| An electronic newsletter
Produced by the Eastern Turkistan Information Center No: 68 6 November 1997 In this issue: A SERIES OF RECENT ARTICLES FROM EASTERN TURKSITAN BY JANE MACARTNEY, REUTERS: (1) NEW SILK ROAD REVIVES WEST CHINA TRADE
(2) CHINA PUSHES WEALTHY EAST TO INVEST
(3) MOSQUES GROWING IN XINJIANG
(4) CHINA'S RICHEST UIGHURS BUILD BIG BUSINESS
(5) FAMED CHINESE CARPETS FIT FOR THE NOBLEST REAR
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= (1) NEW SILK ROAD REVIVES WEST CHINA TRADE 11/06/97, Reuters, By Jane Macartney KASHGAR, China, Nov 6 (Reuters) - A thousand years ago caravans of camels and yaks laden with baskets of silk, ceramics and spices flowed west from China along the Silk Road to Rome, bartering their merchandise for gold, gems and glass. Times, tastes and transport have changed. Now trucks and trains carry containers along routes that once claimed the lives of countless men and beasts, flooding Central Asia's bazaars with cheap Chinese clothes and crockery and returning with loads of copper, steel and pine nuts. Officials in the westernmost region of Xinjiang voice confidence the remote and undeveloped hinterland is well placed to oversee trade from China's huge inland manufacturing base to markets throughout Central Asia and the Middle East. ``We want to use the Silk Road. We want to rebuild this ancient trade route,'' Liu Yushen, Foreign Affairs Bureau director for Xinjiang, said in an interview. ``At present, goods must be shipped by sea, but after our communications are improved then goods can be transported by road and rail through Xinjiang to other countries,'' he said.
``This will be much faster and more convenient,'' he said. Xinjiang's foreign trade was just $1.44 billion last year, or a mere 0.48 percent of China's total. Sharing borders with Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Russia and serving as a corridor to the Middle East, Turkey and other former Soviet Union states, the mainly Moslem region peopled by ethnic Uighurs has enormous potential, officials said. But it also has some fairly major drawbacks -- such as communications and Xinjiang's limited number of open border crossings. The number of frontier ports has multiplied since the days when Beijing barred its frontiers to its former bitter communist enemy, the Soviet Union, and when soaring mountain ranges forbade effective access to neighbouring Pakistan. A road cut through the mountain passes to Pakistan has carried a trade boom, although the route is closed for about five months of the year when winter snows make it impassable. Frontier gates have been opened with the independent states of Central Asia since the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union.
``We are a major window for opening, for an economic and trade gate to Pakistan and the east,'' said Kong Fuxi, who is in charge of foreign affairs for the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, China's westernmost trading post. Businessmen from Kazakhstan roam the markets of Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi, filling large nylon carrier bags with garments and packing consumer products into cartons to take home. In Kashgar, Pakistani traders load trucks with bales of Chinese silk for the journey across the Pamir mountains and through the Khunjerab pass to the bazaars of Karachi, Lahore and even the Gulf states. Xinjiang has now opened 17 border crossings, including a railway link to Kazakhstan, as part of China's bid to revive the Silk Road. China hails the 11,000-km (6,600-mile) road and railway network it is building to connect its eastern coastal regions with Central Asia and eventually Europe as the New Euro-Asia Continental Bridge. The goal is to ensure that a toy from Hong Kong or a skein of silk from Hangzhou can travel by land across Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland and Germany to western European ports such as Rotterdam and Antwerp.
