SOME PEOPLE USE MOUNTAINS: Han Chauvinism in Cultural Revolution Xinjiang

Some people use mountains to identify national boundaries. In West China, there are plenty of mountains with geographical significance. The Altays define the northwest border of China, the Tianshan Mountains bisect Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) latitudinally, the Hindu Kush Range marks the southern border between Xinjiang and the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), and the Himalayas lie upon the southern end of the Tibetan plateau.

Modern people, however, prefer to use legality as the basis for defining identity. This naturally changes contingent upon ideology and regime. As identity changes, so do the underlying conditions for the relationship of humanity, especially as a function of relational exercise of power. Therein lies the notion of ethnicity-based chauvanism. Still absent in this relationship is the definition for what can prompt a legal code to fluctuate so profoundly; for this matter, the notion seems to root in how one groups ideology with regime. If one can define the two elements as co-dependent factors, where one is just as likely to determine the other, then it can be said that a potent time where ideology and regime are both liable to change are times (relatiovely) devoid of social control, and in regard to China this can take radical forms. For the purpose of analysis, the event where social order reaches a nadir that necessitates radical transformation of political affairs, is revolution.

There are many revolutions meaningful to the notion of chavanism, however. But few of these events were as uniformly disturbing to collectivity and individual Western minority as the Great Proleterian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) that raged from 1966 to 1976 through the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The narratives of the lives damaged by the ravages of this time are true testaments to the authoritarian potential of states that boast even the most egalitarian doctrines towards protected nationalities. Unfortunately, the historical narratives of the decade, like all historical documents, represent a socially unequal demographic: whereas there exist several memoirs of Tibetan participants during the years of the Cultural Revolution, there are few to no documents about the people of their northern neighbors.

Where there seems to be none, there actually exist stories. While we wait for their voices to emerge, we can also anticipate the content of what they share. For like the Tibetans, they are in a sense the mouthpiece for their social, economic, and political existances; an area of enquiry that boasts significant scholarship as well as a slew of similiarties between the two territories. The procedure to accomplishing this takes a tripartite form: one must research the explore the social existances of both Xinjiang and Tibet; next, one best examine the voices of Tibet and seek their guiding light to illuminate the possible Revolutionary experience in Xinjiang; then, one uses the synthesis of conditions with experience of Tibet as a model for an expected series of personal events for XUAR during the Cultural Revolution.

First, in exploring the environment of both territories hitherto the Cultural Revolution, case examples of chauvanism at the point of revolution will inform the analysis. In Xinjiang, this means a brief look at the periods of rebellion encompassed through (1) the second half of Qing colonization (c. 1864-1890), (2) the local struggle against the tyranny of warlord rule (c. 1931-1949), and (3) the revolt against land reform during initial years of rule by the Communist Party of China (CPC) (c. 1950-1962). For Tibet, resistance is found in (1) the first century of Chinese chauvanism (18^th century), (2) the initial defense of Tibet from the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) encursion (1947-1954), (3) and the uprising of Lhasa that spelled years of exile for many Tibetans (1955-1960). Besides looking particularly at the manifestations of Han chavanism in these periods, the

Second, the voices to be examined for Tibet are twofold diverse actors during the Cultural Revolution: (1) Bapa Phuntso Wangye (Phunwang), the founding member of the Tibetan Communist Party and reputable member of the CPC bureaucracy who served eighteen years in prison jailed as a political degenerate; (2) Tashi Tsering, a younger Tibetan who studied abroad as well as actively participated in the first years of the Cultural Revolution. Both confronted ethnic tension, as well as political turmoil as each were jailed for varying years.

Finally, to determine the common experiences of the individual in Xinjiang necessitates a close look at Han chavanism during the Cultural Revolution in Xinjiang. In particular, seeking the points of (1) what actions would have forced ethnic tensions to be exacerbated, (2) who suffered the challenges of the era, and (3) what entailed the difficulties for non-Han residents of Xinjiang to surmount during this period largely characterize the procedure for this portion of the debate. Seeking particular phenomena that existed similarly to Tibetan conditions or experiences is a must for this debate; a procedural comparison between Tibet and Xinjiang during the Cultural Revolution will reveal a more tangible image that without.

The first moments of Han chavanism in Xinjiang were exposed a generation into the Qing’s administration of the area. Xinjiang at that time was divided territory in terms of administration techniques: in the “Northern Circuit” (beilu) north of the Tianshan Mountains, generally referred to as “Dzungaria”. This area was under the rule of the high commandery (jiangjun) that was based in the Ili River valley on the western border of Xinjiang. In the “Southern Circuit” (nanlu), an environment wildly different from the north—a series of Muslim oasis towns encircling the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin—required command to be distinctively autonomous. A hierarchy of local elites (begs) and Qing-eneoffed local nobility (jasaks) reported to councilors (canzan danchen) stationed in the older cities of Kasghar to the west. These officials were generally Manchu banner men of high rank, but generally imposed few restrictions on the control of local populations beyond a series of taxes¹. Such was the system of administration from initial rule to the Yakub Beg rebellion (1760-1864).

