China & the Uighurs: A contemporary perspective on a historical conflict, Iowa City, Iowa, March 4, 2010

- [Alan Brody] Our guest speaker today is Professor Wenfang Tang. He is the C. Maxwell and Elizabeth M. Stanley family and Hua Hsia Chair of Chinese Culture and Institutions in the Political Science Department of the University of Iowa. His many academic publications examine comparative politics, as well as political and social change in contemporary China. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Contemporary Politics Annual Editions and a member of the Editorial Board of Open Political Science Journal. He is speaking on a topic today that was at the request of the program committee of the ICFRC, one which we thought has been in the news and relevant. He'll talk a bit about the background. We're very pleased to have him here. He has a wonderful background. He was born in China, in Beijing. He grew up there and went to university at Beijing University before coming to the United States to do his Masters at Kansas, his PhD at University of Chicago, all in political science. Then, he was, I think, for the next 18 years or so. Was it 18? 19 years, at the University of Pittsburgh, coming through the ranks there to become a professor of political science. I think we're very fortunate here in Iowa that our political science department and the university have manged to lure him here. He has a wonderful background and experience. He had a book in 2005 called Public Opinion and Political Change in China. I have a background myself in public opinion and communication, and I lived in China '95 to '99. I just want to make one comment that there was a journalist named Walter Lippmann who years ago talked, Walter Lippmann, yes, who years ago talked about pubic opinion. He had a book called Public Opinion, and he talked about the pictures in our head and the importance of journalism and its coverage of international affairs to the welfare of our country. He talked particularly about something called the pictures in our heads, the way we learn about the world through what we read and see. I just wanted to make the observation, in my time in China, the difference between the picture on the ground and the realities in China, and the pictures in the heads of Americans were so radically different. I think it was worse than almost any other place that I had been. That has improved in recent years, but it's still not all there. We're very pleased to have him today with us and hopefully, to bring us some new pictures with which to understand some of the issues of minority affairs in China and particularly of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, in the West. Professor, over to you, thank you. - [Wenfang Tang] Thank you, Alan, for the introduction. I should also thank you, everyone, for letting me jump the queue. We have to eat first. I feel like so in China. You know, that's where we jump the queue constantly, everywhere you go. You have to learn how to do that. So, as Allen said, the topic today is about a minority group in China. As you can see, I, myself, don't look like the, I'm a Han Chinese. I grew up as a member of the majority. I guess the only qualification for me to talk about this subject is probably I spent half of my life, although in very different circumstances, as a minority in this country. So I developed some appreciation to feel what it's like to be in the minority group. My other, I guess qualification is based on the public opinion, public opinion survey I conducted in this area and also in Tibet several years ago. 1,600 secondary school students, so as far as I know, no one has actually had the opportunity to conduct questionnaires face-to-face survey in these very politically-sensitive regions of China. So I hope I will have the opportunity to share some of the findings from that public opinion survey. Before we talk about this group, I thought that it's helpful to, to locate this region were the Uyghur people live. As you can see, in the map of China, the portion in the northeast, northwestern corner of the country, that part of the country is called Xinjiang. That's one of the provinces in China. This region is the largest province in China. It's 1/6 of the country's territory. As you can see, it's huge. It's three times the size of France. It's very rich with natural resources. It has oil, it has gas, it has coal, other minerals. It is economically very important to China, and also, as you can see, the region borders with eight other countries, the Soviet Union and Russia, I mean Russia, Mongolia and the Central Asian Republic, and even India. For China, it is a security buffer zone between China Proper and the Central Asian region. So strategically, economically, this is an extremely important area. I thought it might be very helpful to just go back very briefly about the history of this region. China, before the Communist government, was a government, I was told that this was very informed an audience, so I don't need to go into details. Before the Communist government was the Nationalist government that ruled Mainland China from 1911 to 1949. Then before the Nationalist government was a dynasty. It's called the Qing