China’s Forgotten People: Xinjiang, Terror and The Chinese State 9781788319799, 9781788319805, 9781788319829

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is an award-winning writer of fiction and journalism whose work appears in The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books, and Financial Times. He is the author of three non-fiction books about China, The Tree That Bleeds (Luath, 2011), China's Forgotten People (IB Tauris, 2015) and Chasing the Chinese Dream (IB Tauris, 2017). He is also the author of a novel, The Casualties (St Martins, 2015) and the forthcoming short story collection, The False River. He is a frequent commentator on China for a variety of international media outlets. NICK HOLDSTOCK

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CHINA’S FORGOTTEN PEOPLE XINJIANG, TERROR AND THE CHINESE STATE

NICK HOLDSTOCK

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I.B. TAURIS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, I.B. TAURIS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2015 This edition published 2019 Copyright © Nick Holdstock 2015, 2019 Nick Holdstock has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. vii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Namkwan Cho Cover image © Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 9781788319799 ePDF: 9781788319829 eBook: 9781788319812 Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India

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CONTENTS

Maps

viii

A Note on Place Names

xi

Preface

xiii

Introduction

1

1

Drawing Boundaries

9

2

‘Liberation’: The Communist Era Begins

35

3

‘Opening Up’

49

4

Striking Hard: The 1990s

81

5

Exiles

119

6

The Peacock Flies West

143

7

Urumqi and After: Learning the Wrong Lessons

183

8

‘A Perfect Bomb’

215

Afterword: ‘As close as pomegranate seeds’

247

Sources and Recommended Reading

267

Index

291

V

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‘Even in the best circumstances the position of a minority is uneasy.’ A L B E RT H O U R A N I

A History of the Arab Peoples

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