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CHINA’S OFFICIAL NATIONALISM IN RESPONSE TO UYGHUR NATIONALISM IN XINJIANG: A QUEST FOR “HOMOGENEOUS, EMPTY TIME” Md. Abdul Mannan1 Md. Ataur Rahman Talukder2 Abstract This article examines the current phase of China’s response to Uyghur nationalism in its Xinjiang province. A massive and unprecedented level of China’s cultural offensive on the distinctness of the Uyghurs is underway. The central question that this article asks is: What is the motive that explains this intensive Chinese cultural offensive on Uyghur vernacular nationalism? The article claims that the current Chinese policies and actions against Uyghur nationalism fulfils the requirement of its official nationalism, in its bid to construct or reconstruct a homogeneous and unitary Chinese nation to a certain point—namely, “homogeneous, empty time”—for the stability and territorial integrity of the Chinese state. “Homogeneous, empty” time refers to a circumstance where a state achieves homogeneity of the nation that it represents to such an extent that the extent of homogeneity becomes an eternal continuity; and time becomes empty, because no changes occur with the passage of time after eternal homogeneity of the nation is achieved. Hence this article claims that the current phase of China’s cultural offensive fulfils the requirement of its official nationalism which, in turn, seeks to assimilate or homogenise the Uyghurs to such an extent where the Uyghurs will no more be Uyghurs but Chinese, helping China achieve a “homogeneous, empty time, in its nationalist imagination. Keywords: Uyghur, official nationalism, ―homogeneous, empty time‖, re-education, Sinicization Introduction China‘s response to Uyghur nationalism in its Xinjiang province has recently drawn much international attention. The Uyghurs, who are ethnically Turkic and Muslim by 1 Md. Abdul Mannan, PhD, Professor, Department of International Relations, University of Dhaka. E-mail : [email protected] 2 Md. Ataur Rahman Talukder, Lecturer, Department of International Relations, Bangladesh University of Professionals, Dhaka. E-mail: [email protected] Social Science Review [The Dhaka University Studies, Part-D], Vol. 37, No. 1, June 2020 2 Mannan and Talukder religion, believe that they are different from the mainstream Chinese people — the Han Chinese — and therefore they deserve an independent state. Over the years, this aspiration of the Uyghurs has stood in sharp contrast to China‘s strong nationalist sensitivity and territorial integrity and elicited different types of responses (Bovingdon, 2010). In 1949, for example, the Uyghurs constituted 75 per cent of Xinjiang‘s total population, with the Hans accounting for just 7 per cent. Today, although the Uyghurs are still numerically the dominant group, they make 46 per cent of the region‘s population while the Hans accounts for at least 40 per cent (Liu, 2017, p.269). Thanks to China‘s massive state-sponsored ―in-migration‖ of the Hans in Xinjiang since the 1950s, it has caused the loss of overwhelming numerical superiority of the Uyghurs in the region in question (Gladney, 1998). The focus of analysis of this article, however, is the current and new phase of China‘s response to Uyghur nationalism. The new phase is clearly identifiable since the beginning of the reign of President Xi Jinping in 2013. A massive and unprecedented level of cultural offensive on the distinctness of the Uyghurs is underway. This includes, for example, the drive to eliminate Uyghur language from school premises and replace that with the standardised Mandarin Chinese, namely, Putonghua. Chinese adults are being detained in political re-education camps where they undergo political indoctrination, such that it empties their minds from Uyghurness and converts them to ―pure‖ Chinese. Uyghur children face similar fate. An ―intergeneration separation‖ of the Uyghur community as a whole is in the making, as children are reportedly taken care of and re-educated by state-run boarding schools or special children centres. There, they are immersed in Chinese language education, alongside political indoctrination, and psychological modification. A parallel offensive on the Muslim root of Uyghurs runs as well. The offensive seeks to ―sinicize‖ Islam. Uyghur Muslims are banned from performing religious activities and rituals and are forced to do what is forbidden in Islam. This campaign seeks to supplant religious faiths of the Uyghur Muslims with the ideological faith of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC). Some commentators term these Chinese actions as China‘s ―cultural genocide‖ on the Uyghurs (Withnall, 2019; Finnegan, 2020). The intensities of these Chinese action since the beginning