Chapter 1 analyses how historical contexts of empire, nationalism, and ethnic relations shape identity and security narratives in contemporary nation-building practices in Xinjiang. The chapter shows that China historically understood Xinjiang through imperial geopolitical prisms, which ambivalently shifted towards cultural nationalism and included Uyghur identity as a security concern. The first section builds on nationalism literature and analyses Chinese nation-building as historically contingent processes of cultural governance of relations between Han and non-Han on the frontier. It shows how mid-twentieth century articulation of territorially bounded nationhood matter co-exists with imperial, pre-modern framings of difference between civilisation and barbarians. The second section uses official Chinese sources and secondary literature on Xinjiang history to analyse how Xinjiang’s position shifted from imperial vassal to a central component in struggles to build a modern, multi-ethnic Chinese national identity. The final section uses official Chinese sources and secondary literature on ethnic relations to explore how nation-building conceptualises and organises ethnicity. Chinese nation-building produces ethnic boundaries in Xinjiang by articulating and securitising hierarchical relations between Han majority and ethnic minorities. The chapter shows how Xinjiang’s ambivalent inclusion as an exotic frontier and indivisible component of a territorial state reflects and produces tensions in China’s national narratives.

Chapter 5 analyses the inclusion of Uyghurs in public performances of ethnic unity (minzu tuanjie 民族团结) and celebrations of traditional ethnic festivals of Han (Zhongqiu jie 中秋节) and Uyghurs (Roza Heyti روزاھېيىت). The first section analyses inclusion of Uyghurs through performances of minzu tuanjie in songs and political slogans that saturated Xinjiang’s public discourse following the 2009 violence. Ethnic inclusion in these texts is mutually constituted against existential threats of Uyghur identities to China. The second section analyses the hierarchical relationship between nation and ethnicity and between Han and Uyghurs in representations of different traditional festivals. Minority festivals are officially framed as private and ethnic while majority Han festivals are celebrated as nationally significant events for all minzu. Minzu tuanjie is ethnocentric and hierarchical because it offers inclusion contingent upon identification with Hanzu as superior and Uyghur identity as marginal. This chapter shows how the inclusion offered by nation-building in Xinjiang produces and reproduces Uyghur marginality and exclusion in contemporary China. Inclusion of Uyghurs in Zhonghua Minzu demands identification with hierarchical boundaries between Hanzu and shaoshu minzu, with the Han nucleus guiding the direction of history towards 'fusion' and disappearance of Uyghur identity.

Chapter 4 analyses how official identity and security discourses were performed in public politics following the July 2009 violence. This chapter uses participant-observations and discourse analysis of everyday security practices and political slogans to examine how hierarchical ethnic boundaries were performed in everyday politics and explanations of the violence. The first section shows how violence in Shaoguan against Uyghurs, which sparked the July 2009 violence, was officially designated an 'ordinary public order incident', unrelated to security. However, failure to punish perpetrators produced widespread Uyghur insecurity. The second section shows how subsequent violence by Uyghurs in July 2009 was framed as an existential identity-security threat. Violent ‘revenge’ by Han was conversely framed as 'operations' by 'comrades' for national security. The binarised, ethnocentric meanings attributed to violence ethnicise daily security practices of surveillance and patrols that target Uyghurs and produce insecurity. The final section shows how small-scale syringe attacks in July’s aftermath were officially represented as continuing existential threats. This narrative heightened Han insecurity, sparking protests for increased security and violence against Uyghurs. The chapter shows that the party-state exacerbates insecurity by securitising ethnocentric narratives of a Han-led nation under threat, excluding Uyghurs as sources of insecurity and activating ethnic stereotypes amongst Han.

