ChinaFile Recommends
01.12.15China Has Just Banned the Burqa in Its Biggest Muslim City
Quartz
Moves like these are likely to further alienate an already disenchanted minority group—the Uighurs, who feel their culture and economy is being overrun by Han Chinese.
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09.18.14Uighur Scholar Ilham Tohti Goes on Trial in China on Separatist Charges
New York Times
A conviction of Ilham Tohti for separatism could result in the death penalty, but in his case life imprisonment is likely to be the maximum punishment because of the specific charges.
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08.19.14China Said to Deploy Drones After Unrest in Xinjiang
New York Times
Three days after an eruption of violence in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang this summer left nearly 100 people dead, the region’s “antiterrorist command” asked the country’s biggest space and defense contractor for help.
Media
08.07.14
Beards and Muslim Headscarves Banned From Buses In One Xinjiang City
A city in China’s remote western Xinjiang region has temporarily banned men with beards and women with Muslim headscarves from taking public buses. The extreme security measure—to be implemented for the duration of a sports competition slated to...
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07.02.14China Bans Xinjiang Officials From Observing Ramadan Fast
BBC
Activists have accused Beijing of exaggerating the threat from Uighur separatists to justify a crackdown on the Uighurs’ religious and cultural freedoms.
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01.25.14Ilham Tohti’s Arrest Demonstrates China’s Renewed Hard Line on Xinjiang
Lowy Institute Interpreter
Economist Tohti was reportedly arrested after 30 police raided his apartment, confiscating documents, books and hard drives. He is most likely to be charged with ‘endangering state security,’ which carries heavy penalties including life imprisonment.
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01.18.14China’s Detention of Uighur Professor Ilham Tohti Worries U.S.
Los Angeles Times
The U.S. government and human rights activists are voicing concern about the detention of a professor who has been an outspoken advocate for China’s Uighur minority group.
Postcard
09.25.13
The Strangers
In the winter of 2009, I was spending my weekends in the northeast Chinese city of Tangshan, and eating most of my food from the far-western province of Xinjiang. Like many minorities, the Uighur, the native people of Xinjiang, have made their chief...
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05.02.13China Criticizes U.S. For Questioning Xinjiang Clash
Associated Press
In the wake of Tuesday’s violence, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell called for a thorough and transparent investigation and expressed concern over discrimination against Uighurs and the practice of Islam.
The NYRB China Archive
04.25.13China’s Sufis: The Shrines Behind the Dunes
from New York Review of Books
Lisa Ross’s luminous photographs are not our usual images of Xinjiang. One of China’s most turbulent areas, the huge autonomous region in the country’s northwest was brought under permanent Chinese control only in the mid-twentieth century...
Features
09.18.12
A Mosque of Their Own
The women of Sangpo know well they are the guardians of a 300-year-old custom that sets them apart in Islam and they are increasingly mindful that economic development could be that tradition’s undoing.Sangpo, a dusty hamlet about two hours from the...
Video
09.18.12
Last Call to Prayer
China’s Hui Muslims are unique in many respects. The country’s second-largest ethnic minority share linguistic and cultural ties with the majority in China that have allowed them to practice their religion with less interference and fewer...
Sinica Podcast
09.30.11
The Shanghai Train Accident
from Sinica Podcast
At least 284 people were injured on Tuesday when a train in the Shanghai metro smashed into another which had stalled on the tracks. The accident, which threw Shanghai into disarray, came only two months after another near-disastrous incident on the...