The Chinese State and the Making of Uyghur Contention in Xinjiang

Since the early 1980s, Uyghur protests and violence have been on the rise, eventually giving rise to bloody incidents in the early twenty-first century that claimed hundreds of lives. This paper scrutinizes the ethnic identification and mobilization process of Uyghurs in the early post-Mao era and examines the role of the Chinese party-state in shaping this process. Drawing on rarely used Chinese-language sources - prison administration reports, prefectural trial records, internally circulated public security investigation reports, and county gazetteers - this paper reconstructs an unusually detailed picture of ethno-nationalist actors in post-Mao Xinjiang, revealing how the party-state ultimately determined not only which identity markers gained salience among Uyghur dissidents but also who became militants and what forms their contention took.

Three key patterns emerge. First, Islamic identity decisively prevailed over Uyghur ethnic identity and pan-Turkic identity as the dominant mobilizing frame - a majority of the twenty-eight documented secessionist organizations foregrounded their Muslim identity. Second, poorly educated rural peasants, not urban intellectuals or the middle class, formed the backbone of Uyghur militancy. Third, terrorist attacks overwhelmingly predominated over nonviolent protest or guerrilla warfare.

This study further demonstrates how authoritarian state practices did not merely respond to ethnic identity but actively reconstituted it. The collapse of Maoist ideology created a discursive vacuum in Uyghur communities, while state regulation of religious life inadvertently elevated Islam as the most credible framework for collective mobilization. Patronage employment and institutional surveillance neutralized educated urban Uyghurs, but left rural communities largely neglected. Repressive policing foreclosed nonviolent contention. The paper thus demonstrates how authoritarian state practices did not merely respond to ethnic identity but actively reconstituted it, playing a decisive role in shaping the specific contours of Uyghur mobilization.