Chapter 2

Origins of theEast Turkestan
Independence Movement

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Social Context and Shape of the Movement

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The East Turkestan Independence Movement first began to take shape in
1933. Every historical event has its elements of chance, but how was theunprecedented East Turkestan Independence Movement able to so quickly
mobilize the population, and erupt ubiquitously and simultaneously acrossthe territory of Xinjiang? These circumstances indicate that early modern
Xinjiang society harbored simmering ethnic problems.
This chapter focuses on social structure in early modern Xinjiang, analyzing the social, political and economic causes for the latent East Turkestan
Independence Movement, to discover the ideological starting point for the
independence movement and explore the ideological system that sustained
it, as well as analyzing the organizational characteristics of the First East
Turkestan Independence Movement, to reveal the nature of the movement.

2.1 Ideology of the East Turkestan Independence Movement“East Turkestan”
As is well known, “Turkestan” signifies “Land of the Turks”: it is generally
divided into East Turkestan, which falls within Chinese territories, andWest Turkestan, which falls within the territories of the former Soviet
Union. However, the significance of the term “East Turkestan,” which once
expressed a geographical concept, is in fact unclear, both in a temporal andin a spatial sense.

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The spatial ambiguity is due to the fact that the term “East Turkestan”
has been used at various times in reference to southern Xinjiang (the Tarim
Basin and the surrounding region), in reference to the region of eastern
Xinjiang containing the Hami Basin, and even in reference to the entire
territory of Xinjiang. The temporal ambiguity is based on the lack of definite hypotheses regarding the point when the term “East Turkestan” (Xarh
Turkestan) emerged in the Uyghur language: some sources refer to Xinjiang as “East Turkestan” even prior to the in-migration of the Turkic
peoples.
Although The Life of Yakoob Beg, written by Demetrius Charles
Boulger and published in London in 1878, refers to southern Xinjiang as“Eastern or Chinese Turkestan,”1 it should be noted that Tārīkh-ī Khāmīdī
(History of Hāmīdī), written by the Uyghur historian Molla Musa Sayrami
and completed in 1908, still refers to the region as “Mogulistan Yurti yaki
Yette Xeher” (Mogulistan, or the Land of the Seven Cities).2 Other sources
show that, even in the early 1920s, the Uyghur people still did not refer tothe region as “East Turkestan.” In a 1934 essay entitled “Xinjiang Legislators in the Era of the Beijing Government,” which criticizes the Uyghur
parliamentarians under the Republic of China, the original Uyghur author
refers to himself as a “resident of southern Xinjiang” (nan Jiang ren 南疆人 ).3
These sources demonstrate that, even among local Uyghurs, the place name“East Turkestan” was a loanword that was not accepted until the earlymodern era.
It was not until the 1930s that Uyghurs began broadly utilizing theterm “East Turkestan”: this was likely linked to the nascent “East Turkestan Independence Movement,” which first began to take shape in that era.
As related by the Japanese scholar Yasushi Shinmen, in September 1933,
the leaders of the Turpan Rebellion sent a letter to the British consulate in
Kashgar, describing the contemporary conditions in “East Turkestan” and“West Turkestan.”4 Britain in fact played what some observers called a“dishonorable role”5 in the rise of the East Turkestan Independence Movement: whether this is tied to the introduction of the English-language term
“East Turkestan” into the Uyghur language bears further research. On
November 16, 1933, the official newspaper of the government of theIslamic Republic of East Turkestan, Independence (Istqlāl) ran the statement: “Our slogan is, ‘East Turkestan is the East Turkestan of every person

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in East Turkestan.’ . . . We do not use their [Chinese] language and place
names.”6 The term “East Turkestan” finally permeated the Uyghur language
as a place name after the First East Turkestan Independence Movement.
The above passage shows that the significance of the term “East Turkestan”
was initially based on condemnation of ethnic oppression, as well as advocacy for national consciousness and a sense of territoriality; the emergenceof this national consciousness and territoriality was undoubtedly tied tochanges in the self-identity of the Uyghur people. We can see also that thesignificance of “East Turkestan” was ideologically linked to the earlymodern “Uyghur Enlightenment.”

