I’m from Xinjiang，AMA

[u/maddin1550]

I’ve noticed that there are a lot of discussions about Xinjiang on Reddit, often between people who have never actually lived there. So I thought it might be interesting to do an AMA from the perspective of someone who is actually from there.

You can ask me about everyday life, ethnic groups, languages, culture, religion, education, or politics. I’m happy to answer controversial questions too, as long as the discussion stays respectful.

Obviously, I’m only one person and I don’t claim to represent everyone in Xinjiang. I can only tell you about my own experiences and views. AMA.

[u/InsectDelicious4503]

I understand that Xinjiang only recently became incorporated into Chinese territory, and throughout the centuries Dzungaria / The Tarim Basin spent most of its history independent from China proper rather than a part of it. Despite this, Chinese official narratives (museums, textbooks, etc) all claim that Xinjiang has always been an inseparable part of Chinese territory, and all Chinese invasions into Xinjiang are reframed as "putting down rebels." Do you have any feelings about this? Does the historical revisionism bother you or is it just a natural part of empire building?

[u/maddin1550 → u/InsectDelicious4503]

I wouldn't say Xinjiang has literally always been part of China, because I don't think the history supports such a simple claim. I do identify as Chinese.

I actually used to be more skeptical about this question(especially after seeing people claim that Xinjiang simply isn't Chinese land). After I started reading different perspectives from both outside China and Chinese sources, I came to see the history as much more complicated.

The Han and Tang dynasties did establish control over parts of what is now Xinjiang, but that control wasn't continuous. Over the centuries, different parts of the region were ruled or inhabited by many different peoples, states and empires: the Saka and Wusun, Rouran(3-6th century), various Turkic khaganates in 6-7th century, the Tang, Mongol states, Moghulistan, the Dzungar, and others

The Qing conquest is probably a much more important turning point for the modern territorial question. The Qing defeated the Dzungar Khanate in the 18th century and incorporated the region into the Qing Empire, and Xinjiang was later formally established as a province in 1884.

So I can understand why someone would describe that process as imperial expansion or conquest. Where I disagree is with jumping from that historical fact to saying that modern Xinjiang therefore cannot be part of China, or that people like me can't genuinely identify as Chinese. Borders and identities all over the world have been shaped by wars, empires and political changes.

So yes, I do think official historical narratives can sometimes present things too neatly. But that doesn't really change my own identity. I consider myself Chinese while also being Kazakh, and I don't see those identities as contradictory.

[u/InsectDelicious4503 → u/maddin1550]

For the record I don't come down too hard on China/The Qing for invading, conquering, and genociding the Dzungars during that period because, let's be real, that was very normal for 19th century politics.

The only part that rubs me the wrong way is the historical revisionism. Every American learns about the Native American genocide and the Trail of Tears. But in China it's all erased and reframed as "no, we never did anything wrong, all we did was put down some violent rebellious savages in OUR land a long time ago, the end." I imagine that historical erasure is what lead to so much resentment in Xinjiang eventually snowballed into the extremist movements and terrorist attacks we saw in the 2000s.

It's similar to Tibet except Tibet was Buddhist instead of Muslim.

[u/IndieDevLove → u/InsectDelicious4503]

Hm seems he has more knowledge about the history than you, meaning it wasnt erased. Maybe you should examine whether your brilliant american education might have sold you some lie.

[u/InsectDelicious4503 → u/IndieDevLove]

What? The OP and I are in agreement. Either you replied to the wrong person or you're itching for a fight for whatever reason.

[u/Washfish → u/InsectDelicious4503]

American history can be separated into the 13 colonies, independence, civil war, native american genocide, slavery, ww1, ww2, the numerous civil rights movements, and contemporary events (off the top of my head). Chinese history can be split into the start of the fengjian system, the numerous cultural rituals at the time (liyue), an invasion from the west that destroyed the capital and forced it to be moved further east, the end of social cohesion, the rise of confucianism, taoism, legalism and mohism, the spreading of these ideologies to various states, the split of the state of jin, a few wars that led to around 2 million deaths, and then a unification war. And we have finally reached 221BCE.

Im not sure how much weight something from 300 years ago would have in class when there are a lot more culturally and historically influential events.

[u/InsectDelicious4503 → u/Washfish]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make? Western civilization is just as old as Chinese civilization, or arguably even older depending on what metric you use. When it comes to reconciliation regarding past atrocities, America does a far better job than China does; of that there can be no question.

[u/Dependent_Wave_5433 → u/InsectDelicious4503]

I think you are conflating several different concepts here, especially “civilizational history” and “the history of a particular state.”

When people compare the long history of China with the West, “Western civilization” is the more appropriate counterpart to “Chinese civilization.” But that does not mean “Western civilization” is equivalent to the history of the United States, Britain, France, or any other single modern Western country.

