Harmonizing Ethnicity at the Contested Borderlands

Abstract

China’s civilizational legacy of fluidity on its borderlands often generates contestation over cultural homogeneity, political congruence and political loyalty, leading to disciplining of the periphery. One such narrative is of Uyghurs of China’s north-western borderland. The uncritical appropriation of Western notions (nation-state, sovereignty and territoriality) accelerates incompatibility between the core and the periphery. Correspondingly, the State employs nationalistic politics and harmonization strategies to construct a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural narrative with a culturally indigenous but politically subservient and loyal population. This chapter explores how China, through its harmonizing strategies, defines Uyghur-ness minus Arab-influenced Islamic symbolism as aspirational. The Chinese intention to define what Uyghur-ness should be arguably grappling with ethnic versus extremist binary of Islam in China. Moreover, it leads to de-ethnicizing Uyghurs eschewing Islam’s polylithic nature within China.