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On July 5, 2009, Urumqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, was shocked by violent civil unrest, triggered by a deadlybrawl at a toy factory in faraway Guangdong Province during which at least
two Uyghurs were murdered by a Han Chinese mob. Infuriated by thelack of a police response, hundreds of Uyghur protesters converged upon
Urumqi’s central market square. The initially peaceful protest took a violentturn as protesters began attacking Han Chinese passers-by, as well as Hui
Muslims and other minorities with Han features, clubbing and stoning
them to death. According to Chinese government statistics, 197 people werekilled during the riots, including 134 unarmed Han Chinese, 11 Hui
Muslims, and 1 Manchu; nearly 2,000 people were wounded. More than
1,000 Uyghur suspects were arrested in the following days, and several werelater sentenced to execution. Although official sources claimed that “thesegrave and violent crimes of assault, looting and arson were meticulously
planned and organized by a ‘trifecta’ of domestic and international groups,”
there is no doubt that these events were triggered by widespread inter-ethnic
hatred. The brutality of the riots left many wondering how such events
could occur against the backdrop of China’s meteoric rise in the early 21st
century, and prompted many to ponder the following chain of questions:
Were the Chinese government’s minority policies problematic? If not, why
would the Xinjiang region’s Uyghur inhabitants bear such enmity toward
their Han Chinese neighbors, with whom they normally coexisted peacefully? If so, what were the key problems, and how could they be resolved?

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The cities of Kashgar and Ghulja (Yining) had in fact previously been
witness to similar incidents provoked by racial hatred. On October 30,
1981, a Han Chinese shop clerk in Kashgar entered into a dispute with aUyghur farmer and beat him to death with a hunting rifle off the store
shelf. Uyghur protesters stormed the city, attacking Han civilians; 2 people
were killed on the scene, and 262 were wounded. In 1997, riots spread
across Ghulja between February 5 and 7 in response to rumors that a
number of Uyghur religious worshippers had been arrested by the Chinese
government during Ramadan; 7 Han Chinese civilians were killed during
the riots, and a number of protesters were killed or wounded as the crowds
were dispersed by police. These two incidents are both similar in nature tothe 2009 Urumqi riots, though dissimilar in scale. This congruence suggeststhat the events in Urumqi were in many ways linked to the circumstancesof Uyghur communities in other regions of Xinjiang, including the southern region where Kashgar is located. Thus, in order to truly understand thenature of the Urumqi riots, we must also first explore the motivations
behind the incidents that occurred in Kashgar and Ghulja.
The reason is in fact quite simple: Kashgar and Ghulja historicallyserved as the birthplace and base of operations for the first and second East
Turkestan independence movements respectively. To understand theethnic tensions between Uyghurs and Han Chinese in Xinjiang today, wemust start by understanding the nature of the East Turkestan independence movement.
The aim of the East Turkestan independence movement was to establish
a Uyghur nation-state in Xinjiang. The First East Turkestan Independence
Movement began in Kashgar in southern Xinjiang in 1933, and the “IslamicRepublic of East Turkestan” was founded in Kashgar on November 12 in
the same year. However, the Islamic Republic collapsed a mere 85 days after
its founding, before its government and system of state power could be fully
formed. The independence movement experienced a resurgence in 1944, andthe “East Turkestan Republic” was established on November 12 of that year
in the city of Ghulja (Yining) in northern Xinjiang. Compared to the firstmovement, the Second East Turkestan Independence Movement was ofbroader scale and longer duration; it played a part in the global war against
fascism, and impacted the post-war reconstruction of the international
order. However, the movement was dependent on the support of the Soviet