But the fate had a different plan for politics in Xinjiang. The Dzungars who had once had support of the Tarim cities had used the cities as fortifications; they were ruined with the destruction Emperor Qianlong’s scorched earth campaign inflicted upon the area. Without the Dzungars, who held the linkage between steppe and oasis city with great esteem, these cities began to fall into disrepair, and yet their denizens were heavily taxed². Additionally, literary sources have conveyed us a certain disdain among the Han in the local military-agricultural cities (bingtuan): by 1760 officals were referring to the local Muslim population as being “dogs”³ and complaining of their hard-drinking, “raw”-ness (fuxing), but Millward makes the distinction that these phrases were uttered in ignorant nervousness, rather than in an odious manner; he sees a transformation of moods occuring with the Yakub Beg rebellion. There was a clear ground for revolt, between the subtext of prejudices as well as the refusal for the Qing court to properly fund their expansionism. [1]

In June 4^th, 1864 the rebellion began, as Kucha attracted aggravated Muslims to gather and protest their treatment stemming from the lack of post-war support. The city was segregated to allow for a small group of colonial officials and soldiers, yet it was far too small to deal with the rapidly spreading chaos: as they began to band together and burn the administration buildings, the Qing soldiers could not repel them. Before long, local elites began to take part in the revolt, and it blazed into Kashgar, Yarkand, Urumqi and throughout the entire country by late July⁴. The local begs were ordered to massacre participants in the violence, and few complied. As Kucha destroyed its Han administrators, new leadership emerged and began organizing expeditions to attack other garrisons, including the main Qing garrison at Barkol in March 1865. The explosion of violence gushed into other personal conflicts, and two Sufi orders began battling it out for domination. Yet, the motives of the battles were not stationed in religion, and they were not defined by ethnicity. These were certainly unifying elements, but they did not primarily motivate the actors to revolt. Rather, Hodong Kim simply describes the violence as a struggle for authority, where the multinational Qing imperial ideology did not win out⁵ The vacuum of Qing rule encouraged local elites to battle for control. As the Kuchean Yakub Beg gained control over Xinjiang, he tried to assert his imperial ambitions by allying with the western powers. The Qing, in a maneuver that was the orthodoxy in Central Asia during Great Game politics, co-opted teir alliance building, and sent out and army that promptly crushed Yakub Beg by 1871.

In this, we observe that economic conditions can coexist with chauvanism to bring about resistance. The resistance itself, took the form of a plurality of views and ethnicities, that fought a regime that had lost the mandate to use such a pluralistic identity. The era of cultural autonomy had ended with this show of violence, and the years following “Hanization” would acquire new tools as Han citizen and prisoner settlement in Tarim were promoted, and the weapons of this new demographic were language and customs. Qing thinkers Gong Zizhen and Wei Yuan best encompassed this form of Han chavanism: a natural defense against violence incitement via assimilation⁶. But it was not long before a new era fashioned new terms for resistance to be made against these weapons. Control became further entrenched in culture, so effective rebellion necessitated the creation of a culture of revolution. New lines for the oppressed were drawn during warlord rule based upon class, but even among this new perception old thought festered. It was during another power struggle that the inclinations of xenaphobia manifested as chauvanism once again; two organizations of radical thought manifested with differing aims and ethnic identities—it was only natural for one to contend against the other.

In the 1910’s, Xinjiang’s economy was still bleak, and tensions continued to rise with the ineffectual control of the Kuomintang (KMT) and barbaric rule of warlords, their strict policies of security that ultimately elevated racial boundaries. By 1931 another violent explosion wrecked the unity of the nation, as local revolts inflamed into all-out war and Tarim and Kashgar seceded from China to form the East Turkestan Republic (ETR). Warlord rule persisted in the new nation, propped up by USSR influence, and did not represent the views of the people any differently from authoritarian Chinese rule. As a result, tension between KMT, ETR, and the populace continued to mount, and in 1944, the county of Yining in Ili seceded from Xinjiang simultaneous to the disintegration of the ETR. Unlike the ETR, the Yining regime was not a function of warlord struggles, and sufficiently represented the locality, in the form of the Xinjiang Turkish People’s National Liberation Committee. Similar to the ETR, however, the Yining regime was greatly influenced by USSR ideology; the propaganda focused upon the nationalistic rhetoricof the building of a pan-Turkist or pan-Muslim nation, rather than an overtly leftist message⁷. So it was that the ETR was founded for a second time, under terms relatively autonomous from Han elites The ETR’s reign lasted until 1947, and for those three years the ETR enjoyed economic stability with help from the USSR. It did not, however, restrain Han chauvanism.

For the next ten years, Han chauvanism came from two different ideologies, flouted by two different agents. While the harassment campaigns the local KMT leaders led against the Ili-based ETR regime had little connection to the future, the inevitable arrival of the PLA once they had bested the KMT had serious implications upon future attempts at self-sovereignty. It is quite counterintuitive to speak harshly about the attempts to fit Xinjiang into the PRC fold: once they became part of the PRC, their currency stabilized and prosperity once again returned to Xinjiang; conventional experiences tell us that the initial CPC encounter with the frontier was quite bloodless. While it is true that the fatalities were low in recouping Xinjiang Uyghur, the liberties that were tread upon are tantamount to any crime of ethnic chauvanism. When the ETR folded in 1947, the people in Ili did not abandon their radical nationalist beliefs, yet the CPC expected them to, given their supposed respect for minorities’ right to self-determinism—the sharing of this ideals spelled that “greater nationalism” was to supercede the needs of “local nationalism”.

