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Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of People's Republic of China, celebrated with much military fanfare in Beijing. A long line of parade floats, one representing each of the provinces and autonomous regions, followed the morning procession of soldiers. Xinjiang's float perfectly summarized its theme, "Blessings of the Heavenly Mountains" (天山祝福)-- those blessings being bountiful fruit, oil, and women. Basically, the bottle-green truck featured dancers and musicians in ethnic costume, as well as a model of an oil pumpjack atop an atlas silk carpet, soaring out of a rainbow. Read into the symbolism at your own peril.

Major international news sources-- CNN, The Guardian, The New York Times, and Reuters to name a few-- confirmed last week that violence has resurfaced in Urumqi, this time in the mysterious form of syringe attacks. According to reports, almost five hundred people have come to local hospitals claiming that they have been jabbed by needles. Subsequent protests by angry citizens called for the resignation of Wang Lequan, Chief Party Secretary of Xinjiang. As a result, Beijing sacked two subordinate bureaucrats, Urumqi Party Secretary Li Zhi and Regional Chief of Police Liu Yaohua to placate Han Chinese who say that the government has failed to protect them against Uyghurs these past two months. As of now, it remains unclear if the needle-sticks mark residual anxieties from the July riots or portend the epic violence to come.

The syringe attacks, however bizarre they may seem, have become potent rumors because they tap into very real fears about Uyghur stereotypes. My friends on the east coast often heard unfounded rumors that Uyghurs contaminate restaurant soup with AIDS-tainted blood. Certainly, a disproportionately high number of Uyghurs are infected with HIV, and the possibility that these needles might just carry the virus, or even traces of other diseases, drugs, or chemicals have transformed suspicious-looking moles and mosquito bites-- as doctors have dismissed them-- into mass hysteria (though in this desert environment I have never seen a mosquito). The scare even has manifested itself in sensationalized pictures like this one printed in the Hong Kong-based Apple Daily (via EastSouthWestNorth). If only this witchy Uyghur knew how to wear her headscarf properly!
 
These articles fail to converge on key points-- the number of syringe victims, perpetrators, protestors, casualties, and more. Basically, no one knows for sure what has happened, except that the authorities have ratcheted up security yet again. University administrations have locked down campuses, while public security bureaus have denied paperwork for some incoming foreign teachers. At the same time, however, my former colleagues and students have set up ingenious ways to circumvent the "impermeable" Internet ban to contact their friends overseas, just to talk about daily life.

In the meantime, some speculative, but interesting accounts have appeared on the Internet about the riots that the mainstream media has not covered, including:

• The Asia Times writes that an internecine struggle between two political cliques on the national stage caused Urumqi's delay in responding to the July riots. This suggests that party officials manipulated Uyghur wrath in order to destroy their rivals' credibility and clout, as well as scores of innocent lives.
• The Times of London believes that the regional government missed critical signs in taxi windows, which had helped publicize the initial protests among the Uyghur community. Unfortunately vague, the article does not mention what these signs spelled out, nor does it consider that most taxi drivers in Urumqi are Han.
• The blog Siweiluozi translated an interview with Heyrat Niyaz, a Uyghur journalist, originally printed the Hong Kong newsweekly Yazhou Zhoukan. Niyaz portrays the Uyghurs as people who easily have surrendered to others throughout history and who do not want independence from China.

To satisfy your curiosity about what Xinjiangers are reading during the Great Cyberspace Blackout of 2009, below is a July 25 screenshot of a TianshanNet Uruмqi Riot feature, which currently remains blocked outside of Xinjiang. As I had mentioned earlier, authorities have limited the news in Xinjiang to a few sources, while at the same time restricting access to them from other provinces, not to mention other countries. Although I can find some of the TianshanNet articles reprinted at other Chinese media sites, I think the idea behind the block is to establish the primacy of state-sponsored media and "official" accounts over other versions. Obviously, this prevents incredible rumors and gory pictures from subverting authority and social order among the local population. For the most part, Xinjiang's coverage does not diverge too much from Chinese news sources, except for the extra emphasis on ethnic harmony-- note the very adorable banners at the bottom: "Each Ethnicity, Each Realm Shows Love," "Witnesses: People from all Ethnic Groups Help Each Other Out," "We are together, Unified," and so on. I have translated two segments (marked in red) which confirm the agenda to reconcile Han and Uyghurs quickly, and blame the unrest on extremists abroad through character assassination solid evidence. Click on the images below to read more.

