News commentary

I don't know how often I comment on political news on this blog, but its not often. I do try to stay informed but I generally get quite annoyed with politcos. But I'm reading a lot about the rioting in Urumqi, in the Northwest Xinjiang Province in China. Most people seem to be ignoring the story but even though I've never been to Xinjiang, this news stirred up a lot of thought with me. But first random thoughts:

- New York is about 10 degrees hotter than it should be. Its a combination of lots of cars, lots of skyscrapers trapping air, baked subway stations, exhaust from those subways, and the fact that you just can't take a leisurely stroll unless you're in a park.
- I saw someone wearing a Clippers Nation t-shirt today. I cracked up in front of him. It had what appeared to be the logo of the Los Angeles Clippers, although I can't be sure because I've never seen them on national television.
- Sarah Palin's speech on her resignation from Alaskan governor basically went as follows: "Life's too short to spend on things that aren't truly important." So really she's saying that life is too short to spend it governing Alaska.
- A commentator on Palin said that many people within her party criticized her for lacking "intellectual capital." That is one of the fanciest ways I have heard for saying that someone is stupid.
- Saw Transformers 2. It is a archetypal summer movie. That may or may not be a compliment.
- I saw a flyer on the 4th of July for a texting promotion to win tickets to an advanced screening of Harry Potter. I was somewhat inebriated at the time and thought "what a dumb thing. I might as well text to it." And I won. Now I have 2 tickets for next Monday, let me know if you want to be my date.

Ok now on to Xinjiang. So I learned when I was in China about how diverse the country really is. I had many pre-trip assumptions about China and because you never hear in the US about Chinese people who look different, I assumed that other people didn't exist. Well very quickly I learned about how the Chinese government classified 56 ethnic groups within the country. The big 5 are the Han, the Tibetans, the Mongolians (who conquered China), the Manchurians (who conquered China) and the Uyghurs (pronounced Wee-gers). Now the Han, which comprises most of my ethnic makeup (although my dad's family is actually part Manchurian), make up 92% of the country so it will seem much less multiethnic than the 56 number would imply, and when you go through most of the East where Shanghai and Beijing are, you will be hardpressed to find any non-Hans. But 8% of China means 8% of 1.4 billion which means there are well over 100 million minorities, or a third of the United States.

But the Hans were historically residents of that Eastern half, living mainly in an area maybe 30% the size of modern day China. Various Chinese dynasties managed to conquer large areas of land in the west, including Tibet and Xinjiang which are both gigantic provinces that make up all of China's western border. The steppes in Eurasia of which Xinjiang and many "Stan countries" are a part of have a very complicated history, being a very early place of human settlement but not of human writing. Basically though, lots of Turkish people were conquered by Chinese forces and during the 1949 Civil War, China re-conquered it and established its borders. There had been and still are attempts for Xinjiang to secede and create a separate state called East Turkestan but these have been repressed.

So you have a great number of Uyghur people and nearly all are fully within Chinese borders, and learn Chinese in school and adopt many of its customs though most practice Islam. I've had Uyghur food in Beijing and it is amazing, and one of my goals this summer was to find similar food in New York. However, faced with overcrowding, the Chinese government encouraged Han Chinese to move to the rest of the country, and now Uyghurs are a minority even in Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang.

I don't think there's a question that these are examples of Chinese imperialism. A powerful country is taking over land that it can despite it belonging to distinctly different people. Based on classical European definitions of what constitutes a nation, Tibet, Turkestan (or Uyghurstan) and maybe other areas within China can certainly claim to be a nation.

And yet Americans that decry this outright violation of sovereignty and ethnic repression might not be bothering to consider America's own history. Even recent history. Undoubtedly when you consider British, Spanish, French and Dutch settlers tearing this land away from Native Americans and then instituting slavery within it, the history of the United States does not look good to modern day sensibilities. And then there are the jingoist outings in the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam and now Iraq but I won't get into those. I think rather Puerto Rico and Hawaii provide direct comparisons for evidence of recent American imperialism. Hawaii is especially is a pretty similar example of an island with its own great independent history, culture and language that got annexed by the United States and then made into a state for military reasons. China had history in Xinjiang for millenia before subduing it into the PRC.

Ah but in addition, there's a very tricky part when we're discussing imperialism and its one in which people don't bring up enough. The classical European definition of a nation-state is one in which the people share a unifying identity, usually constituted by race, culture and language. What we tend to forget is that those variables are constantly in flux and to an extent all socially constructed. They may all seem clearly defined at any given moment but a group of people can change dramatically over a few generations. There used to be large tribes in France like the Franks, Burgunds, Lombards, the Frisians and the Visigoths, or something like that, but they've long lost their distinctions. I read about this in a book on nationalism. Anyways, they're now just all French. Nobody's talking about discrimination against the Frisians, it just sounds ridiculous. However, if you think about it, they probably suffered the ultimate discrimination because their identity was completely lost. My point is that modern day France has a strong national identity and unifying culture but this wasn't always the case. France certainly used to be an empire but now we look at the current country and we see a nation.