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The Early Modern “Uyghur Enlightenment” and “Pan-Turkism”

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The 1880s witnessed the rapid expansion of trade between the Uyghur
communities and Russia (Tatar merchants, to be specific): following the
suppression of the Yaqub Beg regime, the Qing Dynasty had founded theprovince of Xinjiang and granted special trading privileges to Russian
merchants, including complete exemption from taxes in the region of Xinjiang, as well as permission to “exchange goods” and “pay debts in kind withsundry goods,” leading to the rise of an industrial capitalist class of bāy (the“wealthy”), who enriched themselves through industry as well as, and especially, trade.7 At the same time, as exchanges between the Uyghurs and theoutside world, particularly foreign states, gradually increased, Uyghur society quietly birthed an early modern cultural enlightenment.
The Uyghur Enlightenment was a movement centering on a “new classof intelligentsia” who were “beginning to have a profound sense of crisis
regarding their own ethnic identity,” as well as “certain religious figures”
who launched a new-style, universal school education movement (known as
usul ul-jadid, or “new method,” also referred to as Jadidism)—aside from
Islamic education, these schools also taught history, geography, mathematics, chemistry, and other modern sciences.8 The economic backers for thismovement were the wealthy industrialists of the new Uyghur capitalistclass, the bāy.
The Uyghur Enlightenment first arose in the Kashgar region, thecultural and economic center of Uyghur society in the southern Tianshan
Mountains. According to the recollections of a Uyhgur elder, the famous
industrialist brothers Husayn Musabayow and Bawadun Musabayow

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sponsored the establishment of Uyghur society’s first Jadidist school in
1883, at Iksak Township in Atush County, 20 kilometers north of the cityof Kashgar. The Uyghur Enlightenment reached its peak in the 1910s. In
one example, the well-known akhund Abdukadir Damulla, who went onpilgrimage to Mecca and passed through Ottoman Turkey to return toKashgar, founded the first Jadidist school in the city of Kashgar in 1912.9
During this period, Jadidist schools were founded in Ili, Turpan, Qitai(Guchung), Hami (Kumul), Kucha, Aksu and other Uyghur cities.10
According to many Uyghur scholarly sources, as well as recollections by
the older generation of Uyghurs, the most noteworthy aspects of the
Uyghur Enlightenment were the popular trends of “studying abroad” and“inviting foreign teachers.” In point of fact, the foreign countries involved inthese trends were essentially limited to Ottoman Turkey and Russia. It
should also be noted that the Uyghurs’ experiences in studying “abroad”
were fairly limited. The Uyghurs who traveled to study in Russia were notexposed to the influence of the proletariat revolution in Russia’s urban
centers; instead, they were concentrated in the city of Kazan, today thecapital of the Tatarstan region of Russia, and the teachers invited to Xinjiang were also Tatars from Kazan.11
Since most of the instructors initially hired to teach at the Jadidist
school in Iksak had a background at traditional religious schools and wereunable to meet the requirements of a Jadidist education, the Musabayow
brothers decided to send seven young Uyghurs to study abroad in the cityof Kazan, with which they had trade relations. When these figures returned
to Iksak, they broadened the scope of education at the school, and redesigned the teaching content based on the curricula of schools in Kazan and
Istanbul in Ottoman Turkey. By 1892, the Musabayow brothers hadreportedly sent more than 50 individuals to study in Russia and Ottoman
Turkey. The Musabayow family paid for the entire cost of these trips outof pocket.12
Yamauchi Masayuki, a Japanese scholar well-known for his research on
Islamic studies and ethnic issues in the former Soviet Union, notes that: “In19th and early 20th-century Tatar society, reforms to school education werea matter of life or death.” Due to these reforms, “After the Revolution of1905, [Kazan] became the center of Muslim politics and culture, and it
played a role in the Islamic world in no way secondary to that of Istanbul,