dynasty. That was based on the tribal group from the northeastern part of the country. If the map looks like a rooster, it's the head portion of the rooster. That's where the, the Manchus, the tribal group called the Manchus, now, they're one of the largest ethnic groups in China. They're called the Manchus. They conquered the entire China, including the current Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, and China itself. So it established the Qing Empire. The Qing started in the, in 1640s, around that time they conquered China, about 100 years later, the Qing Empire conquered the current Xinjiang and Tibet, that region. In about 1750s, Xinjiang, this area was under the Qing Empire as a province. I should mention that before the Qing conquer, that region didn't have a unified kingdom. It was ruled by separate tribes, and so, the Qing Empire unified this region and put it under the Qing Empire as one of the provinces. Xinjiang in Chinese actually means new territory. So the Qing Empire considered this part of the country as the new territory. For the past 250 years or so, this area has been under the Chinese control. First, by the Qing Empire. Then, under the Nationalist government's control, but, when Japan invaded China in the '30s, one part of Xinjiang, a group in Southern Xinjiang declared independence in 1933. From 1933 to 1943, there was a very brief period of time this group called the Turkish Islamic Republic of Eastern Turkestan was established, and briefly, I think, recognized by the United Kingdom and also by Turkey, just a couple of countries. Then, the Nationalist government sent troops and cracked down that independence. So, that was onco Japan invaded China, right? But, in the '40s, when the Nationalists were fighting against the Communists, and the people in Uyghur were, in this time, in the northwestern part of the territory. They declared independence again, another group, from 1944 to 1949. Only these two very brief periods in the history of Xinjiang there were independent, successful independent movements. After that, the region has been under the Communist government's rule since 1949. The official name of this area is called Xinjiang Autonomous Region, XAZ, XAR. This area is a lot less known to outside world. Comparing with Tibet, for instance. Tibet is so well known in the West, but Xinjiang is less well known. I think one reason is people don't even know how to start to pronounce the name of Xinjiang, right? And also, when people see the word Uyghur, people don't have a clue how to pronounce that. So that's hard. The other reason is that the people here are mostly, mostly Muslims. I guess Buddhism in Tibet has more gains, more semblance in the West than, than the Muslims in China. Maybe that's another reason, for the religious reason. Currently, there are 18 million people living in that area of Xinjiang. About more than half of them are Uyghur people, and the rest are Han Chinese. There have been some separatist movements under, since 1949, under the Communist government, and two of them are very noticeable. One is called ETIM, Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement. This group actually is an interesting group, and it is a violent group. It launched several violent attacks in China, terrorist incidents, and they were also found in Afghanistan. Supposedly, they have links with al-Qaeda. The United States, in candid to criticize, China, of course, has a very strong policy, harsh policy against this group. China considers this group a terrorist group. So, China has always been harsh, and the United States were against China's harsh policy. The United States intended to support these people for their human rights, for the protection of their human rights, until 9/11. When 9/11 happened, and the United States wanted China to work together to fight against international terrorism, China said, that's fine, as long as you put this group under your State Department's list of international terrorist groups. On that list, then we'll work with you, and the US said okay, we'll do it. So, they put the ETIM, this group, under terrorists, on the list of terrorist groups. When the US invaded Afghanistan, 22 of the Uyghur fighters were captured. They were brought back to Guantanamo Bay, actually. They were jailed there for things, I think the early 2000s, for several years. Currently, the United States doesn't know what to do with them. The US convinced the government of Albania to take five of them, and then convinced Bermuda to take five of them, then a South Pacific island country called Palau agreed to take another five of them. So, there are 15, right? Switzerland recently agreed to take two of them. We got 17, so five left. They're still in Guantanamo now, and these five people have been arguing with the US government that they should stay in the United States, but there's a strong opposition in Washington not to let them in. That's a very interesting issue because the US does not want to send them back to China. But the other group is called the World Uyghur Congress. That is actually based in this country. It is a less, at least so far, it is a less violent group. It's been supported by the National Endowment for