On the reasons of the Uyghur nationalism and separatism outbreak in the XUAR of the PRC in the late 20th - early 21st centuries

This article considers some reasons of the exacerbation of the situation in the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region of the PRC (XUAR) at the end of the 20th and at beginning of the 21st centuries. The permanent conflict between the Uyghur people on the one side and the Han people along with the Chinese authorities on the other side had been a serious problem of Xinjiang for a long time. The Chinese authorities consider Uyghur ethnic nationalism and long-standing desires of creating an independent Islamic state of East Turkestan as the underlying factors of both destabilization of the situation in XUAR and repeated escalation of the conflict. However, the real reasons of Uyghur nationalism and separatism outbreak in XUAR during the observed period obviously lie in another realm, as well as the reasons of Uyghur ethnic nationalism and separatism emergence. According to the author, the contemporary round of the conflict between the Uyghur people and the Han people is determined by two circumstances. Firstly, some old contradictions between these two nations are still not eliminated. Mostly, they are nothing but consequences of fails or just an intentional and consecutive governmental policy towards XUAR, which make the Uyghur people upset and cause other problems, e.g., massive and, at the same time, growing migration of the Han people to Xinjiang; irrational, sometimes insufficient or redundant, control over the social-economic and religious spheres, etc. Secondly, at that time some new factors appeared, historically non-conventional to the conflict, like organized and politicized Uyghur ethnic nationalism along with religious extremism and terrorism as primary methods to fight for independence. The author thinks that a kind of synthesis between the old and the new factors occurred at the end of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st centuries, which resulted in a group of fundamental features of the contemporary conflict between the two nations in XUAR. For example, a large part of Uyghur ethnic nationalism turned into the radical Islamist one. Moreover, there appeared strong Uyghur organizations, both secular and Islamist terrorist ones. These organizations politically and ideologically formed contemporary Uyghur ethnic nationalism and now lead the Uyghur resistance. Radical Islam also gained a large influence on Uyghur ethnic nationalism, so that now their struggle against China is the same as "jihad". Actually it is "jihad" against the "infidel", which attracts international terrorist organizations to Xinjiang. Thus, the author concludes that there was just another escalation of the old contradictions at that time. However, emergence of some new factors significantly transformed Uyghur ethnic nationalism. Obviously, it made the situation harder.

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