When the northern allies of the ETR were hesitant to join the CCP without persuasion, as they were habituated to resisting the attempts of any Chinese organization effort., persuasion came in the form of a suspiciously timed airplane crash that killed the entirety of ETR’s leadership. ⁸ But in a sense the goal of establishing an “autonomous” order can be seen as a rather genuine act of selflessness by the CCP. The PRC knew the problems that the KMT had with rebellion and in Xinjiang and the difficulties of communicating from capital to periphery. By establishing Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), the CCP leadership hoped to implications of chauvinistic assimilation in introducing socialism to Xinjiang. Materially, this panned out by planning for minority cadres to fill government positions by 1953. As Millward mentions, however, this “arguably contributed to [indigenous] acceptance of PRC rule, [but] aided the cause of PRC control in Xinjiang through the nested administrative system that put majority Uyghurs in structural competition with other groups and kept real power in the hands of upper-level party officials, who were predominantly Han.⁹”

Thus a new method of control was conceived by revolution. Legally, the Uighurs and Turkish minorities of Xinjiang were representated (de jure). But in terms of the function of this doctrine, it was not observed, and the enforcement proved that the minoritiy representatives were popularly (de facto) discarded. As time passed, the people of the province began to understand the root of their disenfranchisement, and began to dissent for enforcement of the constitution. This turn of events merely played in the foreground as the next phase of Han control over Xinjiang’s affairs began. And it is our duty to take this to heart in regard to the Cultural Revolution: forms of control overlap and sometimes are difficult to discern.

While the subjects may have been unsettled about their de facto disenfranchisement, it seems as thought the determining factor for dissent is largely economic in base. Within this broader economic view, the notions of a region’s overall prosperity is coupled with the welfare of the individual. It is on the terms of the latter, of social equality, where the origin of the next form of resistance laid. The land reform (c. 1950-1962) was a very controversial time in China, and generally the perspective of those who suffered retains a semblance of meaning to class, whether based on a point of view oriented towards hereditary or an arbitrary or personal element of counterrevolutionary substance. Like the rest of the country, the reforms seized landlords’ property and distributed it to the landless, a popular move for a sizeable population of Xinjiang’s serfs. However, for grazing land, the notion of giving up (sedentary) property did not mesh well with the local economy; they measured value through livestock as a property, and relied on land as per usufruct usage as opposed to dedicated land use. In this sense, collectivization in Xinjiang was messier than the rest of the country, and took a unique twist of hurting local cultures in the Dzungaria steppe more than Han, for they were the nomadic ones. ¹⁰ Furthermore, land reform had to deal with mosque endowments. They attempted to control the flow of tithes to the mosques, sometimes pressuring elites to match tithes in taxation. The CPC authorities also furthered the demographic shift by turning the traditional bingtuan into labor camps for political prisoners and immigrants. They were levied for civil engineering and land reclamation, to put land en masse to the plow¹¹. Ultimately, all of these acts were ones that contravened the traditional Xinjiang way of life and limited the prosperity of non-Han workers, as well as hindered the development of the province.

Recourse for matters both petty and provencal was allowed through the Hundred Flowers movement. Many local administrators were sick of the selfish behavior on part of the Han immigrants and politicans. The promise of pragmatic reform was a tempting reason to speak out against the early reforms, and critics took the moment to espouse the virtues of greater autonomy. But when the Anti-Rightist Campaign swiftly followed, the hardships were multiplied, focusing upon “local nationalists” and people with ties to the ETR—who were seen as patrons to the hated USSR. It took years before many of the 1,612 cadres blamed of these dire crimes were rehabilitated¹². As a sum total of chauvanism and resistance, the attacks upon ethnicity occurred through economic development ignoring the environment and the indigenous knowledge the locals held about it, and it hurt the individual and collective alike both in principle and practically. When room was provided for all begrieved people to criticize the party, the resistance was co-opted entirely, and the excuse for detention was, in one way or another, an issue of local identity (beyond international politics).

It should be no surprise that this sort of nationwide movements had a similar toll upon Tibetian life as well.

There are many parallels between Xinjiang and Tibet’s experiences with Chinese colonialism. Perhaps the common experience originated with the precedent of the two areas being incorporated within a greater whole, the Mongol Empire. The Manchus in terms of their very own identity were defined by the passage of the Yuan Dynasty, so it is a suitable place to start for Tibet. From the beginning of the throne’s reign, the two sides were on unequal terms: although the Dalai Lama was exempt from the traditional court kowtow, he still had to bow in submission to the Qing emperor. But the throne truly became active in the affairs of Tibet when their vaunted enemies, the Dzungars, began to upset the Mongol balance of power in the frontier land by courting the Tibetan religious aristocracy. Circumstances turned bloody when the Dzungars invaded Lhasa in 1717, and Qing armies counterattacked; although they were welcomed in Lhasa, the encorporation of Kham—the easternmost portion of TAR—into Qing Sichuan, as well as the creation of a Lhasan garrison was not a comforting move. Aggravating the throne further, the Qing also created a regency in Lhasa that split the formerly united political power of the Dalai Lama, propping up local gentry who supported the Qing throne. Without religion to unite the elites, civil conflict was unavoidable. As rival factions of native bureaucrats squabbled with each other, the son of a influential minster plotted to enlist the Dzungars to gain political dominance. The Chinese garrison disposed of the figure, but it incited riots—the Dalai Lama once again turned to Qing help. One resounding beating later, the Qing reversed themselves and the Dalai Lama once again had complete control politically. Finally, the true extent of the Qing’s dominance over their politics materialized when the Tibet was invaded by the Gurkhas. The court gave the Manchu governor of Tibet (amban) priviledges equal to the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, tasked him as the official go-between for Lhasa-Beijing affairs, and even gave him the power to settle succession disputes¹³.