Ethnic Unity

• Everyone comes to Pasha's wedding [in Uruмqi]: Arpat's daughter Pasha Gets Married, 300 guests-- Uуghurs, Han, Hui-- send best wishes to the couple...
• Fuyun County: Ethnic Unity, from the Eyes of Star Student Nurash Dalil
• Shaya County: Muqams Pass Down and Spread Songs about the People's Duty to Ethnic Unity
• Khotan: Star Students Returning Home Say "People of all ethnic groups belong to one family."
• Hutubi County: Folk Band Plays New Song About Ethnic Unity "One Family"
• Burqin County: Steppe Aken [Kazakh Musicians] Sing about Duty to Ethnic Unity

East Turkеstаn and Rеbiуа

• Background information: Rеbiуа, the Person, the Story
• Rеbiуа, full name Rеbiуа Kаdееr, was born in 1951 in Altai City, Xinjiang, at the foot of the Altai Mountains...
• Former Classmates Denounce the Kаdееrs for Blackening the Name of their Hometown
• Rеbiуа Becomes a Laughing Stock Online (in English)
• News Information on "The Three Evil Forces"
• Rеbiуа: Moral Bankruptcy
• Rеbiуа: World-wrecking, Bewitching Granny -- We are all One Family

I just returned from Хіnjіаng a few days ago, where the government has shut off the internet since the riots. (Naively somehow, I did not think that this would happen at all! I still have so much to learn about China.) This is the first in a series of posts written while isolated in my last weeks at Rockriverton. Some of the information echoes what the news already has reported. Still, it comes from the perspective of someone who has lived here for a bit longer than the journalists who had swooped in on Uruмqi after the riots and went on a whirlwind tour of the region. Хіnjіаng expats, in comparison, all have personal connections to locals and have seen firsthand many of the issues that have emerged as causing the riots. I guess that also makes us more biased in one way or another...

In celebration of American Independence Day, DFL and I had taken the bus to Uruмqi to meet with friends and to run errands. DFL needed to extend his visa while I wanted to buy a birthday present for my sister. On Sunday July 5, we spent the morning in the Erdaoqiao District where we stuffed our faces with delicious dumplings and rifled through brilliantly colored pashminas. It was a dry, but sweltering, hot day-- the streets were quiet save the storekeepers in the bazaar who hassled foreign tourists and blasted Uуghur reggaeton. In the afternoon, we headed towards the city's amusement park for some rides. (The view from the Ferris wheel, below, overlooks Santunbei bus station). One scene continues to haunt me from the park, only because of the tragic events which soon followed: families across ethnic and class backgrounds were lazily picnicking together among the roller coasters and golf carts, a rare sight in Uruмqi. Around dinner, I decided to return to Rockriverton by bus, as I had to do some paperwork at home. In retrospect, this negligible act saved me from danger.

As reported in news sources around the world, during the late afternoon in the bazaar and nearby neighborhoods of Uruмqi, hundreds gathered to protest against the Shaoguan incident, in which Han factory workers incited a race riot against their Uуghur coworkers in Guangdong, leaving two dead and hundreds injured, officially. I first heard about the upheaval when a teacher friend called me from his cell phone downtown, about "explosions near Nanmen." I thought he was joking. (Our waiban did not bother to tell us about the riots until two or three days later.) Though the Shaoguan Incident was the ostensible cause, various events and policies have ratcheted up ethnic tension in Хіnjіаng for weeks, some say months, and even years. Besides the demolition of historic Kashgar, Uуghurs have pointed to (what they see as) systematic discrimination in Хіnjіаng including language policy, migrant labor, unemployment, and economic and educational disparities. This is also the year of significant anniversaries. The authorities, however, do not believe that China has profound ethnic problems, and have framed the riots (pun intended) as the work of Rеbiyа Kаdееr and separatists beyond its borders, financially backed by the likes of the United States and Pakistan.