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Cairo, or Beirut.”13 This has important significance in understanding thenature of the early modern Uyghur Enlightenment. The Uyghurs’ efforts todeepen their connections to Tatar society were based on their shared identity as “subjugated ethnic groups” seeking a way forward for their people.
The Tatars, who had achieved a measure of success in this respect, therefore served as a ready-made role model for the Uyghur people.
As the only independent state ruled by a Turkic people, Ottoman
Turkey also played an important role in the Uyghur Enlightenment. The
Jadidist schools in southern Xinjiang engaged a number of Turkish teachers; this is corroborated by many Uyghur memoirs. The Uyghurs who
studied abroad in Ottoman Turkey were also extremely active in the
Enlightenment.14 To improve the quality of education at his school, Bawadun Musabayow invited Ababakil, Ahmet Kamal, Abudu Rahim, Mukal
and other Turkish figures to teach at the school. After Ababakil returned
to his home country in 1905, Ahmet Kamal became a central figure. At therequest of Bawadun Musabayow, Ahmet Kamal founded Uyghur society’s
first normal school for teachers at Iksak in 1907.15 However, other accounts
state that Ahmet Kamal did not arrive in the Kashgar region until March
1913, at the invitation of the Musabayow family. At the time, there had
been plans to found a normal school in the city of Kashgar, but due toopposition by conservative forces, the school was moved to Iksak, andopened its doors on April 19, 1913.16
At the normal school in Iksak, Ahmet Kamal taught students that thesultan of the Ottoman Empire was their true leader; he also taught them tosing Turkish marches, and the content of his lessons showed a strong inclination toward pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism. Kamal’s actions were
informed by the rise of the First World War: he hoped to arouse the“Turkic” consciousness of
the local Uyghur population through his teachings,
and inspire in them a senseof responsibility as “Turkish compatriots” to support
the Ottoman Empire as the“leader of the global Islamic
alliance.”17 Mas’ut Sabri of
The city of Kashgar in the 1930s

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Ili, who studied abroad in Ottoman Turkey, also taught his students at the
Jadidist school that, “Our ancestors are Turks.”18
The ideological origins of the Uyghur Enlightenment can undeniably be
traced back to both Ottoman Turkey and Kazan Tatar society: “The Tatar
Turks and Ottoman Turkey both served as wellsprings of early modern
Turkic nationalism.”19 Here, “early modern Turkic nationalism” is anotherterm for “pan-Turkism.” The version of pan-Turkism that arose in Tatarsociety sought to strengthen the unity of the Turkic peoples, so that the“subjugated” Turkish ethnic groups could continue to survive and develop
within early modern international society.20 Many Uyghurs adopted panIslamism and became strongly influenced by pan-Turkism after experiencing exchanges with these two regions.
When the First East Turkestan Independence Movement arose in1933, teachers at the Jadidist schools in Atush who had studied abroad in
Turkey mobilized their students to support the movement.21 These circumstances demonstrate the web of connections between the Uyghur intellectuals who traveled to Ottoman Turkey, the Uyghur Enlightenment, andthe East Turkestan Independence Movement. In particular, many of theprincipal actors in the Uyghur Enlightenment later became the leaders of
the East Turkestan Independence Movement, revealing the ideological ties
between the two movements.

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2.2 The First Independence MovementTh
eOrigins of the Independence Movement
The “Kumul Rebellion” (referred to in Chinese as the Hami qiyi 哈密起義or “Hami Rebellion”) of March 1931 set the scene for the First East Turkestan Independence Movement. The fuse for the Kumul Rebellion was the
proposal by Jin Shuren, then the warlord governor of the Xinjiang provincial government, to “abolish hereditary chieftancy and institute centralized
governance” (gaitu guiliu 改土歸流 ), for the sake of expanding his own
power. This move signaled the removal of the hereditary Kumulik Uyghur“princes” (wang 王 ) of the semi-autonomous Kumul Khanate formerly
appointed by the Qing government, channeling the Uyghur farmers under
the jurisdiction of the khanate into local administrative districts under theChapter 2: Origins of the East Turkestan Independence Movement

