‘Bilingual’ education and discontent in Xinjiang

Efforts to promote and impose Mandarin Chinese as the language of instruction in ethnic minority schools in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, aimed at further integrating the state and raising regional educational and economic quality, have had mixed success. The 2004 plan to consolidate Han Chinese and minority elementary and middle schools and to make Mandarin the universal language of instruction in those schools is fostering an immersive second-language environment without prior preparation for students, bringing native speakers of Mandarin into unfair competition with non-native speakers. The increased focus on Mandarin has already had grave consequences for ethnic relations, especially in urban Uyghur schools, where the project is focused, while the mandate for change in educational curriculum and methodology has also been poorly planned and remains under-resourced, negatively impacting educational quality. The Chinese government has available to it other language policy solutions that are both more workable and friendlier to minority sensibilities.     

Building transregional and historical connections: Uyghur architecture in urban Xinjiang

Economic investment and the growing immigration of Han Chinese from other parts of China to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region over the last three decades have increased the presence of eastern Chinese architecture in the urban built environment. This paper refers to the making of, residing in and speaking about the materiality of urban architecture by Turkic-speaking Muslim Uyghur middle-class actors. Besides creating personal comfort through Uyghur elements they draw ethnic boundaries to the Han Chinese. In highlighting the materiality of architecture, the analysis expands beyond the individual house by investigating the ways in which urban architecture offers spaces of meaning for social and ethnic communities. Based on ethnographic data, this paper argues that due to the political context and the state-controlled urban development with Chinese characteristics, urban Uyghur architecture was relegated from the outside of houses to an emphasis on interior decoration.     

Ethnicity and capital: Changing relations between China and Southeast Asia

This article seeks to debunk the persistent myth of an ethnically-based Chinese capitalism and the culturalist view of an “economic miracle” created by Asians of Chinese descent. This myth claims that Chinese entrepreneurs constitute a closed category with homogenous ethnic attributes and cultural values that have enabled them to achieve economic success. This article disputes such primordialist views and proposes an alternative analysis of the cultural economy of regionalisation and constructions of Chineseness. It deconstructs the politics of culture and identity, and argues for the need to analyse Southeast Asian Chinese entrepreneurship within specific historical, geographical, economic, political and socio-cultural contexts.     

CHINA’S ‘POLITICAL RE-EDUCATION’ CAMPS OF XINJIANG’S UYGHUR MUSLIMS

Recently, reports have emerged that China operates “political re-education” camps of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. China justified them as a sort of vocational training program to assist Uyghurs in participating in the Chinese economy. In actuality, they are brutal incarceration camps; these forms of ‘education’ can qualify as torture that perhaps 1.5 million adults have been subjected to, and have led to detaining children of people incarcerated in state-run boarding schools. It is necessary to interrogate the underlying factors that have enabled the Chinese government to open and operate these camps under the guise of education. This paper first examines the impact of the current geopolitical interests of China's Belt & Road Initiative and the historical backgrounds of Xinjiang and the Re-Education through Labour program. It then explains the methods of ‘education’ taking place within the camps and interrogates China's justifications for building them. This education issue is more about inhibiting Uyghur power than China's claim that the camps are meant to empower Uyghurs to participate in the Chinese labour force.     

Native rhythms in the city: embodied refusal among Uyghur male migrants in Ürümchi

Over the past two decades, state-directed Han settlement and capitalist development in the Uyghur homeland in Chinese Central Asia have uprooted thousands of Uyghurs, causing them to move to the city. In this article, I explore how low-income male Uyghur migrants and Uyghur culture producers build a durable existence despite these challenges. Based on analysis of migrant responses to the Uyghur-language urban fiction and indigenous music as well as ethnographic observations of Uyghur migrants from Southern Xinjiang, I argue that indigenous knowledge provides underemployed male Uyghurs a means to refuse the alienating effects of settler colonialism and economic development. By broadening the scope of what counts as ‘resistance’ to Chinese attempts to eliminate aspects of Uyghur society, I show that ‘refusal’ can be a generative way of embodying sovereignty, particularly when confronted by structural violence.     