The demonstration spiraled out of control, and more violent elements began attacking Han passers-by, overturning and burning buses and cars, and lighting apartment buildings on fire. One foreign archaeologist, who found himself stuck in a taxi amidst the mob, witnessed a group of Uуghurs pull a Han man from his bicycle and then beat him to death with sticks and a shovel. The faculty at my university claimed that gangs gouged out the eye of a former college president. Several sensational rumors have emerged about the violence; for instance, a Uуghur supposedly slit the throat of a Han elementary school student during the upheaval. An Uruмqi hospital issued sticks to its nurses, who had to beat back some interlopers, and then later treated them for those wounds they had inflicted. From the few videos released later by CCTV, Uruмqi to me looked like the street anarchy in A Clockwork Orange. The official death toll was 197 people, and over fifteen hundred injured, two-thirds of them being Han. Locals in Uruмqi, not just the overseas Uуghur community, continue to dispute this statistic; everyone I have talked to believes that it is much higher. For instance, a Han friend of mine from Kuytun, a city three and a half hours away from Uruмqi, personally knew eight victims of the riots. To her and many others, the two hundred dead, while mathematically possible, seem improbable in reality.

DFL, who stayed on in Uruмqi, found himself caught in this deadly fracas. On July 6 and 7, he observed and photographed truckloads of soldiers being bussed into the city. Along the streets, shopkeepers closed their businesses and police set up checkpoints to inspect car trunks. He even saw a van filled with baozi and another truck with vats of soup just for the hundreds of troops in town. On July 7, he spotted roving bands of vigilantes that were prowling the streets. Armed with sticks, shovels, hatchets, and Chinese flags, these Han men attempted to mete out "justice" by attacking Uуghurs. Apparently, another protest by Uуghur women about the arrests made on July 5 also occurred on that same day, but that none of us were aware of this demonstration until after leaving Хіnjіаng and reading about it on the internet.

Meanwhile, early Monday morning at 4 am, the government shut off the internet, in efforts to squelch rumors circulating and people organizing. This happened much to the dismay of hundreds of teenage boys addicted to internet games across Хіnjіаng. Similarly, cell phone texting stopped working the following afternoon. At first, I found that only the Хіnjіаng government and bingtuan sites operated, but since then, more and more websites-- on news, tourism, healthcare, movies, have gone online. None of them, of course, allow netizens to upload videos or pictures, send messages, or post blogs. One email service was in operation after two weeks, but no new users could register accounts there. Moreover, these same websites, such as Tianshannet, remain inaccessible outside of Хіnjіаng, which means that most of the information leaving Uruмqi is through government and media channels, besides unofficial leaks of videos and snapshots. Outsiders therefore know more about what is happening in Хіnjіаng than the people actually living there.

The fact that these two realms of information are hermetically sealed off from each other is creating two alternate realities about the events in July. Likewise, CCTV and other news stations broadcasted the same bland footage of the riots, stressing heroic stories of Uуghurs or Han rescuing each other in the melee. At the time, it was the only way to restore public order. When I finally left the region a few days ago, I was shocked to see the photographs of carnage that we could not access within Хіnjіаng. American observers have compared the upheaval to the 1992 Los Angeles Race Riots, but I have noticed many other similarities to the 1923 Tokyo Korean Massacre-- namely, the inability to account for casualties, unaddressed grievances with migrant labor, and the role of rumors in the violence.