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Union to escape the yoke of the Chinese Nationalist government, which wasthen in power, and its proponents ultimately bowed to Soviet pressure toabandon their calls for independence. The movement was later subsumed
under the banner of the Chinese Communist Party, and in the post-1949
era, it was referred to in China as the “Three Districts Revolution.” 1
However, this appellation is based solely on the movement’s final outcome,and does not reflect either its origins or its nature.
The ideas of the East Turkestan independence movement still survive
today in the Xinjiang region, despite the passage of more than eighty years
since it first came into being. For self-evident reasons, the independence
movement went underground during the Mao Zedong era, but the idea ofindependence for East Turkestan has experienced a revival since the 1980s,against the backdrop of China’s overcorrection of policies from the Maoera, the rise of a global Islamic renaissance, as well as the liberation of theCentral Asian countries following the failure of perestroika and the collapseof the Soviet Union. The ideas of the East Turkestan independence movement have steadily gained in momentum. In October 1989, the Uyghur
author Turgun Almas published a book entitled The Uyghur People(Uygurlar), in which he proposed the radical theory that the Uyghur
people have been living nears the oases of the Tarim Basin for eight thousand years.2
The East Turkestan independence movement is not only the tie thatbinds modern Uyghur history from the 20th century onward; it is also a
crucial page in the history of China in the modern and contemporary eras.
Faithfully reconstructing the true circumstances of the East Turkestan
independence movement and, in particular, accurately understanding andevaluating the nature of the Second East Turkestan Independence Movement can help provide insights into the simmering ethnic tensions thathave given rise to events such as the 2009 Urumqi riots, and could also haveprofound significance in the efforts to chart China’s future as a multi-ethnic
state. Regrettably, few studies on the East Turkestan independence movement have been published.
Works that make relatively detailed references to the first and second
East Turkestan independence movements include A Concise History ofXinjiang (Xinjiang jianshi), Volume 3, published by the Xinjiang Academyof Social Sciences; Warlords and Muslims in Chinese Central Asia: Axviii |Introduction

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Political History of Republican Sinkiang 1911–1949 (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1986), by Andrew D. W. Forbes; and Seventy Years ofUpheaval in Xinjiang (Xinjiang fengbao qishi nian) (Taipei: Lanxi chubanyouxian gongsi, 1980), by the Taiwanese author Zhang Dajun. However,these works all describe the movement from the perspective of the political
history of China and Xinjiang, and do not explore the East Turkestan
independence movement itself in any great depth.
In the author’s view, the monograph Seventy Years of Upheaval in
Xin-jiang provides the most detailed narrative of Xinjiang’s political history
in the early modern era. It is based on a previous work by Zhang Dajun
published in 1954, entitled Overview of the Last Forty Years of Upheaval in
Xinjiang (Xinjiang jin sishi nian bianluan jilüe) (Taipei: Zhongyang wenwu
gongyingshe, 1954), so it addresses more attention to the two East Turkestan independence movements of the 1930s and 1940s. The Japanese author
Nakada Yoshinobu also published an article which could be described as arevised summary of Zhang Dajun’s Overview of the Last Forty Years ofUpheaval in Xinjiang, entitled “The I-Ning Affair and the National Movement in Sinkiang” (Inei jihen to Shinkyō no minzoku undō).3 However,Zhang Dajun, who served as a deputy regiment commander in the Chinese
Nationalist army in 1945, had no means of discovering the political developments which underpinned the East Turkestan Republic; his narrativeof the facts is therefore unavoidably error-ridden, and his analysis of thenature of the events is highly colored by emotional factors.
In 1990, Linda K. Benson published The Ili Rebellion: The Moslem Challenge to Chinese Authority in Xinjiang, 1944–1949 (Armonk, London: M.E.
Sharpe, Inc., 1990) in the United States. This work was praised at the time
as “the sole scholarly work in the world to date that discusses the ThreeDistricts Revolution.” 4 However, its content on the Second East Turkestan
Independence Movement and the political mechanisms of the East Turkestan Republic was limited to a few scanty pages in Chapter 4, “The Establishment of the East Turkestan Republic” (The Ili Rebellion, pp. 42–66),
still focusing primarily on the political and military countermeasures takenby the Nationalist government and the provincial authorities in Xinjiang.
Benson was aware of the limitations of her work: in 1991, she requested aninterview with the son of Ahmatjan Kasimi, the then-deceased leader of theEast Turkestan Republic in its later stages, but the request was denied.