The driving notion for Chinese intervention was that agency was a commodity. Qing China, as a force more powerful than Tibet, could help in their affairs if given the chance to direct the leadership. However, at the same time it is suggestive that China’s interests were not with benevolently protecting an equal nation of people, but with fighting a sworn enemy (the Dzungars), and occupying Tibet as a means to recouping their war debt. What makes this case even more similar to the Xinjiang colonization was the method of asserting control. An administration that was originally autonomous in reality became more and more directly in Chinese control through building local administration buildings, and creating a strict system of patronage among local elites. Such parallels compell us to ponder, is there any similarity between the techniques employed by the PLA to gain control Xinjiang, in regards to Tibet?

While KMT affairs embroiled Xinjiang up to 1947, the period in Tibet prior to ascension into CPC regency was fraught with civil conflict that exposed the KMT’s ambivalence towards autonomous regions. Chiang Kai-shek, fighting a losing war, needed to regain grasp over Tibet, yet could only do so surreptiously; in Tibet itself, a revolt occurred against Chinese-backed leadership, as the Sera Monastery rebelled. China did not even attempt to mediate this conflict or implement its disingenuous policies. As a result, as Hsiao-Ting Lin contends, China had completely lost Tibet¹⁴. A vindicative Tibet was certainly acting the part, and when the CPC was gaining control of China, Tibet had expelled all KMT officials from the land, but not without them designating the new Panchen Lama in Kokonor, a final rebellious act that Tibet refused to recognize. Immediately, the Panchen Lama allied with the CPC, and it was used as a bargaining chip to gain “liberation” on their terms¹⁵.

Analogous to the notion of these terms of “liberation” is the Seventeen-Point Agreement, stemming from the 1950 announcement that liberation was a major goal. In truth, it was a major goal, and Mao’s regime tried their best to initially be sensible. As Goldstein mentions,

“On one occasion Mao told his generals they had to be partient and go slow in Tibet: ‘Tibet and Xinjiang are different’, he said. ‘In Xinjiang in the old society there were 200,000-300.000 Chinese but in Tibet there was not even a single Chinese. So our troops are in a place where there were no Chinese in the past.’”¹⁶

At first the PLA tried persuasion. Meeting failure, they decided to engage the Tibetan miltia at Chamdo. It was too futile a struggle against the organized PLA ranks. Negotiation was necessitated through the veritable conquest of Tibet, and in this agreement China gained for the first time in history a written agreement conceding Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. Many Tibetans felt the terms of the Fourteen-Points Agreement was blatantly unfair, and precluding claims to many forms of autonomy was dangerous. But at the same time, many believed it to be a necessity, as Tibet had clearly been a feudal society in the past. The PRC represented progress in the form of the drive for social equality and modern prosperity.

Hence, the ascendancy of Han authority was perceived as an uncomfortable change, but one that ultimately would lead to some good. Yet, the chavanism brought to the negotiation table was quite obvious. Instead of courting Tibetan leaders through promises of cooperative reform and development, the PLA brought the threat of overwhelming might to the bargaining power. It naturally gave them the ability to demand what they wanted, even if it seemed like they wanted to perserve Tibetan autonomy. This sort of disingenuous practice certainly resembles the role minority positions played in Xinjiang. What is codified on legal documents and what happens due to either practices that are unenforced or occur in the background of political activity are wholly seperate entities, and it is the basis for the majority of modern political abuses of ethnicities. Certainly, this is demonstrable through the difficulties for Tibetans outside of “political Tibet” (henceforth referred to using Phunwang’s term, “Greater Tibet”). When reforms occurred in Sichuan and Qinghai, they were to the diminishment of ethnic Tibetans, yet they could not afford even the constrained recourse that political Tibetans could utilize to have their problems mediated. Their crises pushed them across boundaries to seek refuge in Tibet, where they could protest safely. As tempers raged, the possibility of a major uprising became certain. ¹⁷

It was 1956, and both Lhasa and Beijing were plagued by a dreadful feeling of uneasiness. Reforms in Tibet would not progress smoothly; every moment of socialist revolution became, as a Qinghai Provincal Committee remarked, “A very violent class struggle of life and death.”¹⁸ Moments of rapid reform would come accompanied by incindiary revolts. As a portion of a larger movement, Greater Tibet was being forced into a black and white discussion: there was to be no alternative to socialist land reform, especially for nomadic life. Unlike policy in Xinjiang, however, there seemed to be greater sensativity to the downfalls of these programs, and Beijing constantly consulted the Dalai Lama in terms of reform. Yet, this sensativity was confined to the political Tibet. As refugees streamed into Tibet’s urban areas unorganized rebellion became carefully crafted: what started as open revolt in Kham in 1956, became a small portion of a larger militarized freedom force based in the mountains outside Lhasa by 1958. The Dalai Lama was unable to resolve how to deal with this force, or even whether to identify them as friend or foe; Beijing, on the other hand, refused to even entertain the idea that there were problems in Tibet. All of this changed the following year, when the rebels openly asked for the Dalai Lama’s support. He refused to support them. The PLA laid siege to Lhasa, while the Dalai Lama fled for India. Mao declared the result a victory, for Tibetans would be less resistant to reform without the presence of the Dalai Lama¹⁹.

