Sunday, September 28, 2008

uighurs

been readin a bunch of articles about xinjiang--a large sparsely populated area of western china. the region, also known as 'east turkestan'--a term historically used by westerners today used by separatists--is mostly populated by uighurs.

i'm amazed that there are so many places and cultures that i've never even heard about.

however, the point of this short thought was to articulate one question:

when the soviet union fell, it broke up into at least 14 independent states (this is only including the former soviet republics, not kosovo and other states that may have further split since 1991).

in short, across this vast geographical region, there lived dozens of large ethnic groups without majority rule. perhaps, the ussr designated local loyalists and soviet faithfuls as the rulers, but in reality majority ethnic groups were under minority russian rule. when the ussr collapsed, majority ruled states emerged throughout the soviet union's former empire. (most formed have since struggled with their own form of nepotistic authoritarian rule)

so, now i think about china. there are several large ethnic groups that are under han-minority rule. perhaps uighur locals who sympathize with the prc get some power, but these ethnic groups are still under han-minority rule. there are separatist movements in xinjiang and tibet--just to name a couple. i'm sure there are large ethnic groups that seek greater autonomy. and i'm sure that there are ethnic groups that in the case of a prc collapse would desire new ethnic-majority states to form.

so, 1. what does the future of the world look like? 2. what does the future of the world look like if states become political organizations of ethnic majority rule? what if the empires of the world receded, and a new world system of ethnic-states emerged? 4. how important is ethnicity? what does it mean in different places, in different times? what does it mean for uighurs in china and what does it mean for kosovars in albania?

for more background