China is really an even better example of the ambiguity between nationalism and imperialism. The reason the Han ethnicity is the largest on Earth is that they assimilated, or Sinicized, many other groups. I believe that there used to be lots of groups within China, including the Wu around modern day Shanghai, and the Yue in Guangdong, that were once distinct from the Han (whom I don't even know where they're originally from). The Manchurians barely have a separate identity anymore and almost exclusively speak Mandarin. Once again people aren't clamoring for an independent Manchuria, they just accept them as being Chinese. (picture to the right is of Pu Yi, last emperor of China, a Manchu and yet another purported relative of yours truly)

So on a deeper level, the situation in Xinjiang has precedent and I believe the Chinese government thinks that given enough time, Uyghurs and Tibetans and everyone else will all be considered Chinese. In an age of celebrating diversity, this seems like an awful belief but you have to understand where they are coming for because it has happened many times before. But the current issues aren't really dealing with that. Though the rioting reportedly began in protest of a factory brawl in Guangdong that killed 2 Uyghurs, it's pretty much understood that tensions had been boiling up for a while due to government policies regulating Uyghurs. I don't know the details of the policies and I take both Western media and Chinese media with grains of salt - I've read inaccurate reporting by both entities. But from what I understand, China has adopted policy that while allowing Islam, seriously hampers it and seems designed to let it die (I've read that they prevent children from attending Mosques and only let people use a state-approved Koran). They're also slowly phasing out Uyghur-language education, although this should be compared to the rest of China where local language education was phased out very quickly. Overall, with regards to China's policies, I'd say I don't know enough about them, but from what I do know, they are very culturally destructive and I understand why the Uyghurs are protesting.

Their other main complaint seems to be that an influx of Chinese immigration has essentially taken over their land, and that most of best jobs in the region are controlled by Han people. In this context too it seems the Uyghurs have a very fair complaint. In Urumqi, protests against immigration are a display of nationalism. However, in the United States, anti-immigration protests in this same vein are seen as racist and intolerant. Basically both people are saying, "I don't want these people coming in, not knowing our language and taking our jobs." In the US the response has been get over it, and economic and cultural advancements are cited. You can make a very strong case for the same argument to be used in Xinjiang. In a sense, Uyghurs should feel somewhat lucky that they do learn Mandarin in school - they are being taught the language of power in that country and at least one barrier between them and social liberty within that country is knocked down.

I want to conclude that I really do believe that China is a racist country. The R-word is a very sharp accusation to throw around but in my own experience I've seen it to be generally true. I know the US to have plenty of racial problems, but I was surprised to find throughout my travels that most of the rest of the world is even further behind us on racial tolerance and integration. We assume Western Europe to be a bastion of liberalness, but you'd be hard-pressed to find Asian Germans and black Italians who consider themselves to be Germans and Italisn first and foremost. England seemed to have the largest influx and best integration of immigrants, mostly remnants of its empire, but it'll be years before they elect a black president. I noticed in Ireland that people were afraid to talk about race - people were hesitant even to ask what ethnicity I was, and most people would assume that I didn't speak fluent English. Furthermore in China, there were many an occasion where I was definitely treated poorly just because the locals felt like I was different.

Well through this all, I've come to the belief that outright racism doesn't just appear in violence and slurs - I can't recall coming across any flagrant incidents like this in any travel - but rather in the true mindset that what race you are matters. The people I encountered in China really believed that there are concrete differences between races. Stereotypes are laughed at or preached against but rather looked at analytically, even scientifically. The Chinese government subtly quantifies these in their Gao Kao test for admission to college. I can talk about how ridiculous that test is for days but in this discussion, the significant note is that different races are scored on different scales. In order to have more Uyghurs in their good colleges for example, they set a lower threshold score for them. This is state-mandated affirmative action. Whereas I think affirmative action is good for our country, I see it in China as serving a different purpose and not so much as contributing towards diversity but rather distinguishing differences. The only times I saw true diversity, when people of different races hung out together, in China always involved foreigners congregating.

So I don't know what the correct policy should be in Xinjiang. I do see the case as a microcosm of many important historical processes and am following it with great interest. I have seen a real riot like this with uncontrolled violence and burning, and I really hope that the world sees less of it. I hope that everybody in China can learn to live together, a simple notion common to Confucianism and Islam and one that is easily within our natural human capacity.