With the revolt crushed, the timetable for socialist reforms was shortened. New administrative techniques were adopted as well, changing the former system of cooperation with Lhasan elites. An old system that used the Dalai Lama as an intermediary between Tibetan subjects and Beijing policy was discarded in favor for a new system that pushed to enfranchise local intellectuals. Like Xinjiang, schools for minority cadres were set up and the Chinese language was triumphed over Tibetan education, which fortunately continued. The positions these cadres eventually received were far less influential than those of their majority counterparts²⁰. In a sense, the project of assimilation occurred in Tibet much like it did in Xinjiang. Chauvanism at this time was through a similar mechanical implementation of national policy to a province that could not support these policies. But a difference does exist in the modicum of sensitivity that the Chinese expressed in their dealings with the Tibet, especially in terms of the value of their religious autonomy. Whereas the CPC was careful to respect the authority of the Tibetan monastic community, it seems as though at times they overstepped this sensitivity in Xinjiang, when they demanded excessive taxes from mosques’ tithes. Yet, certain things are the same; between Xinjiang and Tibet, it is absolutely certain that the CPC did not have policies responsive to the needs of nomads, an important element that made land reform very unpopular throughout the Chinese frontier. It is also certain that the forms of control used by the Han over their subjects was seen by individual spectators, views that help inform historical analysis.

Bapa Phuntse Wangye (Phunwang) acts as the optimal scope for examining the events in Tibet prior to the Cultural Revolution, as well as a cogent recording of the individual’s experience with the more radical moments in the Maoist era of the PRC. He was born in Batang, an area part of Kham (although not part of political Tibet) and was rapidly habituated into adopting radical thought. He grew up with a childlike adoration for a KMT offical who also desired to bring self-rule to the Khampas through armed resistance. Not only does Phunwang admire his ideals, but his modernity, and from there he desires to be exposed to modernity to share it with his home town²¹. Eventually, he becomes further radicalized (specifically, through Lenin’s Concerning a Nationality’s Right of Self-Determination) and adopts communism as an ideology due to notion that a political identity can transcend national borders. Starting as merely a schoolyard idea, radical thought develops Phunwang into an activist. Most important to his radical ideas was the notion of development. “The world is changing very quickly. I think if we do not reform ourselves, we will destroy ourselves. We won’t have to worry about the Chinese or anyone else. We will be our own worst enemy.”²² These thoughts crystallized into the formation of the political group, the Eastern Tibet People’s Autonomous Alliance. This group would be the lifeblood of Phunwang’s political aspirations from roughly 1945 to 1975. With a plan for national independence formulated, Phunwang and his compatriots finally had the basis to lead a war of revolution. Eventually, Phunwang associated these originally independent ideas to operations within the CPC as they began to win the civil war. But upon activating within the party, he found that his ideas were not garnering much support in the CPC; in reality, Tibet had been captured with no deference made to his popular plans. This was not unlike the case with ETR in Xinjiang: Phunwang’s dreams of a truly autonomous Tibetan government were slowly eroded, despite continual assurances that the CPC bureaus in Tibet would not retain authority over local bureaucracy²³.

What he does discover, however, is that he was not a trusted member of the party. Despite his persistance to achieve his radical dreams through the umbrella of CPC authority, his superiors believed him to be actively sabotaging the party through his old ambitions²⁴. Meanwhile, his own views towards the party begin to change. At first idealistic, he begins to understand that what is ideologically right for the party’s practices are not the reality at hand. The communism he had first learned was through books, and the communism practiced in his province was far from this form. He began to suspect what his Tibetan friends were assuming: that these communists were still Chinese at heart, and therefore exploitative²⁵. The struggle to fight the existance and perception of “Great Han Chauvanism” (da hanzu zhuyi) was a continuous process for Phunwang, but eventually he was the one of the targets of the chauvanism. For his superior, Fan Ming, began to implement more advanced reforms without Phunwang’s approval, through direct consent from above. It prompted his ire, and during the Hundred Flowers movement he argued for the creation of minority “republics” similar to the USSR “socialist republics”. Although this idea was incredibly exciting to Tibetans, it was also a very dangerous idea—both insinuating a relationship with the hated USSR, and preaching too much “local nationalism” for the tastes of the CPC leadership²⁶. He had become, irrevocably, the enemy.

Phunwang’s experiences in prison obscure our vision of the Cultural Revolution in Tibet, for it ranged from 1960 to 1978. But at the same time, it gives historians the tools for examining the memoirs of minority activists, for Phunwang’s prison memories are quite similar to even Han students’ memories of the events. His prison tenure was years of meaningless captivity. It was years before his jailers admitted what his crimes were, and even then they were somewhat ambiguously linked to his radical activities prior to the PLA entering Tibet²⁷. When emerged from prison in 1976, he could only experience the Cultural Revolution second hand, through the aftermath of the chaos, via his family who were stationed in Beijing at the time. What he experienced was incredibly tragic: his wife had been locked into her stall at work where she commited suicide in 1969. People had continually abused Phunwang’s family in ignorant racist terms. The student activists believed them to be spies, who harbored secret telegraph equipment as well as artifacts constructed from human skin²⁸. He experienced the same sort of numbness that other participants and victims felt: numbness. He had exited the prison and was given no apollogy or explanation for the actions of the state, and events occurred so quickly he could account for them. And most tragic for Phunwang, his years of good intentioned radical activity had been rejected as bad thought for no significant reason. Unlike other observers, however, he had the persistence to seek out the rationality to explain these events, and in 1985 he was finally given the validation of having his Tibetan party verified as a true communist party²⁹.

