Chapter 3 Central Asia, Xinjiang, and Tibet 101neighbors as well as travelers from distant lands who traversed their homeland,
and they in turn traveled far for their spiritual and economic sustenance.
James Millward (2007), the Silk Roads expert noted above, called Xinjiang
the “Eurasian Crossroads,” which for centuries incorporated cultural elements
from the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, China, and the Middle East. In his
survey of Xinjiang history, Millward notes that its centrality has made its his-
tory fraught with overlapping claims to contested territories, leaving layers of
conflicting names for regions, cities, and towns. Some separatists refer to
northwestern China as East Turkestan and resist the Qing Chinese label of
Xinjiang. Uighur sentiment toward Beijing and toward Han Chinese is diverse
but generally based on perceived injustice in the Chinese administration of the
region, from the highest levels of power to local authorities and to individual
Uighur–Han relations. Grievances range from cultural affronts like forbidding
Uighurs from choosing certain names for their children, to the adoption of Han
Chinese culture and language in the region, to physical violence against
Uighurs either by mobs or by the police, leading to imprisonment. Uighur
advocates assert that arbitrary imprisonment, censorship, political favoritism,
and draconian cultural codes make life difficult or unbearable.
Extremist violence with roots in Xinjiang has touched other regions of
China as well in recent years, from a suicidal car crash in Beijing’s Tiananmen
Uighur men at a market in Kashgar, Xinjiang Autonomous Region in the northwest of the
People’s Republic of China. In the 1990s and early 2000s, ethnic tension between Uighurs
and the Han Chinese ethnic majority group has occasionally erupted in violence due to
the cultural, economic, and political pressures of increased Han migration into the region.