Since early 2016, the Environmental Protection Ministry has sent inspectors across the country to root out problems of pollution and overexploitation of resources. In August of this year, the fourth batch of state inspectors dispersed to eight provinces and regions, including Xinjiang (East Turkistan). By the end of October, a whopping 1,613 cadres in Xinjiang (East Turkistan) alone had been held accountable for environmental misconduct, the most of any province to have disclosed this number.

The report attributes Xinjiang (East Turkistan)’s ecological problems to poor management. The region’s tourism and land resources bureaus, for example, have green-lit hydropower stations and tourism activities in nature reserves despite blanket bans, while the forestry bureau — which is ostensibly responsible for overseeing nature reserves — has turned a blind eye to these illicit initiatives. Despite a national policy ordering designated mines — including coal mines in Xinjiang (East Turkistan)’s Ili Kazak Autonomous Prefecture — to be shut down by 2020, the region’s development and reform commission had no plans to do so, according to the report.

The environment ministry admonished Xinjiang (East Turkistan) officials for exhibiting “ideological problems” and shirking responsibility. “Cadres in some departments still hold the belief that development is more important than the environment,” the report said. “They think of Xinjiang (East Turkistan) as an underdeveloped area that should take advantage of its resources — such as coal, oil, and minerals — to speed up development.”

“Some think that Xinjiang (East Turkistan) — vast and sparsely populated, with lots of desert — has a rich environmental carrying capacity and high overall environmental quality,” the report continued, “and thus that a little pollution won’t be noticeable or leave any lasting impact.” But this mentality could have real and potentially enduring consequences.

The inspectors’ report is not the first revelation of illegal development in Xinjiang (East Turkistan)’s nature reserves or overexploitation of natural resources. In June 2015, Sixth Tone’s sister publication, The Paper, revealedthat the Kalamali Nature Reserve, one of the largest in China, had turned over one-third of its land to a mining operation, endangering the wild animals that lived there. The latest rezoning project advocating for new mines was called off in December 2015 after catching the central government’s attention.

Even after mines are shut down, they can leave lasting environmental and geological damage — as in two cases in Yunnan and Anhui provinces. Restoring these abandoned sites to safe, habitable areas has been especially slow in Xinjiang (East Turkistan): According to the environment ministry’s report, of the more than 2,100 square kilometers of land once occupied by now-defunct mines, only around 3 percent has been restored back to a normal state.

Although Xinjiang (East Turkistan) has banned or limited the use of scarce groundwater, poor oversight has created drought-like conditions in some areas. In Urumqi, the region’s capital, inspectors found that 91 factories in Midong District were illegally extracting groundwater. And excessive groundwater use near Chaiwopu Lake has dramatically reduced the lake’s water levels. Myriad other air and water problems were also “conspicuous” throughout the region, the inspectors said.

“In recent years, [Xinjiang (East Turkistan)’s] economic growth has relied heavily on the exploitation of energy resources,” the report said. “The region’s environmental protection efforts fall short of both the central government’s requirements and the public’s expectations.”

By Li You –  Sixthtone, 4th January 2018

Editor: David Paulk.

http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1001496/xinjiang-overexploiting-natural-resources%2C-inspectors-say

These factors combine to ensure that the Chinese Communist Party has large incentives to suppress the Uyghur ethnic group. Specifically, each factor threatens two pillars of the CCP’s governing philosophy: preserving territorial integrity and continuing industrialization. Preserving territorial integrity is one of China’s “core interests,” meaning that the CCP considers it essential to understanding Chinese foreign and security policies. China’s history of foreign imperial domination and machinations during the “Century of Humiliation” from 1839-1949 informs the CCP’s obsession with territorial integrity. The Chinese Communist Party views Xinjiang (East Turkistan) Province and its Uyghur population as a potential hotbed for separatism, what the party terms “splittism.” This stems from the Uyghur’s strong and non-Han ethnic identity. Further, the Uyghurs are concentrated in Xinjiang (East Turkistan); 49 percent of Xinjiang (East Turkistan)’s 20 million people are Uyghurs, and few Uyghurs live in China’s other provinces. This density, the CCP believes, adds fuel to secessionist fires. A major component of the perceived difference is religion: the vast majority of Uyghurs are Muslim and consider Islam a defining part of their ethnic identity. In addition, Uyghur literary and cultural traditions differ greatly from the Han Chinese, often seeing the Han as foreign imperialists while Uyghur historical heroes are those who fought against the Chinese empires. The Uyghurs do not even speak a Chinese language; their language, simply called Uyghur, is a Turkic tongue using Arabic script.