What can be adopted from Phunwang’s limited view of the Cultural Revolution? Certainly, it is that not everyone is capable of having a lucid view of the events. But also, that having a lucid view is not a prerequisite to compiling a lucid history. The sudden onslaught of history he received upon release from prison suffered the same irrationality that others perceieved in the period, and his reaction was suitably alike: a numbness that gave way to a continued effort to achieve his goals in a reformed nation. But it also exposes the goals for most Tibetan intellectuals on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. Like Phunwang, many Tibetans wanted to use membership in the PRC as a vehicle to achieve development. However, they too wanted political autonomy, and saw it as a rational end for communist policy, as it was part of the constitution as well as Leninist ideology. Unfortunately, propagating this notion was also seen as comprimising the intergrity of Chinese nationalism, and to an extent this was seen as mutually exclusive with the goal to develop through the PRC. Most of all, the evils of the “Great Han Chauvanism” that Phunwang fights against was that it valued the identity of one nation over another, when autonomy demanded for the two to be equals. He in response advocated constitutional reform on part of the PRC, including steps to recognize Greater Tibet, the study of native languages, and autonomy in local affairs and militia³⁰. The crimes of Han chauvanism in this regard are accounted for in Phunwang’s narrative, as well as his personal response to the problem; it is natural for us to expect this kind of discourse on part of Xinjiang intellectual’s memoirs as well. However, what can be expected from a first hand participant in the Cultural Revolution?

Tashi Tsering is just the man necessary to submit a personal narrative for ethnic minorities regarding particupation in student activism. Whereas Phunwang was a first generation communist originating from the periphery of Tibet, Tashi Tsering was a slightly older figure who had been sent to Lhasa at a young age, where he served as gadrugba dancer to the Dalai Lama. Also unlike Phunwang, his education was very cosmopolitian. In 1957 he left Tibet for Calcutta, India. A year later, he was accepted into St. Joseph’s in Darjeeling to finish his secondary education as well as to study English. He observed the rebellion occuring in Lhasa at first from afar and then on location. It was distressing for him to imagine radical change for Tibet, but at the same time hoped such change would accompany development. Sentiments hospitable to modernizing continued as Tashi Tsering continued with his education, even as he went to the west. In 1960, he travelled to New York to study at Williams College, and the next year to Seattle to study at the University of Washington. As his education progressed, he began to realize that modernization could not occur from a government-in-exile, but from within the PRC. This led him to return home, despite the wishes of his friends who worked with the exiled Dalai Lama.

When he returned to China, he anticipated continuing his studies at Peking University; policy dictated that he had to study at a minority institute³¹. His studies were rather frustrating, as he found correct ideology taking the forefront over subject matter. Around this time the GCPR was launched, and Tashi did not feel at danger at the moment, for he was for radical change and was not a capitalist roader. Because he was at Beijing at the time, he was also part of the revolutionary fervor; in this, he was proud of his conscious decision to return to China rather than serve the Tibetan exiles. However, this declaration did nothing but promote the ire of his classmates³². At the end of 1966, Tashi and his Tibetan classmates decided to return home to pursue revolution. Greeting his friends from the past, he perceieved the first victims of the Cultural Revolution. Progressive Tibetans were being struggled against, and he could but rationalize that they had done something counterrevolutionary³³.

In reality, it was religion that was inspiring struggle. Lhasa was a deeply Buddhist city, but even burning lamps in offering to a deity was grounds for punishment. Like a “wet hat”, the formely liberal policies had dried (through the 1959 uprising) to become uncomfortable and chauvanistic for the Lhasans. Tashi Tsering identitied the crackdown on religion as being far too indiscriminate. Yet he persisted to be a Red Guard because he wished to root out counterrevolutionary elements. Unfortunately, he was quickly identified as one of these elements. On October 13, 1967 he was publically struggled against. His fellow Tibetans were adamantly believed in his guilt. His crimes were not ideological, but experiential. Tashi Tsering was an enemy because he had visited India and America. They sought his repentance for these small crimes, but additionally saw a greater crime in a Tashi who was an advocate for Tibetan independence. Like Phunwang, Tsering suffered weeks of intimidating interrogation. Unlike Phunwang, his captors were his classmates. After weeks of interrogation in his school, he was sent to a makeshift jail on campus, inhabitated by both Han and Tibetan people. Segregation during the Cultural Revolution, according to Tsering, only occurred via class lines. Months passed in this jail as he feared the fate of his friends, as well as his country amidst rumors of war with the USSR. In 1970, he was finally sent to a larger formal prison in Changwu County, where he was sent once more to Xianyang prison, then Chengdu, and then finally Sangyib prison, where he was prisoner from 1971 through 1973. Like Phunwang, Tashi was assigned solitary confinement and was not sentenced to a specific length, a luxury that political prisoners from the Lhasa Uprising were allowed. He was interrogated by Tibetan and Han interrogators alike. The terms of his release were equally mysterious; he chalks it up to bureaucratic mismanagement.

Upon his release from prison, in the later years of the Cultural Revolution, Tashi surveys the impoverishment that the movement has perpetuated upon Xianyang, Lhasa, as well as his home town. Everyone seemed half dead, and under tge cinnybe system production rates had fallen tremendously. Mao’s death is a monumentous relief for his mind, as he hopes the chauvanism that had occurred during the years of the Cultural Revolution would dissappear with him. The following years followed Tashi Tsering returning to Xianyang, seeking rehabilitation. Finally, in 1978—the same year Phunwang was rehabilitated—Tashi Tsering’s imprisonment was ruled as unjust and the CPC recompensated him for his losses.

