Language, Education and Uyghur Identity in Urban Xinjiang

Rising ethnic consciousness among the Uyghurs in contemporary Xinjiang is a major area of research due to heightened Uyghur-Han relations and ethnic conflicts in the region. As the regional lingua franca, the Uyghur language long underpinned Uyghur national identity in Xinjiang. However, since the ‘bilingual education’ (shuangyu jiaoyu) policy was introduced in 2002, Chinese has been rapidly institutionalised as the sole medium of instruction in the region’s higher, secondary and now primary institutes of education. As a result, minkaohan studies – the study of bilingual and indeed multi-lingual Uyghur urban youth – has emerged as a major new research trend.

This book considers ways in which Uyghur urban youth identities began to evolve in response to the imposition of ‘bilingual education’. In particular, it attempts to gauge where individuals – both minkaohan and minkaomin (Uyghurs educated in the mother tongue) - locate themselves on the various spectra of modernisation, sinicisation, re-traditionalisation and globalisation.

As a study of ethnicity in China this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Chinese culture and society, Asian ethnicity, cultural anthropology, sociolinguistics and Asian education.

Joanne Finley Smith is Lecturer in the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle University, UK.

Xiaowei Zang is Professor and Dean of the College of Arts and Liberal Sciences at the City University of Hong Kong.