Xinjiang’s location naturally makes it a focal point of the Silk Road (hereafter SR). But considering that for the first 60 years (circa 1920–1980) of Chinese archaeology—that is, over half of its development—the SR was rarely mentioned in scientific literature, the impact it has had on archaeological studies of Xinjiang remains unclear and poorly understood. With the eponymous Belt and Road Initiative (hereafter BRI) now a decade old and the field of Xinjiang archaeology approaching its centennial, this has become a critical subject of enquiry.

In this article, I recount the history of publication and discourse in Xinjiang, followed by a discussion of recent developments in archaeological practice instigated by the BRI. I contend that consistently using the SR to conceptualize the material record of Xinjiang, a prevalent approach in Eurasian scholarship, is based on flawed and unscientific presuppositions. Even in Chinese discourse today, the SR concept has become secondary to the state objective of building scientific and cultural infrastructure that is Chinese in method and approach, the goal of which is to amplify ‘discourse power’. Although the SR has served as a major banner for unifying studies on cross-cultural contact in Eurasian history, it is laden with complex layers of archaeological history intertwined with a century-old chauvinistic geopolitics that still reverberate globally today. As the scientific role of the SR becomes increasingly muddled, research referencing the SR must navigate the term’s biased presentist connotations to unveil the pertinent historical contexts, or consider alternative frameworks that resist totalizing narratives.

Since 2016 over one million Chinese civil servants have been ordered to spend a series of weeks visiting assigned Turkic Muslim “relatives.” These mostly Han urbanites have been tasked with instructing Uyghur and Kazakh farmers in political ideology and subjecting them to tests of Chinese nationalism and Han cultural assimilation. When they occupy the homes of their Turkic “relatives” they assess whether or not they should be sent into the mass “reeducation” camp system. Drawing on ethnographic field research, interviews and state documents, this essay argues that the systematic normalization of state-directed violent paternalism has produced a new kind of banality in Turkic minority experiences of unfreedom.

In the social, historical, and political context of Xi Jinping’s China, particular forms of racialization and racial capitalism have emerged in Altay Prefecture, the homeland of ethnic Kazakhs on China’s northwest border. This study examines the husbandry industry in Altay Prefecture to elucidate how Xi’s China has built a mode of racial capitalism through the management of Kazakh land, ethnicity, and culture. Within the framework of a case study, I employ document collection and participant observation methods to gather data that are then interpreted through critical policy analysis. The research shows that Kazakhs have been racialized based on their mobile pastoral traditions, enslaved in the “debt economy,” and exploited through husbandry policies and programs. The particular ways in which husbandry has been restructured and assimilated into Chinese industrial production chains exploit and reproduce the Kazakh-Han hierarchy and segregation. This close look at racial capitalism in Altay sheds light on the operations of Xi’s ecological civilization and war on poverty policies in an ethnic minority border region and discusses how they align with the broader geopolitics of the Belt and Road Initiative in Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

Ferula sinkiangensis K.M. Shen is a threatened medicinal plant endemic to Xinjiang, China, with a small population size and a narrow distribution range. We assessed the status of this species with respect to its population age structure, the level of threat and extinction risk. Only one population remains, in Yining County, Xinjiang. We conducted field surveys of the population in 2022 and 2023, counting 2,033 and 1,515 individuals, respectively, in 144 sample quadrats. We assessed the age structure of the population by counting the number of basal leaves of each individual. The frequency distribution had an inverted J-shape, indicative of a relatively stable age structure. However, the number of mature individuals was small, raising concerns about the risk of genetic drift and inbreeding. This species is also threatened by habitat destruction and inappropriate collection practices. We recommend that F. sinkiangensis is categorized as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List on the basis of criteria B2ab(iii), C2a(i) and D.