Taliban 2.0 and China's Counterterrorism Diplomacy in Afghanistan

The US withdrawal that left the Taliban in control of Afghanistan has created a security dilemma for China. Beijing considers its Uyghur population to be a terror threat, and it believes the Taliban are allowing the group to use Afghanistan as a refuge from which to plan attacks and transit into Central Asian neighbors. This article analyzes both the historical record and recent moves by China to explain Beijing's strategy of engaging with the Taliban and developing the Afghan economy. The study indicates that the approach has some potential benefits if, as the Chinese assume, economic growth yields stability, good governance, and a cohesive state that can combat terror groups. However, the article demonstrates that Afghan history, the Taliban's ideology, and the vicious circle of instability, economic stagnation, and further chaos are likely to subvert China's goals.     

From employed to self-employed: An analysis of entrepreneurship in rural Latvia

Abstract

Private business is encouraged in transition countries in order to generate economic development in rural areas. This paper explores different forms of rural businesses in a peripheral region in Latvia. It builds primarily on interviews with business leaders and farmers. The analysis focuses particularly on the individuals that run businesses and how they utilise opportunities and respond to constraints. Individual resources such as ownership of land and buildings, skills and access to influential and geographically wide networks have been decisive for identification and exploitation of business opportunities in this rural context. Successful businesses demand that skills and contacts are continuously updated. Those undertaking such business activities that continuously try to adapt to the changing situation may be called “adaptive entrepreneurs”. Two different forms of adaptive entrepreneurs are identified; “flexible entrepreneurs”, those with greater ability to reorganize their businesses, and “restricted entrepreneurs”, those with more limited flexibility, which make them most vulnerable to change.     

Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses’ Growth Expectations and Financial Performance in Latvia: Does Ethnicity Matter?

Applying regulatory focus theory, this paper investigates the impact of both ‘initial confidence’ and ‘exactness of growth expectations’ on the financial performance of small and medium-sized firms in Latvia. Drawing on a data set based on repeated survey design, we explore the complexity of this relationship empirically. Our overall findings suggest that when controlling for other relevant factors, such as actual growth, entrepreneurs having higher growth expectations perform significantly better in terms of profitability. In addition, education has a strong modifying effect. The impact of high growth expectations on subsequent profit performance is stronger for entrepreneurs with a lower level of education. Moreover, these effects are amplified by ethnicity. They are much stronger for ethnic Russian entrepreneurs compared with ethnic Latvian entrepreneurs.     

Interest versus Identity: Economic Voting in Ukrainian Presidential Elections

To what extent do economic factors accentuate or mitigate ethno-cultural fault lines in Ukrainian politics? Previous analyses of Ukrainian elections have focused on Ukraine's ethno-cultural regional divide, which splits the Ukrainophone West and Center from the Russian-speaking East and South. A newly-fashioned subnational dataset that includes ethno-linguistic, economic, and electoral data for Ukraine's 225 territorial election districts is used to tease out the relative importance of ethnic and economic factors in Ukrainian electoral behavior. The role of economic conditions in Viktor Yanukovych's 2010 victory and shifts in vote shares for Viktor Yushchenko and Yuliya Tymoshenko from 2004 to 2010 are given in-depth examination.     

‘Thoroughly reforming them towards a healthy heart attitude’: China’s political re-education campaign in Xinjiang

ABSTRACT

Since spring 2017, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China has witnessed the emergence of an unprecedented re-education campaign. According to media and informant reports, untold thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslims have been and are being detained in clandestine political re-education facilities, with major implications for society, local economies and ethnic relations. Considering that the Chinese state is currently denying the very existence of these facilities, this paper investigates publicly available evidence from official sources, including government websites, media reports and other Chinese internet sources. First, it briefly charts the history and present context of political re-education. Second, it looks at the recent evolution of re-education in Xinjiang in the context of ‘de-extremification’ work. Finally, it evaluates detailed empirical evidence pertaining to the present re-education drive. With Xinjiang as the ‘core hub’ of the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing appears determined to pursue a definitive solution to the Uyghur question.     