China completed the tracks of a railway through northern Xinjiang and over the Alataw Pass to Kazakhstan in 1993, and commerce has skyrocketed. This year an estimated 35,000 containers will be transported through Alataw, almost tripling from 12,118 in 1996 and a negligible 257 the year before. With border trade showing such huge potential, Beijing has earmarked 3.0 billion yuan ($361.5 million) to extend its southern railway to Kashgar, from the oasis oil town of Korla where it now terminates. The railway across the shifting sands of the Taklamakan desert to Xinjiang may snake into Kyrgyzstan one day and could turn south to link Xinjiang's southern oasis towns that have faded into dusty backwaters since their heyday 1,000 years ago as major Silk Road trading posts, officials said. Trader Khalvi Alvi from the northern Pakistan town of Gilgit was upbeat about the future of the Silk Road as he loaded a truck in the courtyard of a Kashgar hotel. ``I think trade will grow,'' he said. ``Pakistan will do more and more and we can purchase lots of things.'' The sea route from Shanghai to Karachi takes three to four months, compared with less than one month overland. ``By this road, goods can travel from Shanghai to the markets of Lahore in just 25 days,'' he said. ``I think this trade is very positive for both countries.'' But the trip is not smooth as silk. Ali complains about the high cost of transport and the soaring fees demanded by border and customs officials.
``There are some unfortunate factors in trade,'' said Liu, adding that excessive red tape and exorbitant unauthorised fees charged by local officials were dampening the enthusiasm for traders using border crossings. Another difficulty was particular to the Central Asian states -- mounting unpaid bills. Liu estimated the debts of Central Asian businessmen to China at well over $100 million. ``And that is a conservative figure,'' he said. ``This is a big headache.'' Pakistani businessmen were in general regarded as more trustworthy and more likely to honour their letters of credit. Among the biggest problems was with Kyrgyzstan, officials said. Trade with that Central Asian nation had dried up rapidly in the last few years after a brief boom in the early 1990s. ``There used to be many Kyrgyz traders in our markets, especially for the Sunday bazaar,'' said Kashgar's Kong. ``But now they don't have the money to come here and our traders ship their goods directly into Kyrgyzstan to sell.'' The products that command a market outside China are also changing, from raw materials when the border was first opened to floods of light industrial goods and agricultural products in recent years, officials said. ``We sell cotton seed oil, flour, rice and rock sugar and other household goods they lack,'' said Kong. ``We take their copper, aluminium, automobiles, wool, cotton and leather.'' Foreign trade is soaring this year, after nearly two years in the doldrums, they said. In the first half of this year, Xinjiang's exports skyrocketed 78.5 percent to $328.1 million while imports edged up 4.5 percent to $221 million. ``We know that we have problems to solve,'' said Liu. ``We need to boost the quality of exports, we need to improve our administration...we need to open more border ports and we need to invest in our communications and infrastructure.'' But in China's Wild West, pioneering traders and government officials seem determined to ensure the rebirth of the ancient route that took silk and rhubarb to the West and brought gold, Buddhism and Marco Polo to Beijing. ``The Uighurs are natural born traders,'' said Liu. ``Uighurs are engaged in trade in the Middle East, in Turkey even on Wall Street. ``The Silk Road can be reborn.'' (2) CHINA PUSHES WEALTHY EAST TO INVEST 11/05/97, Reuters, By Jane Macartney SHIHEZI, China, Nov 5 (Reuters) - A year ago Ren Zengguo managed a textile mill in China's booming and cosmopolitan metropolis, Shanghai. Now he lives in a remote town on the arid plains of the country's westernmost corner. Dressed in a double-breasted suit, white shirt, silk tie and shiny black loafers, Ren is an unlikely looking Wild West pioneer. But he is at the forefront of a drive by China to move investment to the backward interior from prosperous eastern provinces. China's communist rulers fear a widening wealth gap with booming eastern regions could stir up more unrest in an area already troubled by anti-Chinese Moslem forces.
Officials in the northwestern Xinjiang region insist the policy to move investment from east to west is starting to pay off for the 16 million residents of this area, which is three times the size of France. Local officials say the drive to lure industry and investment to the west is only fair for a region that has lost out so deeply as Beijing's sweeping capitalist-style reforms have nurtured a boom in the east and left the rest to lag. ``The east is earning our money,'' said one senior official in the ancient trading city of Kashgar that two millennia ago was a crucial post on the Silk Route and is now a business backwater. Officials complain Xinjiang cotton flows out for processing in Shanghai, at the region's expense. It is up to Ren, and other coastal entrepreneurs, to narrow the wealth gap. Not far from Ren's factory floor, Xinjiang farmers trudge their fields barefoot, donkey carts are a primary mode of transport and few can read or write. It is a far cry from the bright lights of Shanghai.