In many ways, Tashi Tsering is quite similar to Phunwang. Both valued a semblanece of national independence coupled with the developmental force that the PRC could provide to Tibet. Both were genuinely passionate about developing Tibet, and took many potentially hazardous paths in order to achieve their goals. And both saw the power in maintaining identity through preserving the Tibetan language. However, the forms of chauvanism the two faced were starkly different. We see ethnic chauvanism occuring in Phunwang’s narrative predominantly through his family’s experiences during the Cultural Revolution, as well as his personal experiences with the difficulties affecting politics as a minority politician. But in Tashi Tsering’s views, he was suspected by everyone—both through Han Chinese in Beijing, and his villagers alike! Furthermore, his experiences in prisons equally Han and Tibetan, showed that class background and (probably) personal conflict determined guilty individuals during the Cultural Revolution. This makes the Tibetan experience quite similar to the average Han victim of Cultural Revolution violence. Moreover, it demonstrates the challenges that are promulagated in a GPCR experience just by being unique; Tashi Tsering aggravated Red Guards to struggle against him simply because his international quality made him provocative and different.

What makes Xinjiang different, then? Exploring this question requires an approach seperating these differences from the similiarities. We can draw the differences of Xinjiang’s experience only through the historical record; then, we can use this model to judge against both the techniques and resistance to chauvanism, in tandem to the lessons extracted from the narratives of the time.

Examining Xinjiang as a function of the mechanical operations of national movements puts us in 1960, with the Great Leap Forward; in Xinjiang, it took the same path as it did elsewhere in China, albeit with its own share of problems. Reforming nomadic agriculture, as explained, was a source of great misery during this time, and collectivization of livestock forced the pasture to become sedentarized, and in Dzungaria, the steppe cannot sustain such concentrated activity. Ultimately several collective pastures failed³⁴. In later years of the movement, collectivization became retrenched, and as commune were reorganized, McMillen notes, “[It] essentially represented the re-emergence of the bifurcation between state and society”, as administrating so many people in so many diverse farming conditions was too difficult a task³⁵.

Whereas the university played the role of bringing together radicalized students during the Cultural Revolution in Han Proper, in Xinjiang the bingtuan state farms served a similar purpose. Red Guards traveled to Urumqi to form “the Second Red Headquarters” and the military began occupying the bingtuan for their own radical purposes. Immediately, the local commissar Wang Enmao was accused of being a capitalist roader because he refused to join the local revolutionary committee. He reacted by forming his own Red Guard group designed to defend Xinjiang’s revolutionary cadres from outsider Red Guards.³⁶Like the rest of the nation, the State called upon the PLA to enforce order, to no effect. Despite the dominant view that the cities of Xinjiang were merely backwater frontier towns, they experienced the very same violence as urban areas to the east did. For instance, on January 26^th 1967, tens of thousands of Shanghai youth clashed in Shihezi. They had attempted to seize control of a textile factory and were arrested by conservative Red Guards, and then promptly executed. Factionalism was widespread in Xinjiang as it was in Shanghai or Beijing. ³⁷ The chaos was so intense at one point that Wang Enmao threatened to occupy the Lop Nor nuclear testing facilities to ensure that Red Guards would demilitarize³⁸. It took several years after 1971 for order to be restored. By that time, Wang Enmao has been purged and Lin Biao’s soldiers had begun to replace the more moderate PLA officers in the area. Even when order was restored, it took decades for Xinjiang’s economy to recover, due to the epicenter of Red Guard activity having occurred in the bingtuan.

Millward emphasizes, however, what is not discussed, namely, what occurred in Uyghur majority locations. Reports read of radical troops engaging in border raids with Soviet Russian troops, and locals had a very real fear of starting an international conflict. Being non-Han during the midst of this movement did not allow you the opportunity to be more radical, in fact, it made you the target of radicals. Uyghurs were commonly and baselessly accused of being involved with separatist conspiracies, especially those with background in ETR. Even high ranked officers of non-Han descent were targets for slander. Getting rid of the “Four Olds” in a Han majority region might mean desecrating artifacts, but in Xinjiang it meant xenophobia in the most violent fashion possible. The Qu’ran was burned in public, mosques vandalized with pig flesh, and racial epithets crowded the air. There were no pretenses for maintaining the notion of “autonomy” in Xinjiang during the Cultural Revolution. Everything crude and ignorant that had been suppressed for the sake of magnamity was being exposed as a weapon, not criticized.³⁹ These crimes are not discussed through party self-criticism, Millward laments, and to discuss this persecution even today is considered treason.

To this degree there are quite a few dissimilarities between Tibet and Xinjiang. Perhaps to some degree part of the intial colonial experience, where Xinjiang existed as the war spoils for the Qing court, Xinjiang seems to have experienced a larger degree of native revolt and overall Han antipathy. Because of this, it is likely the potential for ethnic conflict, during the moments of loosened social order of the Cultural Revolution, is far greater in Xinjiang than Tibet. In terms of great game politics, both provinces dealt with the western powers—Tibet with Britain (and to a degree, America) and Xinjiang with Russia/USSR—the sheer hostility that China harbored for USSR during the Cultural Revolution would make life in Xinjiang slightly tenser than Tibet in regards to international conflict. Finally, the ethnic demographics between Tibet and Xinjiang were greatly different: in Xinjiang there was a resident Han population as well as several minorities—people of Turkish, Mongol, as well as Sogdian heritage. In Tibet, there was a far more homogenous population, and the significance of this disparity cannot be under-emphasized.