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governance of regular bureaucrats. The Uyghur farmers had previously
staged two uprisings seeking the abolishment of the Kumul Khanate (alsoreferred to as the Hami wangzhi 哈密王制 or “Hami Principality”), thus Jin
Shuren’s actions initially seemed to be aligned with the farmers’ demands.
However, the reforms did not simply result in a loss of political privileges
for the people connected to the khanate: the government also sent in troops
to squeeze the local populace, while rising Han Chinese immigration
threatened the stability of ordinary Uyghur farmers,22 thus inciting universal discontent amongst the Uyghur elite as well as the general population.
It is arguable that the Kumul Rebellion carried “anti-Han” overtones
from its inception: the rebels sought to massacre all Han immigrants who
had settled down in the region. Participants in the uprising noted in their
memoirs that the leaders of the rebellion were all figures connected to theold khanate: the fact that two different social classes with divergent objectives were able to unite in a struggle against the Han Chinese demonstrates
that ethnic conflict was a more salient and more compelling force thaninternecine class antagonism within contemporary Uyghur society.23
Amidst the surging ethnic movement of the Uyghur peoples in the
1930s, from the earliest Kumul Rebellion to the movement’s gradualspread into the southern Tianshan Mountains, the term “East Turkestan”
never made an appearance. As noted above, the Kumul or Hami region was
at times not even included in the concept of “East Turkestan.” This region
was situated between the Chinese interior and the Uyghur communities ofsouthern Xinjiang, and its geographical location allowed for frequentexchanges with the interior Chinese provinces; the region also undoubtedly
experienced a higher influx of Han Chinese immigrants in comparison toother areas.24 Given this historical and social context, the extent to which
the contemporary Uyghur residents of the Kumul region subscribed to theconcept of “East Turkestan” is questionable.
However, in comparison with the Kumul region, southern Xinjiang
was essentially populated by homogeneous Uyghur communities. Proponents of the movement held that, “Turkestan is the birthplace of the Turks,
and must naturally become the land of the Turks,”25 and declared that the
Han Chinese “who have contaminated our land for many long years” would
be “driven back to their old homes.” These fiery slogans of independence
demonstrate that the rise of the East Turkestan Independence Movement

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was linked to a strong sense of territoriality among some Uyghurs.26 It isclear that the fundamental aims of the East Turkestan Independence
Movement were to “overthrow China’s rule” and strive to “liberate ethnic
territories,” while the movement’s most essential characteristic involved
attacking and purging everything that symbolized “China.”