The dapper Ren said he has no regrets over his move. His task is to organise the transfer of 30,000 spindles from the huge state-owned Shanghai Number One Cotton Textile Co to a new joint venture with the Number Two Wool Factory in Shihezi, some km (miles) northwest of Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi. His Shihezi Xinshen Textile Co Ltd is just one of many such mills springing up across Xinjiang as part of Beijing's ``east spindles move west'' policy to take advantage of the cotton that grows in abundance in the region. The Xinjiang Xinrun OE-Rotor Spinning Co Ltd is a Hong Kong-China joint venture that has moved its entire yarn spinning operations from the southern boomtown of Shantou, not far from Hong Kong, to this dusty, new city on the western plains. Westernmost Xinjiang offers two major attractions, said businessmen and officials who have arranged the move of plant thousands of miles from the east coast to the landlocked west. Labour is cheaper. Cotton is cheaper. And both are plentiful. In addition, costs for power and water are also lower, said Chen Jingguo, general manager of Xinjiang Xinrun.
``Higher profits depend on efficient management and we estimate our profits are 15-20 percent higher than on the coast,'' Chen said as he showed visitors around his gleaming factory floor. His factory boasts one of the most modern production lines in all of China, imported from Switzerland. Even the daunting distance his product must be transported to reach textile plants in the east does not dent costs enough to deter him from investment in the far west, Chen said. ``If we transport the cotton to process in Shantou we have the same problem with distance,'' said Chen. ``So this way actually the costs are lower because the product is cheaper.'' Transport and communications are set to improve. For example, Beijing has allocated 300 million yuan in Kashgar to extend the railway line by some 850 km (510 miles) to link the bazaar city with Urumqi and thus the rest of China. After years of delays, Beijing has also finally come up with 18 million yuan to expand the Kashgar and Urumqi airports. Officials boast that investment is higher this year in the west than in the east, totalling 86.7 billion yuan ($14.4 billion) in the first seven months and a year-on-year rise of 19.9 percent. This compared with 9.0 percent growth in the east.
Tax breaks may help. Domestic investors who move to Xinjiang pay no income tax in their first three years of operation and only half the national average for the ensuing two years, officials said. ``Only Xinjiang has this policy,'' said one Shihezi official. The government of remote Xinjiang is also introducing tax breaks to try to lure foreign investors to do business in China's gateway to Central Asia. ``We want Urumqi to become an economic and financial centre for Central Asia,'' Liu Yusheng, head of the Foreign Affairs Office of the Xinjiang region. To attain that goal, the government of this region of deserts, mountains and fertile oases plans to unveil a new blueprint of tax holidays and other favours. As an autonomous region, Xinjiang has the power to set policies separate from Beijing and is using this status to offer some of the most generous and far-reaching breaks in China. Foreign investors will be allowed to lease, buy, take part in or fully own any type of Chinese enterprise in Xinjiang, including long-protected state industries. ``We are going to offer tax concessions and open policies that are more attractive than those offered by interior provinces,'' Liu said.
