Future Responses to Managing Muslim Ethnic Minorities in China: Lessons Learned from Global Approaches to Improving Inter-Ethnic Relations
| Author | Reza Hasmath |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00207020221097991 |
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essay |
Scholarly Essay
International Journal
2022, Vol. 77(1) 51–67
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00207020221097991
journals.sagepub.com/home/ijx
Future Responses to Managing
Muslim Ethnic Minorities in
China: Lessons Learned from
Global Approaches to
Improving Inter-Ethnic
Relations
Reza Hasmath
University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
Abstract
Current policies to manage ethnic minority unrest in Xinjiang are not working, and do
not address the core root causes behind ethnic tensions. Drawing upon lessons learned
from global approaches to improving inter-ethnic relations, and factoring in China’s
institutional behaviour and norms, this essay looks at policy responses that could be
entertained by the state to improve the conditions of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. It
suggests that in the short-term (under a year) the state could be more responsible in
using the big data it collects for targeted surveillance, in tandem with a comm unity
engagement approach. In the medium-term (one to three years), the state could
employ practices to reduce ethnic prejudice by encouraging increased meaningful
intergroup contact, and promoting a positive media portrayal of ethnic minorities. In
the long-term (three years plus), improving the relative socioeconomic ethnic in-
equalities is paramount.
Keywords
Ethnic minorities, securitization, prejudice reduction, socioeconomic inequalities,
public policy, Xinjiang, China
Corresponding author:
Reza Hasmath, Department of Political Science, University of Alberta, 10-10 HM ToryBuilding, Edmonton,
AB T6G 2H4, Canada.
Email: rhasmath@gmail.com
Scholarly evidence suggests that ethnic minority unrest in China has become a per-
sistent and serious issue, especially amongst the Uyghur population—the largest group
of the ten predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities—in the Xinjiang Uyghur Au-
tonomous Region (XUAR).
1
This unrest has periodically manifested in outbreaks of
ethnic violence across China, from Beijing to the XUAR, since the early 2000s. The
key question that China internally grapples with is, how should the state respond to the
rise of ethnic minority unrest?
The Chinese state’s response
2
has been a one-size-fits-all securitization strategy
without appropriate institutional checks and balances. In Xinjiang, this can be seen in
the state’s efforts to control the extent to which predominantly Muslim minority groups
can engage in cultural and religious practices, the establishment of “re-education
camps,”and a sophisticated mass surveillance system.
3
Suffice it to say, maintaining
large-scale security apparatuses in the XUAR is extremely expensive. Estimates
suggest that, in 2017, the Chinese state spent 20 percent more on domestic security than
on national defence, with RMB 57.95 billion (USD 9.10 billion) spent in Xinjiang
alone.
4
Foreign governments, global media outlets, and international human rights orga-
nizations have denounced the Chinese state’s heavy-handed approach towards the
management of potential and actualized ethnic minority unrest.
5
These external actors
have largely politicalized the conditions of ethnic minorities in China within a civil and
political human rights framework.
6
Yet, a rights-based approach generally fails to
problematize the situation in China’s domestic eyes. This is important since, ultimately,
1. Xun Cao, Haiyan Duan, Chuyu Liu, James A. Piazza, and Yingjie Wei, “Digging the ‘ethnic violence in
China’database: The effects of inter-ethnic inequality and natural resources exploitation in Xinjiang,”
China Review 18, no. 2 (2018): 121–154.
2. For instance, in leaked internal government documents, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has directed the ad-
ministration to “show absolutely no mercy”in the XUAR, which he characterized as a “struggle against
terrorism, infiltration and separatism.”See Paul Karp, “Australia’s foreignminister labels China’streatment
of Uighurs ‘disturbing,’”The Guardian,17 November 2019,https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/
18/australia-foreign-minister-labels-china-treatment-uighurs-disturbing (accessed 27 January 2022).
3. Sean R. Roberts, “The biopolitics of China’s‘war on terror’and the exclusion of the Uyghurs,”Critical
Asian Studies 50, no. 2 (2018): 232–258.
4. The Financial Times,“Security spending ramped up in China’s restive Xinjiang region,”12 March 2018,
https://www.ft.com/content/aa4465aa-2349-11e8-ae48-60d3531b7d11 (accessed 18 October 2021).
5. Most prominently, members of the “Five Eyes”intelligence alliance, comprised of Australia, Canada, New
Zealand, the UK, and the USA, have called for the end of arbitrary detentions and the mass internment of
Uyghurs. In a similar vein, civil society organizations with an international reach, such as Human Rights
Watch, Amnesty International, and the World Uyghur Congress or its affiliates (e.g. Uyghur American
Association)—consisting of largely exiled Uyghurs—have re-energized their efforts to bring to light the
dire human rights conditions for Uyghurs in China.
6. While a rights-based approach is important, using this framework in the People’s Republic of China has
not been largely successful in affording transformative sociopolitical changes since the CommunistParty
of China came into power in 1949. Towit, China has consistently prioritized, in rhetoric and policy action,
social and economic human rights over civil and political human rights championed by most Western
states.
52 International Journal 77(1)
To continue reading
Request your trial