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David Tobin

Mar 26 • 7 tweets • 4 min read

Some book reviews! My fieldwork in Urumchi #Xinjiang planned to explore relations between Han, #Uyghurs, & party-state, particularly how urban groups most exposed to party education understand each other and how interactions shape #nationalism #security

cambridge.org/core/product/i…

What wasn't planned was 2009 mass violence. Han & #Uyghurs explained violence with narratives familiar from living there previously but crystallised into starker boundaries & insecurity. #China's party-state framed Uyghur identities as security problems, intensifying insecurity.

I had hoped to live there again during more peaceful times and even explore some themes in the reviews below. But Xi's ethnic extinction policies and his closed "new era" means we have to learn and use new methods.

@GroseTimothy

Review by @GroseTimothy for the @chinaquarterly.

cambridge.org/core/journals/…

@robertsreport

Review by @robertsreport for the Journal of Asian Studies.

cambridge.org/core/journals/…

@sbtynen

Review by @sbtynen for @Geopolitics_Jl.

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

@PacificAffairs

Review by Yan Sun for
for @PacificAffairs.

pacificaffairs.ubc.ca/book-reviews/s…

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David Tobin

@ReasonablyRagin

Mar 3

After the 2009 violence between Han, #Uyghurs, and #Xinjiang’s security organs, #China’s party-state used region-wide compulsory “ethnic unity education” to "defeat separatism." A key text from those classes is now available. What does it tell us? 🧵

xinjiang.sppga.ubc.ca/chinese-source…

@YXiaocuo

1.

The text is hosted on @YXiaocuo ‘s Xinjiang Documentation Project website. Their goal is to uplift survivors’ voices and create a reliable resource to combat state-sponsored erasure of evidence and partisan presentation of the crisis in Xinjiang

xinjiang.sppga.ubc.ca

2. How are these texts studied?

To pass compulsory “ethnic unity” (minzu tuanjie) exams, schoolchildren, students, and state employees had to chant together in class and pass exams on their own identity and official narratives of history and separatism

Read 13 tweets

David Tobin

@ReasonablyRagin

Nov 30, 2021

@adrianzenz

I reviewed The Xinjiang Papers by @adrianzenz, official document leak from China’s party-state. His argument that targeting of Uyghurs intensified under Xi Jinping’s commands is clearly made, logically sound, and supported with strong evidence. A thread 🧵
uyghurtribunal.com

1.

Authentication.

I read original documents and would have refused to review this without them. These can’t be released to protect people’s safety....

2.

...The transcripts are accurate. Most policies and narratives (Sinicisation, Three Evils, Great Revival) are familiar from researching official media, cadre meetings, and “patriotic education”. Many quotes and references to the documents are online.

Read 19 tweets

David Tobin

@ReasonablyRagin

Jul 7, 2020

What have we learned in 11 years since mass violence between Han, #Uyghurs, and the state in #Xinjiang?

Since the emergence of internment camps sparked wider interest in the subject, many discussions catalogue incidents of violence and describe how the party-state responded. Considerably less attention is paid to why the state responds this way

...particularly why it conceives and punishes some acts of violence and resistance as existential threats but not others. Leaving underlying thinking behind policy and state violence unproblematised rationalises the behaviour and interests of the state as natural and inevitable.

Read 17 tweets

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