Cynics of development often joke that the name "China" comes from the word "拆那" (chai-na), or "tear that down." Recent events in Kashgar, as many news outlets already have announced, reflect this reckless attitude. In the past several months, the character 拆-- scrawled in black paint-- has been appearing on the mud-brick walls of Kashgar's Old Town, a collection of tightly cluttered Uyghur houses, some hundreds of years old. Indeed, the Chinese state has condemned these buildings in a $440-million-dollar plan to demolish and replace some 85% of the historic district with modern apartments, public schools, and open plazas. Likewise, the government will relocate nearly 200,000 residents to new flats on the city's outskirts. The local tourism bureau will then preserve what remains of the Old Town as an ethnic zoo outdoor museum.

This is not the first time historic Kashgar has been assaulted by modernity, nor will it be the last. A main thoroughfare now cuts through the heart of the Old Town past Id Kah Mosque, the largest in all of China. A towering statue of Chairman Mao, also the largest in all of China, salutes Kashgar over the city square. A creaky Ferris Wheel disrupts the skyline of precariously stacked homes. The government, however, has defended bulldozing much of this district by pointing to issues of safety-- houses are overcapacity, many of them without plumbing or electricity. More importantly, officials invoke the memories of last year's Wenchuan disaster to warn Kashgar's denizens; most of these structures would collapse in a major earthquake. A drastic overhaul, they say, is desperately needed. (Nevermind the fact that in Shanghai this week, a very modern thirteen-story building completely fell over, without the help of any tremors.)

Nonetheless, others believe that China fears these warren-like neighborhoods, which supposedly breed conspiracies of separatism and violence. As The New Dominion writes, the state regards social space as instruments of governmentality; what it cannot apprehend must be done away with, and by refashioning organic sprawl into regimented compartments, it can monitor and mold more obedient citizens. Thus, this project interrupts the social cohesion that ties the traditional Uyghur community together-- the narrow networks of transportation traversed by donkeys and scooters, webs of commerce conducted between small businesses and their customers, pockets of respite reserved for unveiled women. These connections will be severed, and when they meet again, they will have reconstituted Uyghur identity in a way that we may have never seen before... or what we have already witnessed in rebuilt cities like Korla, Turpan, and Urumqi.

Other websites obviously have given this issue far better thought than what I have repeated here. What the new order will bring is less clear because none of these sources mention what will physically rise from the rubble. As far as I know, no one has posted official plans yet, only mere descriptions. Besides taking the first two photographs above, my friend CCG, however, had the prescience to document this billboard while walking around Kashgar, which describes the building proposal for Chasa Street (恰萨街). Basically, in this plan, the city will straighten the major pathways within the block. The first story, comprised of neatly squared stores, will attempt to replace the current commercial district in the area. Now, people must pass through a labyrinth of homes in order to reach the inner core, but in the future, anyone will be able to access these shops easily from the street. The project aims to cover the entire first floor with a roof, which will eliminate the traditional sunlit courtyards of Uyghur houses. Instead, I guess that street lamps will light these alleyways, which is so very environmentally friendly. A grassy surface will top the first floor. Four outdoor staircases, one from each major road, will lead to this second level, which opens to four lawns and possibly a central fountain, all enclosed by five-story apartment buildings. Finally, the project offers eight different types of apartment layouts. This plan organizes social life vertically, instead of horizontally, which dramatically cuts down on daily interactions. To illustrate this point, I have this memory from college my freshman year, where I lived in a dormitory connected by hallways, while my friends lived in apartments connected by stairwells. The camaraderie felt in my dormitory versus theirs was palpable and infectious, and it is that same camaraderie that may disappear in Kashgar.