The concentration of the Uyghur population and the differences in religion, language, and culture means that they pose a potentially formidable challenge to the Chinese Communists were they to seek independence. This potential challenge is made more pressing by China’s need to further its industrialization. The CCP perceives that its legitimacy rests on further economic growth; a stalled economy is a stalled CCP mandate. To continue industrializing, China needs secure access to energy. Access to Xinjiang (East Turkistan)’s resources allay CCP concerns that its foreign energy imports are subject to numerous political and military risks. The province holds 40 percent of China’s coal and 20 percent of its oil. Further, the Belt and Road Initiative relies on Xinjiang (East Turkistan) as the gateway to Central Asia and Pakistan. China has already invested $45 billion in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and is expected to invest over $900 billion in the Belt and Road. Almost one trillion dollars in investment necessitates heavy security.

Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.The Chinese Communist Party has chosen to secure its investments through repression of the Uyghur people, primarily in the areas of population control, religious suppression, and language replacement.

Population Control

The Chinese Communist Party employs two methods for diluting the concentrated Uyghur population: Han migration and territory assignment. The party sees the Han population as a naturally loyal constituency (correctly or incorrectly), yet the Han tend to cluster along the coasts. If loyal Han moved to the vast border regions they would shore up CCP support in what the government perceived as potentially rebellious  minority areas. The Communists thus encouraged Han to migrate to Xinjiang (East Turkistan), first forcibly by demobilizing army regiments in the area and sending Han youth to “learn from the peasants” (and then refusing to allow them to return home). Later, the Party used economic incentives, such as discounts on land prices. The policies worked: in 1949 the Han population in Xinjiang (East Turkistan) was 5 percent of the province’s total, in 1978 it was 40 percent. In addition, the Communist government supports the Production and Constructions Corps (PCC), demobilized army units that act as mini-governments unto themselves. They established “farms” around key transport arteries, areas rich in natural resources, and non-Han urban hubs. They “provided the potential to control travel and isolate Xinjiang (East Turkistan)’s subregions with very modest manpower.” These former military units and their key locations afford the CCP a strong position from which to monitor and control the Uyghurs of Xinjiang (East Turkistan).

The Chinese Communist Party further dilutes Uyghur control of Xinjiang (East Turkistan) by recognizing 13 “autonomous” minorities in the province. A minority is granted autonomy when the CCP decides its circumstances are sufficiently different from the Han that it deserves its own government. The Uyghurs are one such ethnicity; the official name of Xinjiang (East Turkistan) is the Xinjiang (East Turkistan) Uyghur Autonomous Region. Though they are nominally autonomous, the central government undercuts their authority at every turn. The CCP does this primarily by awarding the other designated minorities autonomy as well, but here it is primarily autonomy from the Uyghurs. By doing so, the CCP ensures that the Uyghurs cannot politically dominate Xinjiang (East Turkistan). These autonomous minority communities, and their resultant political, economic, and cultural elite, became dependent upon the CCP’s support for their survival. If they refused CCP control over the province, the Uyghurs would dominate politically, economically, and culturally. By setting minority against minority, the Uyghur’s hold on Xinjiang (East Turkistan) is tenuous at best.

By importing Han, giving the Han-controlled PCC control of the economy, and ensuring the loyalty of strategically placed non-Uyghur minorities, the CCP ensures that the Uyghur population is physically divided, constantly in competition against non-Han, and subordinate to Han economic interests.

Religion

Initially, the CCP believed that enforcing official atheism would be counterproductive in Xinjiang (East Turkistan), where Islam is a staple of cultural life. Instead, the CCP sought ways to allow religious traditions to continue for locals while upholding official atheism. “In Xinjiang (East Turkistan) this meant that, from the beginning of socialist rule, the major religious holidays were treated as ‘ethnic traditions,’” and not as overtly religious affairs. Yet over time, the conflation of religion with ethnicity turned institutionalized Islam into an source of ethnic separatism in the eyes of the CCP. During the Anti-Rightist Campaign Mosques were closed, imams (prayer leaders) were jailed, and people who wore obviously Muslim clothing, like hijabs, were arrested. Oppression intensified during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution: “the CCP purposely defiled mosques with pigs. Many Muslim leaders were simply shot.” Any outward expression of Islamic belief was quickly and brutally punished.

