East Turkistan has been administered by the People's Republic of China (PRC) as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a situation that the ETGE considers an illegitimate military occupation. The position of the ETGE is that "East Turkistan and its people have a long history of independence". The ETGE does not consider themselves as "separatists" because they believe that, "you can't separate from something you don't belong to." The position of the PRC holds that the integration of East Turkistan/Xinjiang into the PRC in 1949 was a "Peaceful Liberation", and that the region has "long been a part of China".