More Perspectives on the Destruction of Kashgar's Old City

Kashgar's Old Town Bulldozed - Far West China

A great blog post about the destruction of Kashgar's Old City from someone who actually knows the area. It's a good approach to the situation: the NYTimes articles posited the Chinese motives as essentially evil, whereas the actual boots-on-the-ground situation is much more complicated then that. (As in all things).

China Razes the Cradle of Culture - The National

Another excellent article about the destruction of Kashgar's Old City. The National brings up an issue I hadn't considered before: many of the residents of the Old City's jobs and economic livelihoods were centered in the city itself. Since the city has been throughly demolished, their livelihoods have gone kaput as well - and the government has not provided any jobs to replace them. Uighurs are also at a considerable disadvantage in competing for jobs against the Han Chinese, who the government repatriate in considerable numbers to Xinjiang's border cities. Further, the sense of community that evolved organically around the old city will be gone forever, and that's going to be a pretty considerable loss for the locals.

But perhaps the Uighur's loss is more collateral damage in China's no-holds barred rush to modernization then a malicious effort at "ethnic cleansing", as noted in the article:

“I don’t see it as a deliberate attack on Uighur culture, but part of China’s policy to modernise and develop,” said Dru Gladney, the president of the Pacific Basin Institute and an expert on Xinjiang. He said it had more to do with cultural insensitivity than politics.


Urumqi, one of Xinjiang's biggest cities and a pretty swell place as I recall. Clean air was sort of a compelling novelty.

China, as is abundantly clear from its treatment of its historical treasures, (knock it down, build a theme park on it, knock it down then build a theme park on it!) feels it cannot spare the time and expense of maintaining "living museums". They are attempting to go from an agricultural and backwards economy to that of a super-modern economic power in an incredibly contracted space of time, and the government isn't much concerned about the sentimental stuff that stands in their way. This same attitude is evidenced in the Chinese unwillingness to adhere to international emission's standards : as they reason, everyone else got to pollute and mess stuff up on their path to giant economy status, why can't we? Aesthetics, such as historical monuments and clean breathable air, are definitely a secondary concern in China's eyes. It's not attractive logic to us in the first world, but there also is just about jack shit we can do to compel them otherwise.

From the standpoint of an amateur observer, it's interesting to compare how China and India are going about the business of becoming large, modern economies. China seems to be considerably more efficient, but India doesn't seem to be as willing to forfeit its cultural soul. A ginormous and inefficient democracy (but still a democracy) versus a communist-capitalist totalitarian state. I for one am gonna be interested in seeing how this all works out in the next forty or so years.

Yet another good article about China's efforts to absorb cultures within its borders:

China's Final Frontier - Prospect