The 9/11 terror attacks and the resultant War on Terror allowed the Chinese government to cast Uyghur ethnic unrest as radicalized Islamism. As such, the CCP has tightened its grip over religious expression in Xinjiang (East Turkistan). It allows only a certain amount of Uyghurs to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, a key expression of faith for Muslims, and those that do are subject to “compulsory political education courses” upon their return.

Chinese authorities sent thousands of armed troops and columns of armored vehicles to the province after three Uyghurs killed five people in early 2017. Sources claim that the attack was retaliation against police who punished a Uyghur family for holding Muslim prayer meetings in their home. Other, smaller regulations serve to embarrass, terrorize, or divide the Uyghur Muslim community. As The Economist explained earlier this year, these included forbidding students to fast during Ramadan; bans on “abnormal” beards and Islamic garb; prohibiting parents from “naming of children to exaggerate religious fervor” with names like Muhammad and Islam.

It is important to note that these policies apply only to the Uyghur Muslims. The Hui, the other large Muslim minority group in China, are not subject to such oppression. In fact, the party has identified the continued centrality of Islam to the Uyghur identity as a core obstacle to national stability. By such admissions, we see that regulations on Islam are not about the Muslim religion, but about breaking the Uyghur ethnic identity. The CCP fears Islam could be used as a unifying force that could galvanize Uyghurs to seek independence from China. Turkish minorities in the former Soviet Union, Chechens in modern Russia, and Palestinians in Israel/Palestine have all used Islam as an ethnic rallying point. The CCP is determined to prevent the religion from being used in such a way in Xinjiang (East Turkistan).

Language and Literature

The Uyghur language employs the Arabic script, and by doing so affords the Uyghurs access to a rich literary history stretching from China to Spain and back over 1300 years. Yet in the early days of communist control of Xinjiang (East Turkistan) the CCP mandated a shift from the Arabic script to Cyrillic. This allowed the party to initiate a break within the Uyghur community from its Islamic ties and historical culture; Islamic texts and Uyghur culture were written in the Arabic script. The party again mandated a shift after the Sino-Soviet Split, this time to the Roman script, which allowed the CCP to ease the implementation of the pinyin system in Xinjiang (East Turkistan). The influx of Han immigrants facilitated further change. To accommodate the new immigrants the CCP-controlled regional government stopped using Uyghur in official documents and began using Mandarin.

More than changing it, the CCP has sought to control how Uyghurs use their language. During the Cultural Revolution and its precursors, Uyghur intellectuals were assaulted, Uyghur poets were jailed, and Uyghur writers were barred from publishing. Works and writers that romanticize a golden Uyghur past and the Uyghurs’ independence from Chinese rule are viewed as especially dangerous, with public book burnings being not unheard of. Academics, particularly historians and anthropologists, are also targeted. At the first International Conference of Uyghur Studies, held at George Washington University in 2015, the convenors noted the absence of academics from China. Henryk Szadziewski wrote in the Turkish Review that “Officially sanctioned involvement may be viewed as an endorsement of Uyghur rights, while unofficial participation could have landed scholars in trouble.” By disconnecting the Uyghurs from their history and culture, the CCP hopes to break the psychological connection between Uyghurs and their non-Chinese past. If Uyghur culture and history are only viewed through a Chinese lens, the Uyghurs would be more amenable to Chinese control.

Conclusion

There are many ways that the Chinese Communist Party oppresses the Uyghur people. Yet each method of oppression has, at its core, a single motivating factor: the Uyghurs need to be tightly controlled in order for the CCP to realize its economic goals, which rely heavily on Xinjiang (East Turkistan). Any disruption in security or stability in Xinjiang (East Turkistan) has the potential to derail billions of dollars worth of economics planning and investment. While we have examined the human costs of this control, we will next look to the economic benefits the CCP derives from control of the Uyghurs and Xinjiang (East Turkistan).

Zachary Torrey is an MSc Candidate in Conflict Studies at the London School of Economics, focusing on politics and the political economy of the Asia Pacific.

The two basins are really treasure bowls and abound in oil, natural gas, sylvite, mirabilite, vermiculite and bentonite, which are of high economic value and a large amount of wealth given by the nature.

Over millions of years the geological movements of mountains and basins have produced many large mineral lodes in mountains and deposited large quantities of precious mineral reserves.

With gold mountains and treasure basins Xinjiang (East Turkistan)’s mining prospect is universally considered cheerful.

Xinjiang (East Turkistan) is quite large in geographical size. Many regions haven’t conduct detailed investigation on mineral resources, and some are even never touched. But those already proven resources can clearly show that Xinjiang (East Turkistan) is a mineral abundance zone.