In recent decades, as part of the efforts of the Chinese government first to integrate and, more recently, to forcibly assimilate the Uyghur population into China’s mainstream culture and society, the Uyghur language has been marginalized and repressed to an unprecedented extent. The academic literature on Xinjiang’s language policy has repeatedly acknowledged that this repression is a major source of concern and discontent among many Uyghurs. However, to date, little has been written about the public response of Uyghurs to this policy and their open efforts to challenge it. In particular, with very few exceptions, little is known about the public response of Uyghur writers and artists. In this article I analyse a large corpus of Uyghur poems and songs that engaged openly with the Uyghur language crisis and were published and disseminated in the Uyghur public sphere between the mid-1990s and the mid-2010s. Unlike some studies that try to assess the condition of certain languages at a certain point in time through objective methodologies, these literary and artistic works provide an insider view on how the Uyghur cultural elite and many other Uyghurs experienced the repression and loss of their native language, and also, how they struggled against this repression. In the article I examine the diverse sentiments, perceptions, and discourses that these literary and artistic expressions communicate, and the different strategies that the Uyghurs used to struggle against the language policy and its consequences. I also explore what these works tell us about the development of Xinjiang’s language policy over time, the linguistic reality in the region, and the impact that the language policy has had on Uyghur society. Finally, the article also investigates the broad political meanings of these works and speculates on the link between them and the efforts of the Chinese government to further marginalize the Uyghur language.

Industrial parks in north-west China occupy a liminal space between labour camps and private industry. Drawing on worker interviews, government documents, industry materials and images this article shows that for-profit public-private industrial parks have been built as part of a “camp fix” mechanism centred on detaining and “re-educating” Uyghurs and Kazakhs at the periphery of the nation. It argues that these industrial parks concentrate forms of repressive assistance and “dormitory labour regimes” that operate at other frontiers of Chinese state power and point these strategies of disempowerment towards a seemingly permanent, ethno-racialized underclass, producing a “re-education labour regime.” It further argues that the material infrastructures of these surveiled and policed spaces themselves are productive in enforcing the goals of the “camp fix”: the creation of high-quality, underpaid, docile and non-religious Muslim workers who are controlled through the built environment.

In its one hundred years of existence, the Communist Party of China has experimented with how to connect its narratives of legitimacy to people's affects. In this essay, I trace the conceptualization of gratitude, from its repudiation in the Mao era as a vestige of feudalism and imperialism to its return in the reform era as a re-verticalization of Party sovereignty. The paper addresses four examples of gratitude work: Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Yang's short-lived critique of gratitude in the name of a different conception of popular sovereignty; the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake as a day of gratitude; the detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang who are taught to be grateful to the Communist Party in a campaign of religious de-radicalization; and the refusal of gratitude in quarantined Wuhan during the COVID-19 pandemic. In these cases, the Communist Party's sovereignty stands at the threshold between bio- and necro-politics, promising life and salvation in the midst of death and destruction.

In recent years, domestic tourism into the Xinjiang region of China has grown rapidly. Government officials view tourism as a source of both economic capital and social stability, presenting a normalcy that makes it attractive for investment. There are two paradoxes to Xinjiang tourism. According to most literature, a massive military presence should deter tourists, but numbers have continued to grow in the militarized Xinjiang region. Second, the cultural “otherness” of Xinjiang is a big draw to the region, yet this culture is being suppressed by state policies to contain Islam. Using a dataset of Han Chinese travel diaries, I look at how narrated tourist experiences of Xinjiang justify policing, how ethnic boundaries are reinforced by practices in both transportation and personal interaction, and how state policies influence Chinese travellers’ views on the authenticity of their experience. While bodily assurances of security substantiate political legitimacy, tourists resist the bureaucratic management of sites, allowing for critiques focused almost exclusively on aesthetic taste.

Eurasian steppes experienced frequent cultural transfers, human migration, and diffusion of techniques during the Bronze Age. The Hami Oasis is one of the most dynamic areas and has attracted multiple cultural flows. It is an important area that connects various routes of the Tianshan Corridor with the Hexi Corridor in western China. The Tianshanbeilu cemetery is the largest Bronze Age cemetery in Hami. Thirty-seven new radiocarbon dates allowed us to establish a new and more accurate chronology for Tianshanbeilu. Our results showed that the Tianshanbeilu cemetery was used from approximately 2022–1802 cal BC and remained in use from 1093–707 cal BC. This indicates that Tianshanbeilu is the earliest and longest-used known cemetery in eastern Xinjiang. By incorporating the typology of artifacts and stratigraphic relationships, the development of the Tianshanbeilu cemetery was divided into four phases. The first phase was from 2011–1672 cal BC, the second phase was from 1660–1408 cal BC, the third phase was from 1385–1256 cal BC, and the fourth phase was from 1214–1029 cal BC.