Bypassing Germany's Reformstau: The Remarkable Rise of Renewable Energy

For the past 20 years, Germany has witnessed a remarkable expansion in renewable energy production due to the introduction and further development of a feed-in-tariff model (FITM). This comprehensive and rapid policy change is surprising given the many veto points in Germany's political system and the fact that a powerful alliance objected to an expansion of renewable energy (RE). To explain this puzzle, this study relies on insights from historical institutionalism and policy analysis. I argue that historical contingency and critical juncture opened a window of opportunity for the pro-RE alliance in the late 1980s. Policy entrepreneurs subsequently used the opportunity to advance the FITM. Once introduced, this institution developed a self-reinforcing economic dynamic. Policy entrepreneurs in the parliament and the Ministry for the Environment translated economic gains into political leverage, which was crucial to defend the FITM from counterattacks in the following years.     

Embedded rubber sandals: trade and gifts across the Sino–Kyrgyz border

How does a group of Uyghur traders from a village in Atush (Xinjiang, China) end up with a stock of unsellable rubber sandals in Kadamjay (Batken, Kyrgyzstan), and why don’t they compete according to market principles? This article explores the social investments of the traders and their families, and reveals their behaviour to be rational, both economically and socially. It illuminates the business and daily life of Uyghur traders in southern Kyrgyzstan, an environment that is increasingly challenging and uncertain. The examination of exchange relations between their households explains why the traders cooperate as they do and also why they do not cooperate more. Economic rationales and social obligations prove to be mutually embedded. This insight expands and deepens a nascent analytical approach that recognizes social motivation for economic activities in Central Asia alongside undeniable economic incentives. This approach has much to gain from being more explicitly reconnected to classical anthropological theories of gift giving.     

My Business Pays Me: Labourers and Entrepreneurs Among the Self–Employed Poor in Latin America

Are the independent economic activities of poor people “petty commodity production”—an informal way to earn a subsistence wage? Or are they “microentrepreneurship”, a launching point for capital accumulation and growth? This paper draws on fieldwork in Bolivia, Peru and Guatemala, focusing specifically on the poorest businesses. In–depth interviews indicate that even the smallest–scale producers, merchants and service providers have goals of “improving” their business and “growing” their capital, not unlike their capitalist counterparts. Yet, while growth is desirable, maintaining one's business as a steady source of income is a sufficient achievement for many. Poor self–employed people are both “labourers” and “entrepreneurs”; the key macro–level question becomes, not “Do petty–commodity producers have different goals than capitalist entrepreneurs”, but “What resources are lacking, and what obstacles exist, that keep many microentrepreneurs in low–yield activities, with little opportunity to grow their resources?”     

DEVELOPMENT AS LOCALIZATION

Since China initiated a series of post-socialist transformations in the late 1970s, it has presented itself as a developing country that is pursuing a challenging and ambitious project of socioeconomic construction. It adopted economic development as its primary ideological orientation to complement Marxist thought. China's recent attempts to develop its western region — specifically in the form of the Western Development Project (WDP) — give the ideology of developmentalism a new meaning. This article's close examination of the WDP reveals an interesting interdependence between the issues of development and ethnicity: in addition to addressing problems of unequal regional development, solving increasing security concerns, and tackling poverty, official and scholarly writings in China repeatedly ascribe the WDP with minority features. The author exposes and analyzes the ethnic minority label that China's dominant discourse on development attaches to the WDP and argues that this discourse prevents ethnic minorities from becoming fully recognized participants in the economic transformations taking place in China. It does so by localizing ethnic minorities in one region, China's West, and by characterizing them in a derogatory fashion.     

The Sinicized self: prejudice,epistemology and Uyghur perceptions of their bodies

ABSTRACT

The ‘Sinicization’ of the Uyghur world – that is, the pervasive progression of Chinese influence into it – is a familiar topic of both Uyghur complaint and academic writing on Xinjiang. In this article, I discuss the striking appearance of this same motif in reference to the Sinicization of the physical Uyghur body, and use this example to argue that the communally enforced moral separation of the Uyghur from the Chinese, and the particular understanding of history that underpins this, have epistemological consequences for how the Uyghur people see themselves and the world.     

Ethnic diversity and its spatial change in Latvia, 1897–2011

Utilizing data from five census enumerations of Latvia (including the most recent 2011 census), this study analyzes temporal and spatial trends in ethnic diversity in the country at the national and municipal levels. The measure employed, the ethnic diversity index (EDI), makes possible a more sophisticated interpretation of the dynamics of ethnic diversity than an analysis of the changing percentage shares of Latvia's various ethnic groups over time. At the national level, a trend of declining ethnic diversity prior to Latvia's incorporation into the Soviet Union was followed by a rapid increase during the Soviet period, before the onset of gradually decreasing diversity during the post-Soviet period. These national-level trends obscure a number of trends evident at the municipal level, including salient (depending on the period) ethnic diversity gradients Rīga–Latvia, cities/towns–countryside, and the east–west. Latvia remains one of the most ethnically diverse countries of Europe, and the study outlines some of the implications of the recent stagnation of regional EDIs at rather high levels for the economic and political life of the country.     

