the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which several governments, including China and the US, list as a terrorist group.

Beijing claims that ethnic unrest in Xinjiang is orchestrated by "separatist forces" abroad and blames Rebiya Kadeer, a political activist from Xinjiang who lives in the US following more than five years in prison in China. She heads the World Uighur Congress, a group that advocates fighting for Uighur independence by peaceful means. How much ethnic unrest has Xinjiang seen? There have been repeated clashes between the Uighur population and the authorities since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. In early 1997, Uighur people in the cities of Ghulja, Yining and Urumqi rioted following a security crackdown. According to state media reports then, nine people died in an initial wave of unrest and another nine in a bus bombing.

In early 2007 Chinese security forces raided what they said was a terrorist training camp, leaving 18 dead, according to state media. Last year 16 police officers died in what the authorities said was a separatist attack. What triggered the riots on Sunday? The Xinjiang regional government said the unrest came in the wake of a fight between Han Chinese and Uighur workers in a toy factory in the southern province of Guangdong in late June in which at least two Uighurs died.

According to Guangdong officials, the fight was sparked by a rumour that a Han Chinese girl had been raped by Uighur workers. On Sunday, several hundred Uighurs gathered in Urumqi demanding an investigation of the Guangdong incident.

But observers believe the growing wealth gap between Uighurs and Han Chinese, Uighur unemployment and the domination of local commerce by the Han are the main reasons behind the unrest.


FT.com / Asia-Pacific - Beijing crushes Uighur dissent
 
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SammyCheung

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why would China organize these riots? but the chinese get a good excuse to send troops.
Indeed, China is going to have to shift a lot of PAP. This would only speed up the integration of Xinjiang Autonomous Region with China proper.

This escalation only allows us to bring in even more force to achieve our goals!


Some links will be appreciated for your claims, otherwise it is, what it is, another baloney.
Ignorance is no excuse when you can do a google search

Ethnic minorities in China - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 

Ray

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One has to understand the Han to understand the problems of Tibet and Xinjiang.

The Chinese concept of the Han and the non Han centres on the concept of the Middle Kingdom of Zhongguo. And the remainder world is what is called Tianxia. The system is graded in a hierarchical equation. The whole Chinese outlook is centred around the Han Chinese culture, starting from the 3rd Century. The position of the non Han centred around to what extent they resembled or assimilated the Han culture.

The same cultural arrogance can be noticed exults over how the Mongols adopted the Han system and culture.

In other words, both Xinjiang and Tibet had better kowtow to the Hans and their culture or else they will make them do so! Therefore, the rebellion in Xinjaing and Tibet is understandable since the Chinese are hell bent in Hanising the people. The problem in Tibet and Xinjiang is not only of religion, but a back to the wall resistance to preserve their identity and culture!

It is worth noting if the non Hans showed a willingness to adopt the Han culture, they were *referred to as Shu or a *cooked* barbarian and those who did not were Sheng or *raw* barbarian.

The interaction of the Han and non Han, of course, did not always take place in peaceful ways, such as through trade and commerce. For the Han Chinese, the exchange often arose from their having suffered an invasion. While confident in the superiority of their culture, Han Chinese resorted to various means to achieve a satisfactory outcome. As summarized by John Fairbank, these options "included cessation of contact; indoctrinating the foreigner in the Chinese view by cultural-ideological means; buying him off by honours or material inducements or both; using one barbarian against another through diplomatic manoeuvres; and in the final extremity accepting barbarian rulers at the apex of the Chinese world." Of course, there was no guarantee that any of these methods would work in a given situation. But this spectrum of options for the Han Chinese in designing their relation with non-Hans further reveals the fluidity and indeterminacy in the Chinese worldview. The platitudes and homilies of the Chinese in their statements indicate their ambiguity and subterfuge to disarm the adversary and at the same time, maintain their perceived moral and cultural superiority. Take any world issue and observe the Chinese smug statements, glaring being the military support to Mugabe and in the Sudan issue and the smug statements thereof!

