Chinese Intellectuals and the Problem of Xinjiang

Abstract

Chinese Intellectuals and the Problem of Xinjiang Wang Lixiong, Wo de Xiyu, ni de Dong Tu, Taipei, Dakuai Wenhua (Locus Publishing), 2007It is a common assumption that Chinese intellectuals, however critical of their government, its institutions, and its policies, are unreceptive to calls for greater self-government, much less independence, in China's autonomous regions, most notably Tibet and Xinjiang.(l) While one could argue that Tibetan culture has, to an extent, exerted a form of attraction on critical minds in China in recent years (probably following a similar trend in the West), Uyghur culture and the political situation of Xinjiang do not seem present on their radar screens at all. An interesting exception is therefore represented by Wang Lixiong's book on Xinjiang, recently published in Taiwan, the title of which can be rendered as My Far West, Your East Turkistan. Wang Lixiong is no newcomer to the question, having devoted the past two decades to researching and reflecting on the place of ethnic minorities in China's political system, in particular in view of its possible democratisation, although he no longer holds any official status to carry out research since his much-publicised resignation from the Writers' Association in 2001.Born in 1953 in Changchun into a family originally from Shandong, Wang Lixiong underwent rural re-education during the Cultural Revolution. His father, a Soviet-educated engineer, committed suicide (or was possibly killed) in 1968 (see p. 43Wang remained active in the 1990s, creating the environmental association Friends of Nature (Ziran zhi you) in 1994, and researching and writing a book-length study of Tibet, published in 1998 under the title Sky Burial: The Fate of Tibet ( Tianzang: Xizang de mingyun). In a follow-up to the book, he met the Dalai Lama (in the United States in 2001) for a series of talks, published in 2002 under the title Dialogue with the Dalai Lama (Yu Dalai Lama duihua). He has initiated two important petitions, one in favour of Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, a Tibetan lama accused of planning a terrorist attack in 2002, and another calling for an independent investigation and peaceful negotiations after the violent uprising in Lhasa in March 2008. During this period, his reflections on how to implement democracy in China also took a more conceptual turn in several of his essays: Dissolving power: a System of Gradual Election by Tiers (Rongjie quanli: Zhu ceng di xuan zhi, 1998), followed by Progressive democracy: China 's Third Way (Dijin minzhu: Zhongguo de di san tiao daolu, 2004, expanded in 2006).Wang Lixiong first began to study Xinjiang in 1999, when he travelled there to prepare research for a book along the lines of Sky Burial. He was arrested for photocopying an internal publication, stamped as secret, on the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (the notorious bingtu- an),(4) and attempted suicide in a high-security prison in Miquan before recanting and promising to collaborate in order to obtain his release. He recorded the incident in a short essay entitled Memories of Xinjiang (Xinjiang zhuijf), published in 2001 and reprinted as an introduction to the present volume. …