Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2016

Xinjiang from the Han point of view

Tom Cliff

18:30-20:00, July 21, 2016
Room 301, Building 10, Sophia University, Yotsuya Campus

Han settlers characterise the state stranglehold over economic life in Xinjiang as a “structural
problem” (tizhi wenti) For the nonelite, this structural problem is a livelihood problem, but for
the elite, it is a problem of governance. This paper will explore how connections between the micro
and macro political economies of Xinjiang influenced the hopes, expectations, and actions of Han
settlers at the crucial “turning point” following the July 2009 Urumqi riots. I frame this
ethnographic study with a broader discussion of Han settler psychology and experiences in Xinjiang,
in particular their mutually-dependent relationship with the cultural and political centre of the
Chinese empire-state. Xinjiang Han are, like Xinjiang itself, seen as “behind” by people and
institutions at the core. But Xinjiang, being a frontier, is also seen as a place of opportunity,
innovation, even national salvation. Thus Xinjiang is “ahead” of the core in certain respects, as
well as behind by definition. Xinjiang is asynchronous.
Persistent “imperial thinking” from the centre to the borderlands imposes a strange chronology on
the frontier, where discourses of manifest destiny coexist with chronic uncertainty.

Tom Cliff is an ARC-funded postdoctoral fellow based at ANU’s School of Culture, History, and
Language. Tom has conducted long-term fieldwork in Xinjiang, and his book, Oil and Water: Being Han
in Xinjiang will be published by Chicago University Press in June 2016.

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