At times when all these methods failed to work, or when the Han Chinese failed to fend off non-Han invasion, the effort to preserve China's cultural superiority was continued in the form of sinicization. In other words, as argued by both traditional and modern scholars who believed in the theory of sinicization, while the Han Chinese lost their battles, their culture and lifestyle could captivate their conquerors. As the Chinese worldview was based on a sense of cultural superiority, the military success of a non-Han ruler often failed to shake this basic belief, so long as he chose to adopt Han Chinese culture--namely, the Confucian ideology, the bureaucratic system, the civil service examination (after the Tang dynasty), the sedentary lifestyle, and agricultural economy. However, as pointed out recently by Evelyn Rawski and shared, to some degree, by her opponent Ping-ti Ho, the sinicization thesis can be simplistic in attempting to describe the often rich and complex relationship between the Han and the non-Han in China's long history. While Rawski attempts to draw attention to the efforts made by the non-Hans to preserve their own cultures, Ho defends the validity of the thesis. But Ho also devotes a large portion of his article to discussing the phases and facets of the Han and non-Han relations in various historical periods and notices that sometimes "sinicization" was achieved through practices of "barbarianization."

The Chinese view of China, as summarized by Fairbank, three zones was formed, according to these neighbours' cultural affinities to and geographical distances from China. The first was known as the "Sinic Zone" and consisted of Korea, Vietnam, and, at brief times, Japan. The second was the "Inner Asian Zone," to which most non-Han ethnic groups of nomadic tribes belonged. And the third was the "Outer Zone," which included regions in Southeast and South Asia, as well as Europe in later ages.

The difference among the states in these three zones could be seen in nomenclature: most states in the Sinic Zone were given a name, such as Chaoxian (Korea) or Riben (Japan), whose derogatory meaning was either nonexistent or eventually lost. States in the Inner Asian and Outer Zones were simply referred to by names such as yi, fan, and man, all terms used to designate "barbarians" in the Chinese language. The continuous use of these contemptuous terms by the Chinese to refer to their neighbours inevitably suggests their ethnocentrism. But it also shows the limited success of Confucian culture with regard to its power of assimilation. Although the Han Chinese made many efforts to spread their culture among their neighbours, they also encountered various challenges and failures. In the span of two millennia, only a few peoples who entered China proper and established dynasties were regarded by the Han people as successful examples of cultural assimilation. In other words, in the Chinese perception of the world, there was always a center-periphery consideration that helped situate the zhongguo in the known world, the tianxia.

This center-periphery thinking was essential to the formation of the Chinese worldview. An early attempt by the Chinese to conceive the world is shown in the Yugong (Yu's Tribute), traditionally attributed to Da Yu, a legendary hero whose deeds were comparable to Noah's in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Yugong perceived the world in "five zones" (wufu), centering on the Yellow River region, or China proper, which was divided into "nine states" (jiuzhou). Based on these ideas, the first diagram of the world was drawn by the Chinese. The criteria for dividing the five zones were based on the distance of each zone from the center, which, in turn, affected the level of civilization of its inhabitants. Indeed, the farthest zone was named the "desert zone" (huangfu), suggesting a remote and hence uncivilized culture. But the "desert zone" was not the end of the world. In the Yugong, the term "four ends" (sizhi) was used to indicate the four utmost ends of the world, located respectively in the east, west, north, and south. At these "four ends" one could find nothing but vast oceans or great deserts.

While the Yugong showed a limited knowledge of the world, it largely shaped the Chinese worldview. For example, the terms zhongguo and tianxia were both already used, although the latter was more like a cosmographical term referring to the universe. The universe was made up of heaven, earth, and everything in between; heaven was not only larger but covered the earth, as suggested by the term "all under heaven." Thus, the cosmographical theory known as the "covering heaven theory" (gaitian shuo) was developed. According to the theory, heaven was like a bowler hat covering the earth, and the earth was like a dinner plate placed upside down under the heaven. The "covering heaven theory," of course, had an obvious deficiency: it implied that the universe was flat. During the Han dynasty some scholars replaced it with a new one, known as the "organic heaven theory" (huntian shuo), in which the universe was likened to an egg: earth was its yolk, hanging in the middle and surrounded by the white, which was heaven. Despite their difference, both theories consider the universe in a holistic manner.