Malaysia's Role in Asian Regional Cooperation: A Look at Foreign Policy Themes

Blessed with a vastly diverse multiracial population comprising a plethora of divergent political views and religious aspirations, Malaysia's nation-building efforts have been a unique experiment. Since the colonial period, the country had to contend with three large and distinct ethnic groups, which largely, due to history, could be identified most closely by their role and place in Malaysia's society and economy. Upon gaining independence, this nascent polity was confronted with a colossal task—to unite the various ethnic groups in the country under a single national vision and a cohesive economic development strategy.

Today, despite several shortcomings, Malaysia has hitherto been relatively successful in building a competent economic model based on a complex formula of multiracial unity in the country. Malaysia can be said to be one of the few countries that has been successful in balancing national imperatives with ethnic and religious realities.

It is this understanding of and response to a uniquely pluralistic demographic landscape that has served as the underlying philosophy of Malaysia's foreign policy. The country's approach to building relationships in the region starts from a deep appreciation of the diverse ethnic, religious and cultural nature of Asian societies. Her many policies over the past fifty years aimed at strengthening ties with her Asian neighbors based on enlightened self-interest and mutual political, social and economic benefit. Her domestic experience in dealing with a multitude of Asian races and cultures enabled Malaysia to empathize with the challenges that Asian nations face. This allowed her to forge close cooperation with many Asian countries over the years. Overall, it would appear that Malaysia not only was able to achieve her national motto “Unity is Strength” within its borders but was able to work with her neighbors to attempt to achieve it internationally.

This paper therefore seeks to analyze how Malaysia's outlook came about, how it manifested in her foreign policies and in the approach of her partners.     

Chineseness and Chinese Indonesian Business Practices: A Generational and Discursive Enquiry

This paper discusses the role and meaning of Chineseness in business conduct among different generations of Chinese Indonesian entrepreneurs active in small and medium sized enterprises. This issue is raised in order to inspire the ongoing debate concerning the characteristics of ethnic Chinese business practices in Southeast Asia, and to offer a way out of the culturalist – criticalist impasse by addressing topics that are often neglected: the voice of those concerned, the business practices of Chinese Indonesian entrepreneurs in the SME sector, and generational differences.     

The Wang Lixiong prophecy: ‘Palestinization’ in Xinjiang and the consequences of Chinese state securitization of religion

ABSTRACT

In Your Western Regions, My Turkestan (2007), Chinese dissident Wang Lixiong warned of the ‘Palestinization’ of the Xinjiang question, defined as reaching ‘a critical point in time’ where Uyghurs and Han Chinese enter an interminable ‘ethnic war’. Following the knife attack on Han civilians in Kunming (2014), seen by many as an act of Uyghur terror, Wang reminded us that he had foreseen this trajectory seven years earlier. This article outlines Wang’s six interpretations of ‘Palestinization’ in the Xinjiang context, then shows how tightened regulations on religion and intrusive religious policing was the main catalyst for local retaliatory violence in 2012–2015. I contend that state securitization of religion was counterproductive, heightening societal insecurity and promoting inter-ethnic conflict between Uyghur and Han communities. In Chen Quanguo’s era of ‘de-extremification’, the state’s purported attempt to ‘purify’ Islamic practice continues to be experienced on the ground as violation of pure, halal space.     

Comments on “Soviet Transport Trends, 1950–1990”

A political scientist and specialist on Russian electoral and ethnic politics provides an explanation of machine politics in Russia's regions that accounts for the great variation in the power of these machines. The focus is on distinguishing among the economic and ethnic legacies of the Soviet period, the effects of the transition itself, and the impact of provincial leadership. As evidence, the author presents a historicalinterpretive examination of Russia's transition at the level of provincial politics as well as a statistical analysis of factors impacting the strength of regional machine candidates in the 1999 single-member-district Duma elections.