Organizational Characteristics of the Movement

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The First East Turkestan Independence Movement succumbed not toenemy invasion, but rather to conflict among the movement’s elite. In May
1934, Hoja Niyaz, the president of the Islamic Republic of East Turkestan,reached an agreement with the government of Xinjiang Province to detainand hand over Prime Minister Sabit (Sawut) Damulla as well as the republic’s Minister for Judicial Affairs, leading to the collapse of the Islamic
Republic before the provincial government forces even reached Kashgar. In
this sense, it was Hoja Niyaz who buried the First East Turkestan Independence Movement.
It is worth noting that, although Hoja Niyaz and Sabit Damulla wereboth heads of state in the Islamic Republic of East Turkestan, they in factcommanded two different factions. As the leader of the Kumul Rebellion,
Hoja Niyaz led forces composed of rebels from the Kumul and Turpan
regions in eastern Xinjiang, who had gradually retreated westward toward
Kashgar, while Sabit Damulla headed a nationalist group that had been
active in the region between Hotan in the southern Tarim Basin and Kashgar, with the aim of establishing an independent ethnic regime. Sabit
Damulla was in fact the spiritual leader of the First East Turkestan Independence Movement.
Since both factions featured residents of the Turpan region as well as
Islamic religious figures, they cannot be fully differentiated on either aregional or a religious basis. Sabit Damulla was born in Atush in the Kashgar region: he was a religious figure as well as a Uyghur intellectual, having
studied abroad in Turkey and “received a modern education and a politicalbaptism.”27 Many of his followers were reported to be “youths who hadstudied abroad in foreign countries.”28 Damulla’s faction therefore arguably
centered on a core group of Uyghur intellectuals with modern education.
The role of Uyghur intellectuals as proponents and participants was
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Independence Movement; it also reflects the lineal relationship between the
independence movement and the Uyghur Enlightenment of the earlymodern era.
Sabit Damulla, who is referred to as the father of the Islamic Republicof East Turkestan, once candidly acknowledged in a letter to an Indian
Islamic youth organization that Uyghur society had fallen far behind international society.29 The Islamic Republic of East Turkestan was organizedin the form of a republic, and operated under a directorial system of governance: these positions were inscribed in the “Founding Principles” of East
Turkestan, which was formally established on November 12, 1933, inKashgar.30 However, the new republic’s “Founding Principles” also stated
that: “Persons undertaking government duties must be conversant with the
Quran and with modern science,”31 demonstrating that the so-called “Islamic
Republic” did not seek to institute secularism. The “Founding Principles”
also show that, in terms of its political ideology, while the First East Turkestan Independence Movement advocated an end to ethnic oppression at
the hands of Han Chinese dictators along with separation from China, it
also promoted the modernization of Uyghur society. This again marks
the Independence Movement as the ideological heir to the Uyghur
Enlightenment.
Inspired by the Kumul Rebellion, southern Xinjiang erupted in a seriesof uprisings. Religious figures played a clear role in forwarding these uprisings, and the concept of “Islamic jihad” had an inspiring effect on the rebels.
One figure who served at a command post for the rebellions recalled that,during the “Turpan Rebellion,” everyone from the commanding personnel
to the ordinary rebels was filled with religious fervor.32 Sabit Damulla
reportedly utilized the theory of “Islamic jihad” to mobilize Uyghurs in the
Hotan region prior to the “Hotan Uprising.”33 The injunction to “carefully
abide by the Quran” was also explicitly written into the “Founding Principles” of the Islamic Republic of East Turkestan.34 Though its time wasshort, it was the association with Islam that led the rebel forces in different
regions to briefly unite under the “republic”; this is an undeniable fact.
The efforts of the Islamic Republic of East Turkestan to achieve unity
through the rallying cry of “Islamic jihad” were informed by the fact thatthe participants in the uprisings stemmed from different social classes anddifferent regions: although they were able to find common ground in

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opposing ethnic oppression, rebels of different socioeconomic classes
diverged sharply in terms of their motivations and their objectives. Since
most of the inhabitants of a given region were engaged in the natural economy of self-sufficient oasis agriculture, conflicts over oases had given rise
to a deep-seated sense of territorialism within Uyghur communities.35 In
addition, the fingerprints of Uzbek figures from the Soviet Union and
Afghanistan could also be discerned in many of the local uprisings. Callingupon the “righteous cause” of “Islamic jihad” was therefore necessary toachieve complete cohesion in the political unification of diverse interest
groups from different regions and different social classes; this was entirely areflection of the practical circumstances of contemporary Uyghur society.
Popular mobilization in the name of Islam was the second important organizational characteristic of the East Turkestan Independence Movement.
The organizers of the First East Turkestan Independence Movement, as
well as its successor movements, used “Islamic jihad” as a rallying cry tomobilize mass participation, treating Islam as a conduit to unify the various
political forces participating in the independence movements.

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2.3 Ethnic Oppression in Xinjiang

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The progression from the Uyghur Enlightenment to the East Turkestan
Independence Movement shows that a sense of ethnic crisis among Uyghur
intellectuals, who had been exposed to the influence of modern international thought as well as pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism, was the primary
motivating force for the germination of the independence movements. Thissense of ethnic crisis stemmed from contemporary social conditions in
Xinjiang, and the ethnic oppression experienced by Xinjiang communities
in the first half of the 20th century was the most direct cause for the rise of
the East Turkestan Independence Movement.
Hai Weiliang defines the relationship between Uyghur communities
and the central government prior to the latter half of the 19th century as “therelationship of a tributary state and a suzerain.”36 This definition is notentirely apt, but there is no doubt that the Qing government granted acertain degree of autonomy to Uyghur communities. However, after theChapter 2: Origins of the East Turkestan Independence Movement