This holism, however, did not mean that every component in the universe played an equal role. Rather, the universe was characterized by heaven's domination and earth's subordination. This cosmography, therefore, presented a preconceived political order in the universe. Moreover, it was employed by the Chinese to support the center/ periphery relationship between themselves and their neighbors. China's superiority, for example, derived from its proximity to heaven. Considering their country as the celestial empire (tianguo) and their emperor as the son of heaven (tianzi), the Chinese believed that it was only natural for them to become the center of the world and carry out the mission of civilizing the rest, just as heaven was superior to the subordinated earth. Thus the self-image of China, or the "central kingdom," had a base in the cosmography of heaven and earth.

In the early imperial period, when Chinese historians produced some model texts in historiography, they basically followed the center/periphery approach to configuring the world. Ban Gu (A.D. 32-92), a historian of the Han dynasty, is famous for his composition of the Hanshu (Han History), a text that paralleled the influence of Sima Qian's (145-86 B.C.) Shiji (Historical Records) in Chinese historiography. In comparison with Sima Qian, one of Ban's novel contributions was a chapter on geography, called Dilizhi (Treatise of Geography), in which he gave a general description of the territorial topography of the known world. Ban Gu used both terms, tianxia and zhongguo; the latter, read according to the connotation, referred to the capital of Ban's perceived world empire. According to Ban, after Yu successfully controlled the great flood, the world was divided into five zones (wufu), in which nine states (jiuzhou) were established. The distance of each from the capital affected the level of civilization of the inhabitants. Those who lived closer to the zhongguo enjoyed a higher level of civilization than those who lived far away.

The level of civilization of the peoples in different areas was determined in the Han dynasty by cultural and geographical proximity to China, as well as by ethnic differences. As Richard Smith has noted, while most Chinese believed that "people outside the pale of Chinese civilization could be culturally transformed," there were others who thought that the ethnic difference was destiny. As a result, Han rulers held different expectations for the behaviors of the peoples and took a hierarchical approach in their perception of the world. They hoped that their neighbors would adopt Han culture, but they did not expect everyone to become as civilized as they were. As a result, the ethnic distinction between the hua (brightness) and the yi (barbarian) remained intact during the early imperial period. This distinction suggests that even though the Han people made a claim of universalism about their culture, they were also aware that this universalism not only worked in a center-periphery context but also reflected ethnic differences.
 
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SammyCheung

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China is, like all large states, multiethnic; but one ethnic group--the Han Chinese --dominates the politics, government, and economy. This account focuses on the Han, and it considers the minority peoples only in relation to the Han ethnic group.

Over the centuries a great many peoples who were originally not Chinese have been assimilated into Chinese society. Entry into Han society has not demanded religious conversion or formal initiation. It has depended on command of the Chinese written language and evidence of adherence to Chinese values and customs.

It is religious activity problems that are finding expression in various riots that occur. It is not for the first time that there has been problems in Xinjiang.

It has nothing to do with class struggle.

It happens in both Tibet and Xinjiang since religion and culture is being trampled underfoot.

In Xinjiang, anyone below 18 years of age is not allowed to go to the Mosque or get religious teacing.

Every Friday morning Xinjiang's imams are obliged to go to their local state Religious Affairs Bureau, to discuss the text of their Friday sermon with officials. At these Friday meetings, imams receive only "general instructions and may improvise" in their sermons. During the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the authorities force Muslim schoolchildren to have lunch. State employees are under similar pressure.

Now, if this is what happens, it is obvious that the Muslims are not going to embrace the Hans.
Well cry me a river. Some kids are forced to have lunch during Ramadan.

Modern culture is coming to Xinjiang Autonomous Region and Tibet Autonomous Region, and some backward unemployed are claiming this is destruction of their backward culture. China is not going to put up with that garbage. Modernization and capitalism is our way.
 

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