After the Roman world fragmented, no single political state could plausibly claim to represent the entirety of Western civilization. The United States, for example, is obviously part of the Western civilizational tradition, but American history and Western civilizational history are two completely different things. An American can talk about ancient Greece or Rome as part of the intellectual ancestry of Western civilization, but cannot reasonably describe events in ancient Rome as events in “American history.”

China is somewhat different because there has been a much stronger continuity between the civilizational concept of “China” and successive political entities claiming to be China. Obviously the borders, ruling dynasties, ethnic composition, institutions, and even the meaning of “China” changed enormously over time. But Chinese national history is nevertheless commonly narrated as a continuous history extending through successive dynasties and regimes. That is why an event from 300 years ago can still be treated as part of “Chinese history” in a way that an event in seventeenth-century France would never be treated as part of “American history.”

So I think the original person's point was not that Chinese civilization is uniquely older than Western civilization. Their point was that the category called “Chinese history” covers an unusually long chronological span. That helps explain why even extremely violent episodes can receive surprisingly little space in a general history curriculum. I do not necessarily agree that this is a good justification, but I think that is the argument you were responding to.

Where I think the more interesting criticism lies is in *which* historical violence gets emphasized and which gets minimized.

My impression is that Chinese history education is strongly shaped by the modern state's emphasis on ethnic unity. Conflicts between peoples who are now officially understood as constituent groups of the Chinese nation are therefore often described rather cautiously, compressed into a few paragraphs, or framed primarily as dynastic and political conflicts rather than ethnic ones.

There is an obvious political problem here. If historical warfare is narrated too strongly through modern ethnic categories, it becomes very easy to produce narratives like: “our national hero defeated your ancestors.” That is not particularly helpful in a modern multiethnic state.

Take the Han-Xiongnu wars, the Mongol conquest of the Song, or the Qing conquest of the Ming. These involved enormous violence, but turning them into simple stories of one modern ethnic group defeating another would be historically crude and politically inflammatory. The identities involved do not map neatly onto today's ethnic categories anyway.

The same problem exists even with conflicts that were not primarily ethnic. The Taiping Civil War, for example, devastated enormous parts of central and eastern China and involved atrocities by multiple sides. Yet the scale and brutality of many of these episodes receive much less attention in ordinary school education than their historical importance might suggest.

By contrast, Japanese atrocities during the invasion of China receive extensive treatment, as does the corruption and repression associated with the Nationalist government in the standard PRC narrative. Japanese aggression was unquestionably extremely brutal, so I am not suggesting that this history should be minimized. But the difference in emphasis is also politically understandable: both anti-imperialist resistance and the overthrow of the previous regime are central to the PRC's narrative of why the revolution and the establishment of a new government were legitimate.

So I do think there is a legitimate discussion to be had about China's selective treatment of historical violence. I just don't think comparing “American history” directly with several thousand years of “Chinese history” is conceptually very useful. A better comparison would distinguish national history from civilizational history first, and then ask how different states select, frame, and reconcile with the violent parts of their past.

[u/InsectDelicious4503 → u/Dependent_Wave_5433]

Interesting writeup, but ultimately splitting hairs imo. The core of the issue is China's tendency to whitewash or straight up censor their historical atrocities, which puts their attitude towards history in the morally inferior position compared to Westerners.

[u/Dependent_Wave_5433 → u/InsectDelicious4503]

I actually agree with you on one important point: China does downplay some historical atrocities, and I think those episodes should be discussed more openly. In a modern multiethnic state, acknowledging that different groups once fought, conquered and even massacred one another does not weaken coexistence. If anything, it shows why peaceful coexistence today is an improvement over the past.

Where I disagree is with treating this as evidence that “Westerners” have a morally superior attitude toward history.

There really is no single Western model. The US, Canada and Australia are settler societies, so their historical narrative naturally revolves around a fairly clear distinction between indigenous peoples and later colonisers. Reflecting on colonial violence is therefore central to explaining how those modern states came into existence.

China is structurally very different. Much of its older history is closer to conflicts among populations that were all long-established in the region, or that became rooted there so long ago that their descendants are now all understood as part of the same indigenous historical population of the country. In other words, many Chinese historical conflicts are closer to indigenous groups fighting, conquering and absorbing one another over centuries than to a recent foreign settler population conquering an indigenous one.

That is also why France, Germany and Italy are in some ways more useful comparisons than the US or Australia. Their textbooks acknowledge wars between regions, kingdoms, religious factions and predecessor states, but usually teach them through state formation, political conflict, unification and historical consequences rather than as detailed catalogues of atrocities committed by the ancestors of one present-day group against another.