Xinjiang (East Turkistan) has good mineralization conditions and a large gross amount of resources. Prospective mines mainly include petroleum, natural gas, coal, gold, copper, nickel, lead, zinc, asbestos, salts, bentonite, limestone and vermiculite etc.

Mineral resources are widely distributed here with more than one hundred important metallogenic belt. There are oil, gas, coal and mineral salts in large basins like Tarim, Junggar and Turpan, and gold, iron, nonferrous metals, rare metals, and non-metallic mines in mountains like Altay, Tianshan, Kunlun and Altun.

Xinjiang (East Turkistan) has a complete ore deposit. There are altogether 171 known ores in China, 138 of which are found in Xinjiang (East Turkistan). Among them are seven energy minerals, forty-two metal minerals, seventy non-metallic minerals and three underground water resources. It’s rare in China and not quite common in the world for a provincial region to have so many ores distributed in such a well-coordinated way.

Xinjiang (East Turkistan) has very rich reserves of mineral resources. Among the 117 ores with proved recoverable reserves, five ores reserves rank as the top one of the country, twenty-four are among the top five and forty-three are in the top ten.

Ores are of good quality and there are many quality bonanzas. For instance, the proven reserve of iron-rich ores in Xinjiang (East Turkistan) account for one quarter of the country’s gross reserve. The high grade of Ashele copper mine and Kalatongke copper-nickel ore is so rare in the country. The recently discovered Tuwu copper mine is expected to be built as a giant open-pit copper mine.

Xinjiang (East Turkistan)’s various basins, large or small, are rich in oil and gas resources with a reserve of more than 30 billion tons, which account for one-third of the country’s total.

Xinjiang (East Turkistan)’s coal resources are extraordinarily rich and account for more than 40 percent of China’s total coal reserve and rank the number one in the whole country. There are only ten basins with over 500 billion tons coal resources, and Xinjiang (East Turkistan) has two of them. These coal mines have not only a large reserve but also full variety of coal sorts, including gas coal, fat coal, coking coal, lean coal and lignite etc., which are of good quality and used widely.

Sylvite is a scarce resource in China and it has long depended on imports, but Lop Nor of Xinjiang (East Turkistan) is abundant in sylvite resources and has a huge reserve. Large scale exploitation of sylvite in Lop Nor can effectively ease conflicts between supply and demand of sylvite.

There are rich resources of building materials, such as marble, granite, asbestos ore and limestone, with great variety and good quality.

Since ancient times, Xinjiang (East Turkistan) is known for gold mine and is a well-known Home of Gems and Jade. Now various kinds of silicified wood, colorful stones and rare rocks are very popular among collectors.

From the geological structure and metallogenic characteristics, Xinjiang (East Turkistan) is with tremendous potential for the exploitation of the region’s mineral resources. Some conducted geological studies and surveys also found large-scale multi-type prospective mineralization belts. In the western region, Xinjiang (East Turkistan) is the only provincial region that has large reserves of mineral resources with full variety of ores and good accessories.

Mineral resources not only directly provide mineral products for market needs, but also stimulate the rise of many industry chains like energy, chemical, metallurgical and building material industries. For example, coals can not only be used in energy industry for power generation, coking, gas and synthetic crude oil, but also to produce fine chemicals like dopes, perfume, chemical reagents and surfactants. Besides used as heat protection, thermal insulation and sound absorbing materials, vermiculite can also be used to produce latex mat, elastic heat resistant plate, refractory coating mixture, water paint compounds, wastewater treatment coagulants and inorganic perfume odorants. Bentonite finds wide use in petroleum, metallurgy, casting, paper making, construction materials, textile, pharmaceutical, food and other industrial sectors.

In the 1950’s China built its first large-scale oil field in Karamay and thus retorted upon experts’ prediction that China had no oil reserve. After half a century, Xinjiang (East Turkistan) has once again demonstrated a favorable mining development pattern.

It can be predicted that with the implementation of transform strategy for advantageous resources, different minerals, including black minerals like oil, natural gas, coal, iron, chromium and vermiculite, yellow minerals represented by copper, nickel and gold, and white minerals represented by sylvite, sodium salt, mirabilite, cement limestone, asbestos and bentonite, will blossom in radiant brilliance and promote Xinjiang (East Turkistan) to be China’s successive base of oil, natural gas, coal, copper and nickel, chemicals, construction materials and other mining industries.

The prospect can be clearly seen from the angle of economic development.

(SOURCES: XJTS)Editor: Chengli