China and the Uygur vs. United States and the Native Americans: Tow Governments’ Ethnic Policies

• In Event: 130 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 08. Racial and Ethnic Poltics/Policy

Abstract

In the past several years, several bombings, riots and other violent incidents have taken place in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in China. The most serious incident took place on July 5th, 2009 in the capital city Urumqi, referred to by the Chinese government as the “Xinjiang Riot”. In the wake of these riots, several theories appeared to explain why such ethnic conflicts occurred.
In this paper, I will examine the ethnic policies made by the Chinese government in the past 50 years, and try to find out what are the other reasons behind such violent ethnic conflicts in the past 20 years. In order to pin point main causes, I will use the policies of the U.S. government towards Native Americans as a mirror to illuminate the policies of the Chinese government towards the Uygur. Through this comparison, we can see what are the failures and successes of the U.S. government policies towards the Native Americans; and what kind of lessons can the Chinese government learn from the U.S. in terms of assimilation and native cultural preservation issues after colonization. The similarities and differences will be addressed and an evaluation will be made regarding what is the key issue in policy making dealing with indigenous populations; and what are the main issues of ethnic tension and conflicts.

Author

• Huiying Wei-Arthus, Weber State University