But moving to Xinjiang is not without risk. The region has been rocked in recent years by increasingly violent anti-Chinese protests by its Moslem ethnic minorities, although officials dismiss these as a containable problem created by a tiny number of disgruntled extremists. More worrying are the problems of using a relatively untrained work force accustomed to the ``iron rice bowl'' of jobs for life and the difficulties of starting a business without a network of contacts. Ex-Shanghai resident Ren said his lack of connections -- the grease of business operations throughout China -- had hampered his ability to obtain working capital. His Shihezi Xinshen plant has begun production, but only just. Operations are running months behind schedule with 6,000 of the factory's 30,000 spindles yet to be moved from Shanghai. ``I don't regret coming here,'' he said. ``Wherever you do business there are going to be difficulties. Our problems here happen to be working capital and an untrained labour force.'' On the upside, he has the power to hire and fire at will and his management team is streamlined, unlike most top-heavy state enterprises. Also, costs are 20-30 percent lower than in Shanghai and cotton is abundant, high quality and cheap. ``We are bringing in new, modern management techniques from the east. Some Shihezi state factories are visiting us to ask how we do it,'' said Ren. ``Maybe our new ideas are the most important thing we bring to Xinjiang.'' (3) MOSQUES GROWING IN XINJIANG 11/04/97, Reuters, By Jane Macartney (from TURKISTAN NEWSLETTER) KASHGAR, Mosques are mushrooming across China's mainly Moslem Xinjiang region to meet an increasing demand for places of worship. Congregations are swelling as increasing numbers of young people among China's Moslem minorities are inspired by Islam in the country's westernmost region. Students even take time out during lunch hour to perform noon prayers. The resurgence of Islam in Xinjiang is causing an uneasy relationship between Communist Party officials and Moslem clerics, between Han Chinese and ethnic Uighurs.
"Religious freedom is guaranteed by our constitution and no one can interfere with this," said Tsadik Kara Haji, deputy director of the Kashgar Islamic Association and imam or leader of the great 15 th century Aidkah mosque in this ancient Silk Road city. With Moslems making up almost all the 10 million ethnic minority residents of Xinjiang's 16 million people, Beijing has a lot of watching to do. Tsadik Kara Haji said that of the three million minority residents of the Kashgar district, two million were believers. The rest were still too young to be admitted.
He did not explain how that sweeping total was able to include government and party officials, who are banned from holding religious beliefs in atheist China. The region's party chief Wang Lequan has launched a campaign to stop officials from turning to religion -- a sign of the extent of the power of faith that has taken hold since Beijing's guarantee of freedom of religion in 1979. "I don't drink wine, not since I went to Mecca," said one Uighur official at a dinner. Asked if he was religious, he burst into laughter. "Party members are not allowed to be religious," he said. No one was convinced. Such tacit acceptance seemed to extend throughout the region, where Islam arrived more than 1,000 years ago, brought by Silk Road traders to this once Buddhist area. "I am free to worship," said one Uighur student as he emerged from noon prayers in the small New City United Mosque in the southern Xinjiang oasis town of Khotan. "Of course we are free," said the student's classmate.
Moslem clerics have been called to frequent meetings by the government and ordered to ensure no member of their flock strays toward separatism. This is because Islam poses the greatest peril to China's unity, Xinjiang's top officials have said. In Kashgar, the heart of Islam in China, senior Moslem clerics insisted that the officially sanctioned faith was loyal to Beijing. "We carry out religious work, we do not interfere in politics or engage in splittism," said Tsadik Kara Haji, speaking after conducting noon prayers for some 500 faithful in the yellow and white tiled Aidkah mosque. However, the cleric said he would not use his preaching in the mosque as a platform to disseminate the government's warnings against what it calls illegal religious activities. "Our work is to worship, to read and to interpret the Koran," he said. "Other matters are the business of propaganda departments." The government may not be able to persuade clerics to spread the party line, but it recognises the influence of Islamic elders in the local communities. In some parts of Xinjiang, clerics must attend government education sessions as often as twice a week. This is particularly so in the restive south, where the Uighur Moslems make up the vast majority and where most sporadic anti- Chinese unrest has erupted, officials said. "We need to teach the imams what they can and cannot preach," one Khotan official said. "There are very detailed regulations covering what they can say." Such rules were essential. "Illegal religious activities are very numerous," the official said. Imam Mohammad Sit, 78, of Khotan's United Mosque was unable to answer when asked to describe an illegal religious activity. "I can say what I can say, what I should not say I will not say." The Kashgar imams insisted those involved in the anti-China movement received no support from the Moslem community. They blamed illegal activities on impostors who duped gullible and illiterate Uighurs. "These people are not religious," Tsadik Kara Haji said. "They dress up as men of religion, they tell fortunes and take money... but we oppose this kind of activity. "They take advantage of illiterates and deceive people," he said.