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Qing Dynasty recaptured the territory of Xinjiang, and particularly after
it founded the province of “Xinjiang” in 1884, the Uyghurs’ uniquebureaucratic system—the “beg” system—was abolished, and the Uyghur
population was absorbed under the direct administration of the central
government. Thereafter, a large influx of Han Chinese bureaucrats, immigrants, and other figures began flowing into Xinjiang, including the Uyghur
region.37
According to a 1928 national survey by the Ministry of the Interior of
the Republic of China, at the time, Xinjiang had a total population of
2,551,741; Uyghurs comprised 70% of the population, while the Han
Chinese population represented less than 10%.38 However, the Uyghur
population may have been even larger in actuality. The estimates by Japanese scholar Hori Sunao place the total Uyghur population at 2,941,000 in
1940. Extrapolating from the figures provided by Hori, the Han Chinese
population at that time would have only been around 234,715.39 Regardlessof whether or not these calculations are accurate, it is an incontestable factthat the Han Chinese population in Xinjiang was extremely small in thatera. Yet many of these Han Chinese inhabitants were bureaucrats, soldiersand merchants, who maintained a tight grasp on real political, military andeconomic power in Xinjiang.40
During the era of the Republic of China, political power in Xinjiang
was concentrated in the hands of the Han Chinese: this is clear from thecontemporary administrative structure and the ethnic composition of officials. From the founding of the Republic of China in 1911 to the mid1940s, a series of warlords and dictators of Han Chinese background
had ruled over Xinjiang, concurrently serving as the chief administrator(provincial governor) and the highest-ranking military officer (governorgeneral), and espousing “closed-door” policies. The senior officials of theorgans of the provincial government (including the Department of Civil
Affairs, Department of Finance, Department of Education, Department ofWorks, and the Foreign Affairs Office) were also all of Han Chinese
ethnicity.41 Having been converted into a “utopia” that was almost wholly
isolated from the central government and the interior provinces,42 turnoverof Xinjiang’s highest-ranking leaders was achieved only by means of assassinations and regime changes. Yet the Uyghur people were unable to play
any kind of role amidst this farce of rapidly changing regimes.

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Within the local administrative system (comprising 8 administrative
districts and 59 counties), people of local ethnic background were similarly
nowhere to be seen. In southern Xinjiang, although Uyghurs represented
nearly 95% of the local resident population,43 the period from 1912–1922
witnessed only one figure of Uyghur background amongst the senioradministrators and county magistrates.44 “Who has the right to say that apeople should be subject to wicked oppression by a minority? Who canadmit that a people should not struggle for its survival? From the vantage
point of the entire Republic of China, in the spirit of Mr. Sun Yat-sen’s
Three People’s Principles for founding the state, there are no advantages to
Xinjiang separating itself from China and seeking independence for thepeople of Xinjiang, yet the facts tell us, we cannot begrudge this to thepeople of Xinjiang.” As noted in the passage above by two intellectuals
recalling the course of the First East Turkestan Independence Movement,in analyzing the causes for the rise of the independence movement, thepolitical inequality between ethnic groups in that era cannot be overlooked.45 According to the essay “Xinjiang Legislators in the Era of the
Beijing Government,” cited above, among the 20 parliamentarians electedin Xinjiang in 1921, only 3 were Uyghurs; moreover, they were all puppets
hand-picked by the Provincial Governor Yang Zengxin, and their ability torepresent the Uyghurs’ interests and wield any personal political power was
naturally viewed as suspect by the local Uyghur populace.46 Even more
surprisingly, the 40 parliamentary representatives elected in Xinjiang in
1915 did not include a single person of Uyghur ethnicity.47 These facts
illustrate how the Uyghurs, despite being the majority ethnic group in theregion, were completely excluded from legislative bodies and the policymaking process in contemporary Xinjiang society.

