Wen Yang: Interpreting Xinjiang, China with English readers

Wen Yang: Interpreting Xinjiang, China with English readers The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, an area in northwest China, is about 7 times the size of the United Kingdom, or 6 times the size of New Zealand, or 2...

Wen Yang: Interpret China's Xinjiang with English readers The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a border area in northwest China that is about the size of seven United Kingdom, or six New Zealand, or two New South Wales. Because of its remote location and relatively backward economy, it is difficult for people to think of it directly when talking about China. So many people who set foot on this land for the first time can’t help but marvel at how big China is: there is such a large corner that is often forgotten! It has been forgotten mainly because it has long been in the shadow of China's economic miracle. It is far away from the coastline and divided by three huge mountains. It has very poor climate conditions and does not have the geographical advantage to be the first to develop and achieve take-off. But in another consideration, namely, China's national security strategy, it receives more attention than any other region. Open the map and you will see that Xinjiang has a 5,600-kilometer-long border with eight countries: Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Among the more than 21 million people living in Xinjiang, a total of 55 different ethnic groups live together, including ethnic groups from these neighboring countries. And there are 8 religions coexisting together, including Islam, Christianity, Orthodox Christianity and other religions that are popular in Central Asian countries. How to achieve peace and stability, economic development and improvement of people's livelihood in such a vast border area with multi-ethnic coexistence, multi-religion, long borders and borders with many foreign countries is a strategic issue of rare difficulty not only for the Chinese government, but also for the world. Although historically speaking, the effective management of this land by the Chinese central government can be traced back to the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty more than 100 years ago, the true national rule in the sense of modern national sovereignty and territorial integrity began after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. After the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, nearly 200,000 people from the Chinese People's Liberation Army who entered Xinjiang were collectively transferred to the Xinjiang Military Region and formed the Xinjiang Military Region Production and Construction Corps. They reclaimed farmland on the Gobi desert sands on the edge of the desert and carried out land reclamation and border garrison. Without seeing it with one's own eyes, it is difficult for outsiders to imagine what kind of "reclamation" and "construction" this is. Reclamation is not about competing for land with local aborigines, but about converting land into fields on uninhabited stone beaches, starting with the most primitive farming. The construction did not receive any material or technical support from other places. Instead, it was completely built from scratch by the military reclamation warriors. The so-called "home" where we settle down is a hole dug in the ground. The "wife" is a woman assigned to everyone by the organization from other places. The clothes are old military uniforms with patches on them, and the food is the most basic food for survival. The Chinese soldiers who had just ended the war continued to shift into production in a war-like manner, laying the initial foundation for subsequent construction. This is a story that can only appear in China's border areas. If it corresponds to the understanding of English readers, it is like the settlers who came to the New World. They did not compete with the indigenous people for the best land, but chose remote wastelands that were not cultivated by anyone. Instead of relying on the wealth obtained from the local area, they started from scratch through hard work. They built new homes and new cities in the mutually beneficial cooperation of peaceful coexistence and mutual promotion with all the indigenous people. Today's Xinjiang has been modernized everywhere. The scenes of land reclamation and border garrison in those days can only be seen in museums and heritage parks. However, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, an organizational form with Chinese characteristics, still continues. A city, that is, a division, integrates division and city, and integrates government and enterprises. The two concepts of liberal democracy can be used to interpret the history of Western frontier development, because conquest and plunder are also freedoms. But in the history of China's frontier development, there were only two concepts: production and construction. This was true in the past and remains true today.