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In the 1990s and thereafter, a number of works on Xinjiang in themodern era were published in mainland China, including: Bai Zhensheng
and Koibuchi Shin’ichi (eds.), Outline of Xinjiang’s Modern Sociopolitical
History (Xinjiang xiandai zhengzhi shehui shilüe) (Beijing: Zhongguo
shehui kexue chubanshe, 1992); Xinjiang Three Districts Revolution
History Editing Committee, History of the Xinjiang Three Districts Revolution (Xinjiang san qu geming shi) (Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 1998);
Huang Jianhua, A Study of Nationalist Government Policies on Xinjiang(Guomindang zhengfu de Xinjiang zhengce yanjiu) (Beijing: Minzuchubanshe, 2003); Miao Pusheng and Tian Weijiang (eds.), Historical
Survey of Xinjiang (Xinjiang shigang) (Urumqi: Xinjiang renmin chubanshe, 2004); Li Sheng (ed.), The History and Current Conditions of Xinjiang,China (Zhongguo Xinjiang lishi yu xianzhuang) (Urumqi: Xinjiang renminchubanshe, 2006), and so on. Although these works are chiefly characterized as historical overviews, two served as important references with respect
to the historical sources and research methods used in this book. The firstis the History of the Xinjiang Three Districts Revolution, which minutely
plots out the course of the Second East Turkestan Independence Movement; however, because the movement is viewed through the lens of therevolutionary conception of history, a number of issues are not fullyexplored. The second is The History and Current Conditions of Xinjiang,
China by Li Sheng: although this work is also a survey history, Chapter 3,
which discusses the history of Xinjiang prior to the Second East Turkestan
Independence Movement, and Chapters 4 and 5, which narrate the courseof the movement, offer a great deal of useful information; its references
to the existence of Russian-language archives are particularly invaluable.
Regrettably, perhaps owing to political considerations, Russia later refused
to authorize the release of the archival materials, and even today, thescholars who reviewed these materials are still unable to provide detailed
descriptions of their contents, which remain an unfathomable mystery.
The scarcity of prior research on this subject, and in particular the lackof studies from an ethnonational perspective or from the perspective of themovement’s political mechanisms, is due first to the lack of sources, andsecondly to the diversity of those sources that are available. For a truly
thorough study, it is necessary to address sources in a wide variety oflanguages, including Chinese, Uyghur, Kazakh, Russian, English, andxx |Introduction

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this book, I reviewed hundreds of important sources, including the official
documents of the East Turkestan Republic in the period from 1944
to 1946, the constitutions of the “East Turkestan Revolutionary YouthLeague” and the “East Turkestan Revolutionary Party,” as well as speeches,
essays and letters by leading figures in the East Turkestan Republic. I also
read the memoirs and diaries of Sheng Shicai and Wu Zhongxin, theformer governors of Xinjiang, and collected a number of memoirs writtenin Uyghur, Kazakh and Chinese by figures involved in the Second East
Turkestan Independence Movement. Other sources included Japanese andAmerican diplomatic documents related to Xinjiang. I was also fortunate
to have the opportunity to interview a number of Uyghur, Kazakh and Sibe
figures with special ties to the leadership of the East Turkestan Republic inthat period. These collections served as the fundamental source materials
for this book.
This book primarily relied on the first-hand sources described above inattempting to reconstruct the East Turkestan independence movement andthe political evolution of the East Turkestan Republic from four perspectives: social structure in Xinjiang and within the region’s Turkic-Islamiccommunities; the origins and evolution of the idea of national revolution;
the principles underpinning the internal coherence of the East Turkestan
independence movement, and power structures in the East Turkestan
Republic; and international relations and politics surrounding the Xinjiangregion. These perspectives served as the foundation in exploring the natureof the East Turkestan independence movement.
In terms of its content, this book can be divided into five sections.
Chapters 1 and 2 provide context for the social transitions in the premodern and early modern eras, examining the characteristics, successes andfailings of the Qing Dynasty’s policies on Xinjiang during the era of traditional rule; the grim international situation faced by Xinjiang during
its period of transition; the social status of Islam in Uyghur communities,
and its changing circumstances; the influence of pan-Turkism and panIslamism in early modern Uyghur society; and social structure in Xinjiang
and within Uyghur communities, to analyze and explore the motivations
that propelled the rise of the East Turkestan independence movement.
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regime of the Han ruler Sheng Shicai, revealing how he was able tosuppress the First East Turkestan Independence Movement and theIslamic Republic of East Turkestan, at the cost of ultimately exacerbating
ethnic conflict in the region. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 seek to reconstruct theevents behind the rise of the Second East Turkestan Independence Movement, the founding of the East Turkestan Republic, and the expansion of
the republic’s sphere of influence in each of its three districts, to serve as abasis for exploring the characteristics of power structures in the East
Turkestan Republic. Chapters 8 and 9 reconstruct the political developments behind the Xinjiang Peace Talks and the fall of the East Turkestan
Republic, exploring the underlying causes for the republic’s collapse fromthe external perspective of international politics, as well as the internal
perspective of the inherent contradictions within the national movement.
Chapter 10, which serves as the conclusion to this book, analyzes thenature of the East Turkestan Republic from the perspective of its politicalsystems, social structure, inter-ethnic relations, and economic conditions,and explores the significance of the Second East Turkestan Independence
Movement and the East Turkestan Republic in the history of the Uyghur
people, the Xinjiang region, and early modern China.