Translated from Uyghur:
Reconstruction Plan for Hazardous Housing in Kashgar's Old Town, Chasa Street
The red areas represent residential areas. Stores will occupy the entire first floor, while apartments will take up the other five floors above. Safety is guaranteed in these apartments. They are easily convertible, with many different layouts to choose from. The first floor is for stores. The office designed everything to maximize space and convenience for the owner. All the buildings will be surrounded by roads, which will facilitate commerce. Each store is furnished with two doors. Also, the buildings will be decorated in the style of traditional Uyghur architecture, in order to attract more visitors.
Current Layout:

Commercial Area, First Floor:

Overall Apartment Plan:

Individual Apartment Layout, Façade, and Aerial View:

Although thousands of riots go unreported every year in China, two Xinjiang-related incidents have cropped up in the news in the past ten days. Labor and business disputes, people in China worry, are threatening to destabilize social order amid the global financial crisis. First, on June 16, police in Urumqi fired warning shots to break up a crowd of sixty people protesting a construction project, fatally wounding a man. A Uyghur policeman, identified as Kudelet Kurban, accidentally triggered his gun, hitting Yao Yonghai, a supervisor with the Guanghui Real Estate Company in the neck. Yao, who had helped oversee the construction project in question, later died at the hospital. Like the suicide bombing in Urumqi last April, it seems that this incident stemmed from increasing anxieties about the struggling economy.

On June 26, however, ethnic clashes erupted between Han Chinese and Uyghur workers at a toy factory in Guangdong province in southeastern China, killing two people and injuring another 118. (See a blurry photograph of riot here.) Around 10 pm Friday night in Shaoguan city, some Han Chinese workers carrying metal pipes entered the Xuri Company dormitory and attacked their Uyghur colleagues, who struck back with knives. In May, the government had sent about six hundred migrant workers from Xinjiang as part of "Transfer Surplus Workforce Outwards" program to this toy factory. This program aims to give poor Uyghur workers job opportunities, while feeding east-coast sweatshops with cheap labor. Nevertheless, critics have leveled accusations that these factories employ under-aged migrants at a pittance; stories of abuse and rape by company bosses have also come to light in the Uyghur community. Moreover, they fear that the mass transfer of young Uyghurs across the country comes at the cost of eroding cultural identity in Xinjiang.

Initially a Xuri Toy Factory spokesman claimed that the different living habits between Han Chinese and Uyghurs had sparked the ethnic strife. More grisly details, however, are beginning to emerge. A string of robbery and rape cases hit the factory after the Uyghurs had arrived from Shufu County, Kashgar Prefecture in May, arousing suspicion among Han Chinese workers. Over the past two weeks, for instance, two charges of rape resulted in the temporary arrest and expulsion of some Uyghurs from the factory. On Friday night, a Han Chinese woman had entered a Uyghur dormitory where the residents tried to harass her. Her screams alerted her Han Chinese coworkers. Now, the internet is buzzing with allegations of "gang rape" at the toy factory. In the ensuing brawl of hundreds, people beat each other with a hundred fire extinguishers and opened four fire hydrants, leaving the dormitory floors covered in blood and glass shards, according to eyewitness reports. Two Uyghurs were killed, and another twenty people were seriously wounded. Four hundred armed police arrived at the scene, who managed to quell the mob by 4 am. The authorities then removed six hundred Uyghur workers from the premises by shuttling them by bus to other parts of the city for security reasons.

06/29/2009 Update: Police have arrested a former factory worker for spreading false rumors, which had led to the Shaoguan incident. Failing to find new work after quitting his job at Xuri Toys, this man posted the following message on a local website: "Six Xinjiang boys raped two innocent girls" at the factory. It remains unclear if the previous crimes at Xuri Toys in early June were also linked to internet gossip.

06/30/2009 Update: Two more "eyewitness" reports have surfaced along with many more cell-phone pictures on the internet, translated from Chinese by the blog ESNW. RFA has also published an in-depth report, quoting Chinese reactions on Twitter. I want to stress that the Shaoguan police largely have debunked the rumors posted on these sites; most of the Han Chinese discontent resulted from recent economic problems in the Guangdong area, intensified by unreasonable fears towards minorities.