Despite threats from such impostors, Islam was still showing healthy growth in Xinjiang, the imam said. "There are now 10,000 mosques in the Xinjiang district, compared with 6,000 to 7,000 before the Cultural Revolution," he said. During the Cultural Revolution, the ultra-leftist movement launched by chairman Mao Zedong from 1966-1976, religion was outlawed as bourgeois, mosques were closed or destroyed and clerics jailed. The imam glossed over the apparent flouting of a government rule that a religious building may only be built on a site previously used for the same purpose. "The population has grown a lot and so we need more mosques," he said. "If the people who want to build a mosque apply for the proper permission then they can go ahead." (4) CHINA'S RICHEST UIGHURS BUILD BIG BUSINESS 11/03/97, Reuters, By Jane Macartney URUMQI, China, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Tursun Imen is one of the richest Uighurs in China. The story of the Moslem cook turned millionaire hotelier who runs the biggest private enterprise in Urumqi, capital of China's westernmost region of Xinjiang, bears testament to the entrepreneurial possibilities belied by China's communist label. Even wealthier than Imen may be the vivacious Rabiya Khadir, the region's richest businesswoman. But her success has run up against an unusual problem for an average plutocrat -- the government does not agree with her husband's views. Suspecting that he favours independence for Xinjiang, it has suspended Khadir's foreign trade rights. The story of the two Uigher millionaires reflects China's dilemma in governing this restive region where Moslems Uighurs far outnumber ethnic Han Chinese.
Imen, 53, says he has not experienced prejudice from officials or banks. Khadir, 49, has confronted not only the disadvantages of being a Uighur in China, but a traditional disdain for women. Imen says he is worth about 100 million yuan ($12 million), although that could be a conservative assessment since capitalist entrepreneurs in communist China often prefer to downplay their success. ``I hope that my success can make other Uighurs proud,'' said Imen, who is of the 10-million-member Turkic-speaking ethnic minority who make up the bulk of the population in Xinjiang. Seated behind an imposing desk, his head covered by the ubiquitous green embroidered skull cap preferred by most of China's Uighurs, Imen waves his arms in excitement as he describes his path to riches. He attributes his prosperity to the sweeping capitalist-style reforms unleashed by late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979. ``As soon as I heard about Comrade Deng Xiaoping's reforms, I left my state job and set up my own restaurant,'' he said. ``Before 1979, everyone worked eight hours a day, and people spent most of the time looking at their watches to see how much longer they had to wait before they could go home,'' Imen said. ``You just went to work and went home again.''
Imen certainly doesn't. He has just opened a 212-room hotel in the heart of Urumqi and is setting up a farm to supply produce from an oasis on the edge of Xinijang's desolate Taklamakan desert. Urumqi has 6,900 private entrepreneurs and 360,000 individual businessmen. Imem is the biggest, officials say. They try to ignore the colourful Khadir, dismissing her success as a bubble business built on suspect loans. Khadir estimates her total worth at about 220 million yuan -- an impressive return on her initial start-up capital in 1980 of 60 yuan. She boasts domestic assets such as an eight-storey shopping complex and a six-storey apartment building in Urumqi, while her international interests include a leather factory in neighbouring Kazakhstan and a department store in Uzbekistan. But her business has been stymied since her passport and foreign trading rights were confiscated on March 28 amid suspicions that her husband, a college professor who is now in the United States, supported the Uighur separatist cause. ``My husband is his own person, I am my own person. We are not the same,'' she said. ``But people are jealous of me, they just can't stand to see my success.'' Khadir says that the bigger the challenge and the more difficulties she faces, the more determined she is to overcome these obstacles. ``My enemies cannot stop me,'' she said. ``I believe in the reforms of Deng Xiaoping and the policies of the (Communist) party. I will succeed.''
