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Throngs of migrants
flooding China's ancient Silk Road cities
Posted on Wed, Sep. 22, 2004
By Tim Johnson
Knight Ridder Newspapers
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Throngs of migrants flooding China's ancient Silk
Road cities |
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French supermarket Carrefour & American KFC are
seen in the Xinjiang International Grand Bazaar, a
tourist spot in Urumqi, Xiangjiang, China. RICKY
WONG, KRT
More photos... |
URUMQI, China - Every morning, the
trains that pull into the old Silk Road cities of
China's Wild West disgorge torrents of migrants toting
bulging plastic bags and dreams of a new future.
Not so long ago, they would have stood out. Xinjiang
province is populated by Muslim Uighurs, blue-eyed
Kazakhs, Persian-looking Tajiks and more than a dozen
other ethnic minority groups. Barely a smattering of
Han Chinese, who make up the vast majority of the
country's population, lived here.
But after years of a state-sponsored "Go West!"
campaign, Han migrants from eastern China are
overwhelming the ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. The
province is on the cusp of looking like the rest of
China, its unusual multi-hued ethnic identity diluted
forever.
The most recent census, in 2002, found Han Chinese
making up about 40 percent of Xinjiang's 21 million
people. Many residents, though, think the Han have
grown to a majority, even above the native Uighurs (pronounced
Weegers), whom the census puts at 46 percent. The Han
population in Xinjiang is rising at double the pace of
any ethnic minority.
When communist China was founded in 1949, Xinjiang's
Han Chinese made up 6 percent of the population, while
Uighurs were about 75 percent.
The immigrants flooding Xinjiang, which means "new
frontier," largely stick to themselves, wary of their
ethnic brethren.
"We cannot communicate with them. We don't know their
language," said Zhang Bizhong, a construction worker
from Sichuan province. "We Sichuanese prefer to eat
rice and pork, and dishes with strong flavors. The
local minorities don't eat pork. They don't like rice."
An eight-day trip around Xinjiang, which looped
through Hami, a former Silk Road desert oasis near the
border with Mongolia, all the way to Kashgar, a
distant Uighur outpost along the Karakorum Highway
near Pakistan, underscored the transformation of the
region, which sprawls over a sixth of China's landmass.
Earthmovers are ramming down the mud-brick houses in
desert oases, making way for the sterile white-tile
commercial buildings that investors from coastal China
are throwing up.
In Turpan, a desert town near the Flaming Mountains,
donkey carts ply the central market. Uighur merchants
wearing skullcaps sell prayer rugs. Ululating music
wafts through the air. Chinese-speaking migrant women
in miniskirts, cell phones in hand, jostle with local
women in Muslim head scarves.
From a stall stocked with ornate daggers, Tuhuti
Ku'erban said Uighurs such as he might not like the
influx of Han Chinese, but saw no use in protesting to
the all-powerful ruling Communist Party.
"We can't speak out. If we did, what difference would
it make?" Ku'erban said.
On a cool evening at the main square in Hami, retired
teacher Li Defeng, a Han who emigrated from central
Henan province, surveyed those viewing an outdoor
dance show and said: "There are very few natives here.
Everyone is from somewhere else."
Farther west, one sees more of Xinjiang's ethnic mix.
Some minorities have Central Asian and Mediterranean
features, including sandy hair and light-colored eyes.
Languages are also different. Tajiks speak a form of
Persian, while Uighurs, Kyrgyz and Kazakhs speak
Turkic languages.
A senior Communist Party official in Xinjiang, Wang
Lequan, who's also a Politburo member, said in a
meeting with foreign reporters that migrant laborers
filled a void. Many Xinjiang minorities don't want the
"dirty, hard and tiring work," he said.
Noting that about 1 million migrant laborers pour into
Xinjiang each summer to harvest cotton and tomatoes,
Wang said some decided on their own to stay. He denied
that Beijing was attempting to dilute the ethnic
population to gain better control of the region. A
government-supported migration to Tibet similarly has
changed the population mix there.
"The reality is that the Han Chinese bosses are
reluctant to hire Uighurs. They have the stereotype
that they are lazy, recalcitrant and speak poor
Chinese," said Dru Gladney, an expert on Xinjiang at
the University of Hawaii.
China's leaders long have feared that regional
separatist efforts, such as those of the Uighurs or
the Tibetans, could cause the country to fragment.
That fear intensified in the 1990s, when Uighur
radicals carried out more than 100 bombings and
assassinations. Security forces cracked down.
Thousands were sent to forced labor camps, and perhaps
hundreds to the firing squad.
Today, Han Chinese control the top party and military
posts in the province, tightly monitoring Muslim
religious activity and slamming the lid on any
outbreak of social discontent.
Meanwhile, authorities aren't slowing migration, if
the Urumqi train station is any indication.
"I'm going back to my hometown to bring more people
here," said Liu Zishi, a 36-year-old cotton picker
from neighboring Gansu province, a suitcase beside him.
His foreman pays a commission for each migrant worker
he brings back.
Xinjiang's grasslands and deserts are rich in
resources. The huge area, which borders eight
countries, holds oil and gas deposits, coal, minerals,
vast cotton plantations and fruit orchards.
An economic boom is apparent in Urumqi, a city of 2.1
million people with new high rises built by coastal
investors and cranes on the horizon building more.
"If you go to Kazakhstan and come back after one month,
you see the changes," said Mansur Muldakoolov, a
financial manager of a Kazakh-owned fruit juice
company.
Xinjiang's economy outpaces the growth of nearly all
the rest of China, even though it's far from the
industrialized east. Annual per capita income is
$1,300; it's $1,010 a year for the country as a whole.
"We are very proud of this," said He Yiming, deputy
party secretary in Urumqi.
All isn't equal, however. An income gap falls along
ethnic lines. Han Chinese workers earn more, and many
non-Han workers can't find jobs.
Like much in Xinjiang, Han Chinese and their ethnic
counterparts offer vastly different narratives about
culture, daily life and even history.
Han Chinese see the region as an integral part of
China from time immemorial. Minorities note that
Xinjiang wasn't under Chinese control until the late
19th century and twice saw the rise of the short-lived
East Turkestan Republic in the 1930s and 1940s before
falling under the control of communist China in 1949.
While Han Chinese view the development of Xinjiang
with pride, some minorities feel marginalized by it,
seeing it as a symbol of humiliation.
Party officials say they see only ethnic unity in the
region.
"We live together harmoniously," said Bai Zhijie, the
Communist Party secretary in Hami prefecture, reciting
the "three inseparables" party dictate: "The Han
people cannot be separated from ethnic people. Ethnic
people cannot be separated from Han people. And the
ethnic groups cannot be separated from one another."
Han penetration of Xinjiang is evident even in Kashgar,
the oasis near Kyrgyzstan that's the cultural
heartland of the Uighurs. A railway line opened up
Kashgar to immigrants in 1999.
All around the central Idh Kah Mosque, which dates to
1442, bulldozers are razing ancient buildings. Coastal
investors are constructing modern shopping centers in
faux-Islamic style.
"If you go to the southern part of the city, it is
almost all Han Chinese," said Gladney, the scholar.
The two sides of the city see eye to eye on very
little, including the time of day. Government
officials keep the clock on the same time as Beijing,
a continent away to the east. Locals set the clock
back two hours.
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