In the past two weeks, President Obama has appealed to a hundred foreign nations to take in the seventeen Uyghurs imprisoned at Guantanamo, as fierce congressional opposition has prevented their resettlement in the United States. The primary candidates-- Australia, Canada, and Germany-- all have rejected these men, presumably due to economic repercussions and diplomatic threats from China. Moreover, returning the detainees to China would result in certain torture or execution, for they had trained with Islamic separatists in Afghanistan prior to their capture. Even so, the American courts determined that these men were not "enemy combatants" to the United States.

Today, the Associated Press has learned, the president is negotiating the transfer of these Uyghurs to the island nation of ... Palau. A former "trust territory" of the U.S. 500 miles east of the Philippines, Palau offers exotic, tropical scenery-- and not much else. Because it refuses to recognize the People's Republic of China, and instead maintains political relations with Taiwan, Palau represents an ideal location for the Uyghurs, diplomatically speaking. More than three quarters of its population, however, practices Christianity; there is hardly a Muslim community, let alone a Uyghur one, which means that the detainees will face considerable challenges to sustain their own language, religion, and culture if resettled there. In accepting these Uyghurs, the Palauan government will receive up to $200 million dollars from the U.S. for its development projects and national budget, although one senior member of the State Department denied that it is quid pro quo. If it were, it would have amounted to roughly $11.7 million dollars per prisoner!

Given the current financial downturn in the U.S., I am surprised to hear that the government still has enough funds to consider this generous deal with Palau. Do Americans fear that Uyghur detainees will resort to terrorism in their own backyards, so much as to part with millions of dollars in tax-payer money? The Uyghur community in Washington D.C. has already offered to house and care for these men for free. This agreement with Palau typifies how the American government tends to solve dilemmas of its own creation, in international relations, the environment, economics, and so on-- by thrusting those problems onto developing countries, some of whom are lucky enough to collect financial compensation. Rather, the state should take responsibility for Guantanamo, and confront the actual obstacle to this ordeal, that is the rampant fear of "dangerous" Muslims, both within the government and in the general public.

Currently Xinjiang is fighting a two-front battle against giant gerbils in the desert and thorny caterpillars in the grasslands. An overpopulation of gerbils is upsetting the delicate ecosystem of the Dzungar Desert in northern Xinjiang. These rodents, which reach up to sixteen inches in length, create large burrow systems that damage the fragile root systems of the few plants growing there. Six years ago, the same gerbils damaged eleven million acres in Xinjiang, or roughly an area the size of Switzerland. In order to combat the gerbil infestation, forestry officials have dispersed contraceptive pills by their burrows. These pills, disguised as bran feed, prevent conception in females as well as terminate existing pregnancies.

Meanwhile, a plague of voracious caterpillars has eaten through the pastures near Wusu, a city 200 miles west of Urumqi, photographed here. Packed at a density of up to 3000 worms per square yard, these green and black caterpillars "eat grass like they are rolling a carpet," according to one agricultural official. The damage to 20,000 acres of grassland (of which over half was totally ruined) caused by these pests have forced fifty herders, their families, and 20,000 heads of livestock from their fields. Unfortunately, local experts cannot identify the insects, which may have reproduced quickly due to the warm winter and wet spring. Although scientists are examining samples at Xinjiang Agricultural University, they might not be able to determine the particular species for months, especially if the caterpillars delay metamorphosis during the hot, dry summer. The regional government has sent five tons of insecticide and banned grazing in the affected areas for the next week.

In an effort to close Guantanamo Bay and relocate some 250 detainees, the Obama administration finally plans to accept seven of the seventeen Uyghurs who had been captured in Pakistan and imprisoned in Cuba for supposed terrorist activities. As these men will comprise the first group of the detainees released onto American soil, they may face challenges from various governmental organs and opposition from the public. Moreover, Xinjiang scholar James Millward argues that this act represents a bold affront to China from a diplomatic standpoint; that is, if China granted asylum to Al Qaeda trainees from Afghanistan, the U.S. would find it downright insulting.

