Xinjiang and the Great Islamic Circle: The Impact of Transnational Forces on Chinese Regional Economic Planning

Abstract

Before economic reform and political liberalization swept the socialist world, leading to disintegration of multinational states such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, nation-building in socialist economies was primarily studied in the context of modernization theory. This paradigm placed all developing countries along a continuum from tradition to modernity and attributed their movement along the path to domestic factors, with the central assumption that nation-building, assimilation of minority peoples and industrialization followed a linear path of progress. At the beginning of China's economic reforms Donald McMillen used this framework to explain Xinjiang's relations with Han China. McMillen focused on local elites, primarily Muslim minorities, as modernizers working through Han organizations, promoting Xinjiang's development in co-operation with Beijing.