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Oct 3 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
Six essential books to help understand how the current crisis in the region known as #Xinjiang emerged. These overlooked, multidisciplinary works, published before the current crisis, range from history to anthropology to political science. #Uyghurs #Centralasia #China #Islam
Obviously I think you should read my book too! It explains how the goals of #China's ethnic policy shifted from gradual to rapid assimilation, exacerbating insecurity and cycles of violence between Han Chinese, #Uyghurs, and the state in #Xinjiang.

cambridge.org/core/books/sec…
brill.com/view/title/150…
cup.columbia.edu/book/eurasian-…
hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?is…
taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.…
cup.columbia.edu/book/the-uyghu…
brill.com/view/title/206…

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More from @ReasonablyRagin

David Tobin Profile picture
Jul 26
NEW REPORT by @lauratmurphy, @nyrola, and myself uncovers massive networks of forced labour and transfers of Uyghur people managed by the Bingtuan and commanded by the central party-state. An explainer 🧵

#Uyghurs #Xinjiang #China

shu.ac.uk/helena-kennedy…
1.
What is the Bingtuan?

The Bingtuan (#Xinjiang Production & Construction Corps) is a state-run corporation, functioning as regional government, paramilitary organisation, prisons bureau, media empire, education system, and one of world’s largest state-run corporations.
2.
Established in the 1950s by former PLA and GMD soldiers, the Bingtuan describes itself as representing China’s ancient “settling the frontier culture” (屯垦文化) with “plough in one hand, gun in the other”

See: doi.org/10.1080/014198…
Read 16 tweets
David Tobin Profile picture
May 19
How does Xi Jinping command policy in #China? This report analyses the #Xinjiang Papers and new evidence of #Uyghurs mass detention. 🧵

sheffield.ac.uk/seas/news/xinj…
1.
The report analyses Xi’s thinking and the centralised decision-making behind Xinjiang policy, institutional shifts to ensure policy implementation, and the arbitrary nature of mass detention of Turkic-speaking Muslim communities.
2.
It explains how China’s political system operates and analyses the thinking behind genocide in Xinjiang. The PRC is moving towards totalitarianism: personalised rule, mass mobilisation and surveillance, and ideological education.
Read 17 tweets
David Tobin Profile picture
Mar 26
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.
Read 7 tweets
David Tobin Profile picture
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…
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 Profile picture
Nov 30, 2021
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 Profile picture
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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