Regardless, the American press remains unsure about how to present the identities of the Uyghur detainees. Are they unlucky hotheads or religious extremists? Either from inadvertent mistakes or from deliberate constructions, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times offer completely different stories stemming from the same incident-- one of the detainees had smashed a television not long after the Uyghurs on Guantanamo had received privileges to watch it.
From The New York Times in June 2007:

By June 2002, nearly all the Uighurs had been sent from military detention centers in Afghanistan to Guantánamo. They described their imprisonment as bewildering and traumatic, punctuated by moments of the absurd. After they were cleared for release, they were able to watch cartoons and Harry Potter movies, until Mr. Mamet smashed the television because of what he said was the guards' refusal to take him to a doctor. The set was replaced with one made in China, the men said dismissively; it broke after a week.

From The Los Angeles Times in April 2009:

But the TV privileges underscored potential difficulties to come, according to one current and one former U.S. official. Not long after being granted access to TV, some of the Uighurs were watching a soccer game. When a woman with bare arms was shown on the screen, one of the group grabbed the television and threw it to the ground, according to the officials. Since then, officials at Guantanamo have bolted down the TVs and shown pre-taped programs, editing out any images they thought Uighurs might find offensive.

So, who are these Uyghur detainees? Given the number of bare arms, legs, and midriffs I have seen in public, on television, and on the internet in Xinjiang, I doubt The Los Angeles Times version, but I could be wrong. Furthermore The New York Times anecdote depicts Guantanamo as negligent, a reputation that the guards surely did not want to confirm. A more complicated portrayal may come from the Uyghur detainees themselves. One of their lawyers recently released a heart-wrenching letter from Abu Bakkar Qassim sent to President Obama. The former prisoner belongs to the group of five Uyghurs who had resettled in Tirana, Albania three years ago. Qassim claims he is just a father, only trying to be a hero for his son whom he has not seen in eight years. In the absence of their children, Qassim and the others often fed the itinerant iguanas of their detention camp. I urge the journalists covering the Uyghur detainees to corroborate their sources; otherwise they may be perpetuating the harmful stereotypes that many Americans have of Muslims and, as a result, fostering a possibly hostile community for Uyghur resettlement.

The New York Times reports today that the Chinese Public Security Bureau is attempting to update 1.3 billion national identity cards with color photos and embedded microchips in an effort to improve government surveillance. In order to do so, the bureau must rely on an extensive database of names, which uses computers programmed to read only 32,252 of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters in use. This means that the bureau will enforce sixty million Chinese who bear more obscure ideograms in their names to change those characters to something more common.

This article reveals yet again the degree to which public (the state) and private (the citizenry) spheres overlap here, this time initially caused by the shortcomings of technology. I want to stress, however, that authorities often require citizens in Xinjiang, unlike other regions in China, to change their names regardless of some technological excuse.

Recently, I have been following this outrageous saga of a Uyghur woman named Arzigul Tursun who recently gave birth to a third child in Bulaq village, which borders Kazakhstan. The one-child policy here actually applies to Han Chinese, and allows ethnic minorities to have two or three children, depending on whether they live urban or rural areas. Tursan, six months pregnant, was thrown into legal ambiguity when the police realized that while she was from Bulaq, her husband was from nearby Yining city. Consequently, the local authorities-- who are also Uyghur or Kazakh (and the Radio Free Asia article fails to emphasize this fact)-- tried to force her to have an abortion. After the case caught the attention of two United States congressmen and their respective embassy, she was able to have her child.

In response to her treatment, Tursan wanted to call her baby Koresh, which means "struggle" in Uyghur. Nevertheless, at registration, the police obviously rejected this name. She instead opted for Umid, which means "hope." At first I believed that Tursan's naming difficulties represented a rare case, though giving a fascinating glimpse into the extent of police jurisdiction in this region. Actually it is quite a common occurrence. For instance, I heard about an Urumqi couple who had similar problems naming their child. Their desired name? Saddam.