Khadir and Imen started out just after the radical 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when ``capitalist roaders'' were sent to jail and when setting up a private business was politically very daring. Imen, the son of a prosperous farmer from the village of Yingjiashi near the Silk Road trading post city of Kashgar, had been trained as a cook and then worked in a state-run hotel in Urumqi for 18 years. ``I watched in the hotel as they sold their dumplings and their costs were very high,'' he said. ``I thought I could do a better job.'' On his first day of business in his tiny family-run restaurant near the city's bus station, Imen made 70 yuan ($8.3) -- a small fortune at a time when the average monthly salary was not much more than 100 yuan. ``We were so excited we couldn't sleep all night,'' he said. Since then, Imen's rise has been smooth, helped by his warm relations with local Chinese and Uighur officials. Three years after his business debut he opened a restaurant on the edge of one of the city's main bazaar areas. From running a family business, he expanded to hire a staff of 13 in the days when private employers were still regarded as exploitative capitalists. ``The people of Xinjiang are an ethnic minority and I wanted to serve them their own food,'' he said. It was a recipe for success. By 1989, his eatery was so popular that he expanded once again, renting two floors of a building in a smarter part of town, taking on 89 people and opening a restaurant serving dishes from his home town of Yingjiashi. Last year he opened a hotel that cost him 60 million yuan ($7.2 million), including a loan of 28 million. Khadir said she was one of those who gave Imen a loan. ``I want to support other entrepreneurs to succeed,'' she said, adding that the Communist party's recent congress endorsing private enterprise had inspired her with confidence. Khadir says 80 percent of her business is based on trade in steel, cotton, cement, fertiliser, wool and consumer goods with the Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union, and has little doubt her business will resume soon. ``We Uighurs face a lot of difficulties,'' she said. ``But just watch me. I will succeed. I trust in myself, I am a woman and I won't fail.'' (5) FAMED CHINESE CARPETS FIT FOR THE NOBLEST REAR 11/03/97, Reuters, By Jane Macartney KHOTAN, China (Reuters) - Settling one's rear on the soft pile of a fabled carpet from Khotan has for centuries been a dream cherished by everyone from emperors to peasants throughout Central Asia and China. Hundreds of families in Khotan, lying on the ancient Silk Road, still keep its great carpet-making tradition alive. "Khotan's wool is very high quality, Khotan's designs are thousands of years old," said Daud Akhund, 60, whose family has for centuries woven carpets in this remote oasis town on the edge of China's western-most Taklamakan desert. The first intrepid explorers of the Silk Road in the 19th century wrote of being invited by khans in the region to sit down on Khotan rugs to dine. Marco Polo's rear almost certainly rested on one in the mid-13 th century as he journeyed to the heart of fabled Cathay. Antique carpets from Khotan, which lies some 950 km (570 miles) southwest of the Xinjiang regional capital of Urumqi, are now much prized by collectors. Khotan's modern carpets carry a great cachet, commanding markets as far afield as Central Asia and the Middle East.
In the Akhund family, daughter-in-law Nutsu Songhan, 20, is responsible for carpet weaving. She works with two other girls at a hand-loom set up under a grape arbor in the courtyard of the family's mud-built home and usually completes one six-square-meter carpet in about a month. A carpet can take a little longer in busy farming seasons. Prepared by: Abdulrakhim Aitbayev (rakhim@lochbrandy.mines.edu) and Bill Mitchell (turpan@ix.netcom.com) WUNN newsletter index*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= The World Uyghur Network News electronic newsletter is produced by the Eastern Turkistan Information Center (ETIC) in cooperation with the Taklamakan Uighur Human Rights Association (USA), and is devoted to the current political, cultural and economic developments in Eastern Turkistan and to the Uyghur people related issues. Eastern Turkistan (Sherqiy Turkistan in Uyghur) is a name used by the indigenous people of the region for their motherland located in what is at present the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic China. The World Uyghur Network News brings information on situation in Eastern Turkistan from the Uyghur and other sources to the attention of the international community. *=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= EASTERN TURKISTAN INFORMATION CENTER |