Guantanamo and the Uighurs: The Story of China’s Other Minority – Part I.

by Collin Spears – Visiting Fellow, Center for New Politics and Policy

Officially, the People’s Republic of China has 55 distinct ethnic minority groups, which total to about 100 million in number or 8.5 percent of the country’s population.  Most of these minorities live on the margins of China-proper, and do not have greater issues with the national government than the Han majority who live in similar situations.  Some groups, such as the ethnic Koreans (Chaoxian) and Manchu (Mǎnzú), are highly integrated into the Chinese mainstream.  However, the best known Chinese minority internationally, especially in the West, are the Tibetans (XīZàng).  They are widely understood to be an oppressed culturally distinct minority who wants independent or, at the very least, greater autonomy from Beijing.

This level of international awareness is astonishing; considering, the Tibet Autonomous Region (Xīzàng Zìzhìqū) is roughly 12% of China’s total land area, but Tibetans make up less than half of one percent of China’s population.  This makes them only the ninth largest minority group.  The Tibetan Issue is well known, primarily due to a superior global marketing campaign, which includes the venerable Dalai Lama and a host of celebrity Western activists, such as Richard Gere and Sting.  However, the Uighurs (also Uyghurs, Wéiwú’ěr) are a more numerous minority who have struggled just as long against the Han Chinese, whose homeland also makes up a larger territory, have never enjoyed the same international regard.  Perhaps, Turkic Muslims are not as appealing to the hearts and minds of the West as monks in flowing robes, despite the latter’s harsh feudalistic history.  Besides cultural bias, the Uighurs have likely failed at marketing, because unlike the Tibetans, they have no central leadership that is universally recognized by all the disparate factions.