page_title: History of Kashgar
section_title: People's Republic of China
hierarchical_section_title: History of Kashgar / People's Republic of China
caption_attribution_description: English: NJ 43 Su-fu [U.S.S.R., China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, State of Jammu and Kashmir] Series 1301, Edition 5-AMS, Map from the International Map of the World 1:1,000,000
context_page_description: The earliest mention of Kashgar occurs when a Chinese Han dynasty envoy traveled the Northern Silk Road to explore lands to the west.
  Another early mention of Kashgar is during the Former Han, when in 76 BCE the Chinese conquered the Xiongnu, Yutian, Sulei and a group of states in the Tarim Basin almost up to the foot of the Tian Shan range.
  Ptolemy speaks of Scythia beyond the Imaus, which is in a “Kasia Regio”, probably exhibiting the name from which Kashgar and Kashgaria are formed. The country's people practised Zoroastrianism and Buddhism before the coming of Islam.
  In the Book of Han, which covers the period between 125 BCE and 23 CE, it is recorded that there were 1,510 households, 18,647 people and 2,000 persons able to bear arms. By the time covered by the Book of the Later Han, it had grown to 21,000 households and had 3,000 men able to bear arms.
  The Book of the Later Han provides a wealth of detail on developments in the region:
  In the period of Emperor Wu [140-87 BC], the Western Regions1 were under the control of the Interior [China]. They numbered thirty-six kingdoms.
context_section_description: Kashgar was incorporated into the People's Republic of China in 1949. During the Cultural Revolution, one of the largest statues of Mao in China was built in Kashgar, near People's Square.
  On October 31, 1981, a incident occurred in the city due to a dispute between Uyghurs and Han Chinese in which three were killed. The incident was quelled by an army unit.
  In 1986, the Chinese government designated Kashgar a "city of historical and cultural significance". Kashgar and surrounding regions have been the site of Uyghur unrest since the 1990s. In 2008, two Uyghur men carried out a vehicular, IED and knife attack against police officers. In 2009, development of Kashgar's old town accelerated after the revelations of the deadly role of faulty architecture during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Many of the old houses in the old town were built without regulation, and as a result, officials found them to be overcrowded and non-compliant with fire and earthquake codes. Additionally, the newer buildings may also have been built with increased ease of surveillance in mind.
  When the plan started, 42% of the city's residents lived in the old town. As the plan was undertaken, residents have been removed from their homes in order to demolish large sections of the old city and replace these areas with new developments. The European Parliament issued a resolution in 2011 calling for "culture-sensitive methods of renovation."  The International Scientific Committee on Earthen Architectural Heritage (ISCEAH) has expressed concern over the demolition and reconstruction of historic buildings.  ISCEAH has, additionally, urged the implementation of techniques utilized elsewhere in the world to address earthquake vulnerability.
  Following the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, the government focused on local economic development in an attempt to ameliorate ethnic tensions in the greater Xinjiang region. Kashgar was made into a Special Economic Zone in 2010, the first such zone in China's far west. In 2011, a spate of violence over two days killed dozens of people. By May 2012, two-thirds of the old city had been demolished, fulfilling "political as well as economic goals." Critics have called the destruction of the old city part of a campaign of cultural genocide. In July 2014, the Imam of the Id Kah Mosque, Juma Tayir, was assassinated in Kashgar.
  On October 21, 2014, Aqqash Township (Akekashi) was transferred from Konaxahar (Shufu) County to Kashgar city.
caption: Map of Kashgar (labeled as SU-FU (KASHGAR)) and surrounding region from the International Map of the World (1966)[Note 3]
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "9897", "Image ImageLength": "11070", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "i2s Digibook Scanner", "Image Model": "Suprascan A0 10000 RGB", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "400", "Image YResolution": "400", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2007:06:25 15:10:38", "Image ExifOffset": "324", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "462", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6480", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4949", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "5535"}