of Xi Jinping‘s reign is just unprecedented. The central question that this article asks is: What is the motive that explains this intensive Chinese cultural offensive on Uyghur vernacular nationalism? In examining this question, the article asserts that the current Chinese policies and actions against China‘s Official Nationalism in Response to Uyghur Nationalism in Xinjiang 3 Uyghur nationalism fulfils the requirement of its official nationalism, in its bid to construct or reconstruct a homogeneous and unitary Chinese nation to a certain point—namely, ―homogeneous, empty time‖—for the stability and territorial integrity of the Chinese state. ―Homogeneous, empty time‖ refers to a circumstance where a state achieves homogeneity of the nation that it represents to such an extent that the extent of homogeneity becomes an eternal continuity; and time becomes empty, because no changes occur with the passage of time after eternal homogeneity of the nation is achieved. Hence this article claims the current phase of China‘s cultural offensive fulfils the requirement of its official nationalism; and official nationalism, in turn, is an instrument of homogenizing the Uyghurs to such an extent where the Uyghurs will no more be Uyghurs but Chinese, helping China reach a ―homogeneous, empty time‖ in the construction of a homogeneous Chinese nation. The article is divided into three sections. The first section offers the analytical framework. The section defines the concepts of ―official nationalism‖ and ―homogeneous, empty time‖ and shows that official nationalism fulfils the requirement of achieving the goal of ―homogeneous, empty time‖ with regard to creation of a homogeneous nation. The second section presents a discussion on the vernacular Uyghur nationalism in China‘s Xinjiang province. The final section analyses the central argument of the article. The Chinese government perceives Uyghur nationalism as threatening to an imagined and unitary Chinese nation, and to the territorial integrity of the Chinese state. Thus, as the final section shows, China‘s official nationalism embeds an offensive cultural policy that seeks to erase the Uyghurness of the Uyghurs and convert them to ―pure‖ Chinese; and such aggressive policy is aimed at achieving the goal of ―homogeneous, empty time‖—i.e. a point of time or situation when there would be no existence of the elements of Uyghur nationalism but only official Chinese nationalism. Analytical Framework: The Interplay of “Homogeneous, Empty Time” ’and “Official Nationalism” This section presents an explanation of the concept of ―homogeneous, empty time‖ as a precursor to framing how China seeks to achieve the goal of ―homogeneous, empty time‖ on the Uyghur question. Any explanation of the concept of ―homogeneous, empty time‖ cannot be divorced from the concept of ―official nationalism‖, because conceptually it is through official nationalism a state enters into homogeneous empty time in its nationalist imagination. 4 Mannan and Talukder The term ―homogeneous, empty time‖ was originally coined by German Philosopher Walter Benjamin (1940). Benjamin contradicts traditional historicism‘s conception of time as a linear continuity. He sees that time is non-linear while asserting that the progression of ―human race in history is not to be separated from the concept of its progression through a homogenous and empty time‖ (Benjamin, 1940). A concise and precise definition of ―homogeneous, empty time‖ can be captured from one of the works on Benjamin (1940) by a political theorist: In homogeneous empty time, every moment of time is equivalent and empty. It is homogeneous because one ―day‖ or ―minute‖ or ―hour‖ is treated as equivalent to any other. It is empty because, on the whole, it lacks special moments which give it meaning (in contrast to cyclical, ritual, and biological time). It simply passes, and people fill it with contingent contents. Homogeneous empty time passes in an eternal present which remains fundamentally the same. The new reproduces the old in a series of structurally similar moments. This experience of time arises from the constant replacement and renewal of commodities. People experience time this way because of its technological and social underpinnings in the capitalist way of life (McLaverty-Robinson, 2013). The application of the concept of ―homogeneous, empty time‖ in the study of nation and nationalism is credited to Benedict Anderson (1983), the author of Imagined Communities. Nation, as Anderson defines, is an imagined community: ―It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion‖ (1983, p.6). The fellow feeling among the members of the imagined community becomes an eternal phenomenon

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