In documenting chauvanism, it has taken the several important overlapping forms. First, was the ability for the Qing to control affairs indirectly through patronage of local elites; despite the identities of these local governors being equivalent to the local population, the reality was that they practiced the policies of the Qing court. Second, was the CPC’s action of co-opting prexisting political organizations and ideology, in an attempt to fortify their control over the political atmosphere of their regencies. Third, was their practice of applying uniform policies onto these regions, despite their status as autonomous from the whole of the PRC. Fourth, the CPC employed shows of might to heavily influence negotiations that they claimed to be truly cooperative.

In addition to modes of Han chauvanism, there are means for minorities to resist. First, was the armed revolt, usually dictated by dire circumstances. Second, there was “local nationalism”, whether based on ethnicity (e.g. pan-Turkism) or religion (e.g. pan-Islamism), it was more or less a mechanism for organization for armed conflict initially, and turning into a formal ideological stance as the localities became imbedded into the PRC. Third, and most important, was resistance to assimilation by means of codifying one’s culture. Like the previous forms of chavanism, these means to resist are not mutually exclusive, although their progressive development spells that the later developed techniques are generally more effective within the confines of modern PRC politics.

Among the two narratives we analyzed, there were several congruencies. One similarity between Phunwang and Tashi’s stories was that both were relatively disengaged during the Cultural Revolution. Their memories of the event are not at all nostalgic, but clouded by the bars of prison. In liberation, they are numb and cannot reconcile the events that have passed with their years of political engagement. Once again, the Cultural Revolution is portrayed as an aberration, and it is only after pushing the CPC to realize their misconception of their forms of political activity do they feel at peace. A second similarity was that their analysis that “Great Han Chauvanism” was the main enemy to the welfare of Tibet. They saw it persist despite the idealistic rhetoric of the CPC’s constitution. Yet, they did not give up even when directly attacked by this chauvanism. The centerpiece of their narrative was a merger of the collective and individual: they believe in the power of progressivism, and their ability to act upon the progressivism to change their faulty nation for the better. Finally, both identify that the PRC is an important body to Tibetan politics in the sense that it can drive Tibetan development. Both see the primary problem with Tibet as the lack of social welfare and backwardsness of the province. They agree with communism’s aim as a modernizing force and both strive to realize a goal related to developing Tibet. As a whole, both are Tibetans who are emblematic of the multifarious goals of Tibet: they simultaneously seek modernism, as well as resist chauvanism by means of codifying Tibet’s language and culture, and in general, this is the basis for modern Tibetan activism.

So where does Xinjiang’s possible narratives fit in this slew of themes? I believe they would fall within the notion of activism, albeit in a capacity wholly unique from Tibet’s expression of this action. The general sense of activism, to unite the reinforcement of an autonomous culture (the modern form of resistance against assimilation) with the hunt for modern prosperity, is something shared between the two regions. On the basis of the differentiating factors, it is questionable whether any one Uighur or Hui memorist would report, as Tashi Tsering, that the Cultural Revolution struggled wholly through class identification, for they would know preternaturally from generations of authoritarian rule that nearly every act of violence has a bit of chauvanism latent within it. Xinjiang memoirists would certainly remember the events are irrational, for they were merely the victims of a mechanical national movement, and in truth their political intentions had little to do with their punishments, as seen with the Tibetan activists.

A final would point truly seperate the Xinjiang stories from the Tibetan ones: considering the coexistance of Xinjiang ethnic minority and majority populations, what could differentiate the Han story, if both are judged as a function of their “backwater” environment by migrating students and elites? Perhaps answering this distinction could serve the great purpose of blurring lines of identity, formerly clearly drawn alongside ethnicty. Although studying the Cultural Revolution might demand that a lot of events deemed merely “irrational” to be explained on cogent terms, to do the opposite exposes the sheer arbitrary nature of identity. In the end, while some people use mountains to define who they are a person, it is only one view. Legality changes through the winds of time, as does the ephemeral perception of man. But some things do not change and cannot be demarcated by a mountain range. Authority will always be authority no matter how it disguises itself, and a story will always be a story no matter how it dresses itself up. It is those without either who pass with the wind, and the responsibility of the historian is to account for these fleeting moments.

[1] It can be contended that the occupation occurred as an attempt to recoup war debt; to this extent the leadership would be hesitant to spend additional silver to finance grain subsidies for poor villagers or to properly recompensate their banner troops. As a result, the province was backwards and it was a powderkeg of tension.

1Beyond the Pass 32-33

2Kim 1-3

3Beyond the Pass 194: the original charcter for Muslim features the current character for the ethnicity (回族) as a phonetic alongside the dog radical. It was quickly banned, but for a brief period this was a popular derogatory term.

4Kim 45-48

5Ibid 68-71

6Beyond the Pass 240-247

7Wang 90-97

8Starr 86-87

9 Ibid 91-82

10 Ibid 88

11Eurasian Crossroads 250-253

12Ibid 256-263

13Grunfeld 40-47

14Lin 194-198

15Lin 201-205

16Snow Lion 38-42

17Snow Lion 46-54

18Grunfeld 124

19Ibid 141-154

20Ibid 166-179

21Tibetan Revolutionary 17-21

22Ibid 67

23Tibetan Revolutionary 148-153

24Ibid 155-159

25Ibid 160

26Ibid 200-218

27Ibid 256-265

28Tibetan Revolutionary 262-276

29Ibid 304-308

30Ibid 280-298

31Struggle 92

32Ibid 106

33Ibid 109

34 Starr 93-94

35 McMillen 146-147

36 Starr 95

37 McMillen 198-206

38 Ibid 215

39 Starr 96-100

~ by thedefinitearticle on May 17, 2008.