Chapter 6 uses detailed, semi-structured interviews with Han and Uyghurs in Ürümchi on tuanjie narratives to analyse the effects of nation-building. The first section analyses how Uyghurs and getihu Han dismiss tuanjie as propaganda but deploy it to re-perform minzu as fixed identity boundaries. Han intellectuals conceptualised Zhonghua Minzu through ethnocentric culturalism that includes Xinjiang as a frontier. The second section explores how Han deploy official narratives of Xinjiang’s 'liberation', defining Hanzu through lineage and language. Han nationalists re-perform officially articulated boundaries between ‘Inner-China’ and ‘frontier’ as timeless while culturalists framed Han ethno-nationalists as impediments to nation-building. Nation-building narratives are challenged by different Han identities arguing for more or less inclusion of non-Han. The final section shows how Uyghurs re-perform ethnic boundaries demarcated by Chinese nation-building, articulating their identity as a Turkic group living in a Hanzu nation. Uyghurs refer to their inferiority in official discourse and daily experiences of ethnic discrimination to locate their Turkic and Islamic identities outside Zhonghua Minzu. The chapter shows that nation-building in Xinjiang is failing because its model of inclusion runs counter to daily experiences of ethnic boundaries and perpetuates tensions between Xinjiang’s inclusion as Chinese territory and cultural exclusion as a frontier.

Since the 2008 global financial crisis and US military interventions in the Middle East, China’s leaders consider themselves in an unparalleled strategic ‘window of opportunity’ under ‘new conditions’ of Western decline that could enable transformation of world order for centuries. China’s Leading public intellectuals draw attention to Western failures combined with China’s double-digit growth figures to argue the world has entered a ‘post-American century’. These politically influential thinkers believe China will be a ‘new type of superpower’ that rules by consent and attraction instead of ‘Western’ coercion and assimilation (Hu & Hu, ).* This optimism amongst Chinese elites and scholars has driven public debate in popular books and online commentary, culminating in Xi Jinping’s signature slogan of the ‘China Dream’ of the Great Revival (weida fuxing 伟大复兴) to become a ‘strong and prosperous nation’ (fuqiang daguo 富强大国) again. However, this optimism conceals deep pessimism at the heart of these debates that identity and insecurity on China’s ethnic peripheries could derail the Great Revival. While the 2008 Beijing Olympics slogan, ‘one-world-one-dream’, circulated across official media, riots and inter-ethnic violence exploded in Lhasa, Tibet. The 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was subsequently overshadowed by ethnically targeted violence between Turkic-speaking Muslim Uyghurs and the Han ethnic majority. The events of July 2009 claimed at least 197 lives in Ürümchi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) (Xinhua, ). The violence sparked broad debates amongst China’s ethnic policy thinkers about the relationship between identity and national security. Wang Yang, Guangdong Party Committee Secretary, now head of the Central Committee’s Xinjiang Work Group, suggested that China must re-adjust its ethnic minority policies ‘or there will be further difficulties’ (Smith Finley, , p.78). This book analyses the social and political dynamics in Xinjiang that led to the turning point of 2009, culminating in a rethink of identity and security in China and ethnic policy shifts towards ‘fusion’ (jiaorong 交融).

My argument is rooted in an understanding of politics and life as tragedy, an argumentI elaborate to show its relevance to foreign policy and policymaking.

Distinguishes “is” from “ought” questions and offers a novel defense of ethics based on the likelihood that policies in accord with generally accepted eithical principles are more likely to suceed.

The final chapter uses semi-structured interviews with Han and Uyghurs in Ürümchi to analyse their responses to official security narratives. The first section analyses how Han use official discourses of danger to securitise their own identities, defined through ethnicity, lineage, and language. Working-class and getihu Han deployed party-state discourses to articulate China as an ethnic Han nation under threat from Turkic-Islamic Uyghurs. Han intellectuals emphasise Uyghur inclusion in Chinese civilisation represents the real Zhonghua Minzu but without addressing the Han-centrism of this inclusion. The second section analyses how Uyghurs securitise identities and articulate China as an existential threat by re-performing official and unofficial Chinese narratives on Uyghur-ness. Uyghurs invert party-state discourses, articulating Han as part of a state-led cultural assimilation project through demographic and linguistic transformation. The Han-Uyghur ethnic boundary is redirected inwards between Uyghurs educated in Uyghur (minkaomin 民考民) and those ‘Sinicised’ by Mandarin-medium education (minkaohan 民考汉). Han and Uyghurs use tensions between inclusion and exclusion in official Zhonghua Minzu narratives to understand daily experiences of ethnic boundaries and articulate competing identity-security narratives. The chapter shows the party-state’s attempt to increase security by identifying China’s friends and eliminating enemies produces perpetual insecurity.