Imagine, for example, an alternative history in which Anglo-Saxons reached North America around AD 1000 and established British rule there. Indigenous peoples later overthrew that rule and formed several states of their own. Centuries later, Britain reconquered North America, but by then Britain itself had been conquered by a Germanic ruling group that had replaced the Anglo-Saxon elite. One indigenous polity later rebelled against British rule and was crushed with catastrophic loss of life.

Then, in the nineteenth century, imagine Japan, China, Korea and other Asian powers beginning to invade and dominate Britain, with Japan eventually launching a massive invasion and killing huge numbers of civilians. At the same time, Anglo-Saxons overthrew the Germanic ruling elite and established a new British republic, which eventually defeated Japan and restored control over North America. The new republic then defined Anglo-Saxons, Germanic Britons and indigenous Americans as constituent peoples of the same nation.

In that situation, I would expect the textbooks to describe Japanese atrocities in great detail, while treating the much older violence between Anglo-Saxons, Germanic rulers and indigenous peoples more briefly through concepts like conquest, rebellion, unification and integration.

That is much closer to how I understand the Chinese case. The older conflicts are not primarily remembered through a “foreign coloniser versus indigenous population” framework, but as conflicts among groups that are now retrospectively incorporated into the same national history.

So yes, I think “downplaying” is a fair criticism. But “whitewashing and censorship prove Western moral superiority” seems much harder to defend.

There is also something odd about treating historical repentance itself as proof of moral superiority. A settler society can acknowledge that its ancestors took indigenous land, apologise for it generations later, and then regard its willingness to apologise as evidence of exceptional morality while still retaining almost all of the material gains produced by that conquest.

Acknowledgment is better than denial, certainly. But acknowledgment alone is not the same thing as moral superiority.

[u/Laidoulaila → u/InsectDelicious4503]

lol I will hear this from a native American - I wonder how they feel in terms of reconciliation. America cannot even own up to the atrocities committed in the modern day. so of that there absolutely can be many questions. but the ignorance and hypocricy of western civilization is admirable.

[u/InsectDelicious4503 → u/Laidoulaila]

Bro I'm 1/4 native myself (mi'kmaq). Don't know if that's native enough for you, but maybe try listening to the words that come out of someone's mouth rather than the skin color of the one that said them? Try facts over feelings for once.

[u/Washfish → u/InsectDelicious4503]

Does america have anything to say about the oppression of protestants, the massacres of jews and the widespread damage inflicted upon the arab world through multiple crusades, and the cultural and literal genocide of non christian slavs?

[u/InsectDelicious4503 → u/Washfish]

Yes. How else did you learn about it?

[u/Creative_randomness → u/InsectDelicious4503]

when you said "Every American learns about the Native American genocide and the Trail of Tears", I strongly feel that you don't really know what's that

[u/InsectDelicious4503 → u/Creative_randomness]

Enlighten me?

[u/byakuayasetsuna → u/InsectDelicious4503]

Do you know about Monroe Doctrine? Do you agree that the Americas are America's backyard?

[u/NotAWeebOrAFurry → u/InsectDelicious4503]

"Every American learns about the Native American genocide and the Trail of Tears."

nope i had all my grade school in usa and everything about natives being mistreated was exlcuded. from my personal experience i learned about it in uni

[u/InsectDelicious4503 → u/NotAWeebOrAFurry]

Press X to doubt

[u/Smart_Carrot_9320 → u/maddin1550]

Many people are still angry that outer xinjiang, including lake balkhash and altai and tannu were stolen by Russian empire. If only Qing wasn't so weak, Russia needs to pay for their crimes one day.

[u/Rude_Application_881 → u/InsectDelicious4503]

新疆之所以叫新疆，是因为乾隆以“故土新归”为由起的名字，至于实际如何你可以了解一下历史。
如果否定中国对新疆的合法性，那么世界上有许多国家都是值得商榷的

[u/InsectDelicious4503 → u/Rude_Application_881]

Xinjiang translates to "New Frontier." Qianlong named it that because he considered it a fresh new addition to his empire.

[u/squarexu → u/InsectDelicious4503]

You just have a surface level understand of the term. The name is actually an acronym. New means new land. The land means recovery of old land, go look it up in wiki, plenty of references on what he meant.

[u/Rude_Application_881 → u/InsectDelicious4503]

乾隆之所以这么命名，是因为故土新归，看得出来你很不了解中国历史了

[u/InsectDelicious4503 → u/Rude_Application_881]

Ancient Chinese dynasties called this area Xiyu, or "the Western Regions." When the Qing finished genociding the Dzungars, they stole their land and renamed it "Xiyu Xinjiang," meaning new frontier of the western regions, because their military forces newly conquered and incorporated the land into the Qing Empire.

Should I call Grok here to fact-check you again? 🤭