Economic Extortion and Policies for Cultural Assimilation
However, the Han Chinese elite who wielded political hegemony in theregion of Xinjiang did not play any active role in local socioeconomic development. During the Republican era, economic conditions in Xinjiang experienced little change in comparison with the late Qing era: the region saw
no advancements in modern industry and transportation,48 and depended
on foreign imports for the vast majority of manufactured goods. 49 A
Uyghur intellectual offered the following critique of the ruling authorities

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in 1921: “Upon entering the Republican age, the biggest change in Xinjiang
was writing such-and-such year, such-and-such month of the Republicof China in letters, and even that, we Uyghurs learned from the Han
Chinese.”50
During the era of the Qing Dynasty, the central government had annually disbursed around 3 million taels in funding or “interprovincial assistance” (xiexiang 協餉 ) to the Xinjiang provincial government.51 However, in
the Republican era, even this type of funding was discontinued. In response
to a severe financial crisis, the first provincial governor of Xinjiang, Yang
Zengxin, adopted measures for increased taxes, paper rationing, revitalization of industry and commerce, wasteland reclamation, and so on. 52
However, Yang’s “revitalization” of industry and commerce achieved little
to no results,53 and he ultimately resorted to extortion of the local populace
to mitigate the crisis. Between 1912 and 1915, Xinjiang issued 6,232,800
taels of paper currency not backed by reserves.54 In comparison with 1884,
the year the province was founded, by 1915, agricultural taxes in Xinjiang
had risen sharply: taxes on wheat had increased by a factor of 2–3, andtaxes on corn had increased by a factor of 2–5, while taxes on grass fodder
had soared by a factor of 19.55
Local bureaucrats abusing their privileges to plunder the Uyghur inhabitants was a common occurrence.56 The surprising phenomenon of ministers of the provincial government seeking demotions to the level of county
magistrate was a reflection of the opportunities such direct administrative
positions offered for exploitation of the populace. 57 The memoirs of
bureaucrats from that era record many strategies for pillaging via taxation.58
County magistrate positions in Kucha, Aksu, Yarkent, Kargilik, and otherregions in southern Xinjiang with a high concentration of Uyghurs wereregarded as particularly “lucrative positions” (feique 肥 缺 ). It is therefore
easy to imagine the scale on which Han Chinese bureaucrats plundered the
local Uyghur population.
Until 1933, the Xinjiang provincial government had enforced a policy
mandating that Uyghurs receive an education at Chinese-language schools(academies). The original purpose of this policy, dating back to the Qing
Dynasty, was to induce Uyghurs to abandon their traditional customs andinstead adopt Chinese customs; the policy thus carried an implicit bias
against Uyghur culture.59 Such ethnically biased policies encouraged a sense40| The East Turkestan Independence Movement

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of ethnic superiority amongst the Han Chinese inhabitants of Xinjiang. A
1930s report on Xinjiang by an observer from the Soviet Union notes that,even after living in a Uyghur region for 50 years, one Han Chinese elder
was completely unable to speak the Uyghur language.60 The Han Chinese
residents of Xinjiang also disdained the Islamic taboo on idolatry, building
Buddhist temples, Confucian temples, and shrines to General Guan Yu in
the seat of every county government, and carving out their own ethnic
communities within Uyghur territories.61
The acute ethnic discrimination and oppression that informed every
sphere, from politics and the economy to culture and society, naturally gave
rise to ethnic hatred for the Han Chinese amongst the Uyghur inhabitants.
Many Uyghurs “feel that the Han bureaucrats who rule over them know
only the demons of exploitation and butchery, and that the Han people are
all demons too.”62 The Uyghurs’ ethnic enmity toward the Han Chinese
thus took shape as the primary source of social conflict in contemporary
Xinjiang.

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2.4 Xinjiang’s Dual Social Structure and the Public
Administrative System for Uyghur Communitiesnive

The Dual Structure of Regional and Ethnic Communities

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Many of the counties in southern Xinjiang were established around an
oasis. The county magistrate held supreme authority over taxation, theconstruction of cities and roads, the police and public security forces, thejudicial system, and so on.63 However, the contemporary system of bureaucratic appointments by the provincial government only extended as far as
the county level. County governments thus became the link between thenational bureaucratic system and Uyghur communities, while relying on
local Uyghur figures for administrative operations and public management
below the county level. The local public administrative system for Uyghur
communities was further divided into grassroots-level administrative organizations, water management organizations, religious tribunals, and so on.
Given that only around 3,000 Han Chinese had migrated into southern
Xinjiang during this time period,64 we can speculate that the traditional
structure of Uyghur society had not yet suffered much erosion. However,