Democracy. If you know that organization. It's a congressionally-funded group that supports human rights all over the world. This group is based in the US receiving funding from the United States. I think the different approaches towards these two different groups in the United States shows what I call the strategic ambiguity of the United States. You know, how to deal with distant groups from an authoritarian country like China, how to bring political change, desired political change in that country. It's very much reflected in one approach. Then, how to fight against international terrorism is very much reflected in another approach. So, it's a very interesting policy in the US. Although, there are some separatists groups in Xinjiang, compared with other areas of the world, the Uyghur people in Xinjiang have been, relatively speaking, pretty calm. If you think about Chechnya for instance, other regions. It's been, the ethnic tension has been relatively low until recently. As many of you may remember, last July, there was a major riot in Xinjiang, in the capital city of Xinjiang, Urumqi. It was a riot during the time of Iranian presidential elections, so the media, this news was competing with the presidential election in Iran. I remember very clearly, but it was a very, very bloody riot. In early July, nearly 200 people were killed on the street in the capital city of Urumqi. Most of them were Han Chinese. That was a, for the first time, people realized the tension between different ethnic groups on China, particularly among this group of people. It's so hard. The rage was so strong, and that caused this kind of riot. That's probably, as far as I can remember, the biggest riot since 1989, Tiananmen demonstration. This is probably the only one or two. I mean, if you didn't include Tiananmen demonstration and this riot, then the two bloodiest events in the history of the commonage of government. The question is why. If you look at the numbers, in terms of economic development in this area, and you see that the economy has grown very rapidly. From 1949, since the Communists took over until now, the GDP grew 10 times. In this area, it's relatively, compared with Tibet, the living standard is higher. The level of education is higher. In the past 10, 20 years, the Chinese government has been pouring in economic aid to support this region's economic growth. But, why people are so unhappy? I have a picture, this is a picture, I have to read. This is a picture from the December 2009 issue of National Geographic. They had a major article on Xinjiang. The title of that is called The Other Tibet. One of the photos, this is, I got this from the website. I am not sure whether the photo is also in the magazine itself, but, at least you can see that on the website. The photo shows a Han Chinese teacher in a Uyghur school, high school, teaching Chinese. I can't see it, but basically, the article lists some of the reasons why the Uyghurs are unhappy. One reason is that there's a growing economic gap, even the living standard is improving in the region, but there's a growing gap between the Han Chinese and the Uyghur people. The Han Chinese typically had better jobs and they make more money, and the Uyghur people are in the lower income category. That's one reason. The other reason is massive Han Chinese migration into that region. They are 40 some percent of the people in Xinjiang are Han Chinese. That's another reason people are getting very upset that you are coming into our home and taking our land. Of course, the other reason is heavy-handed repression by the Chinese government. Whenever there's a little attempt, effort to gain some autonomy and independence and you have a very strong, harsh policy to crack down. Finally, as the Han Chinese cultural invasion, this pictures shows very well, particularly the picture's intention is to show that the Chinese government is forcing the local people to speak Chinese, wiping out their own cultural tradition, their own language. This is, perhaps, the common view, I would say. This view is not very difficult to find outside China. I would say that these are all very possible reasons, but I would like to offer an alternative explanation of why it happened. The reason is, if you look at these things, economic gap exists among Han Chinese, probably larger. In Han Chinese areas, you have very rich people and very poor people. These people are not killing each other. They are very unhappy. The poor people are unhappy, but not to the extent they want to risk their life or kill other people. Han migration started way before, under the Qing Empire, as I mentioned earlier, they were Han soldiers stationed there and lived there. Under the Nationalist government, there was an effort to migrate Han Chinese. Also, since 1949, since the Communist government in the '50s, there were major effort to migrate Han Chinese, like soldiers, veteran soldiers were ordered to settle, hundreds of thousands of them settles in Xinjiang. Repression. You know, it is a repressive government, but it's not only repressive in Xinjiang. It's repressive also in the rest of the country. It's not convincing to me that repression itself can cause such a problem. Cultural invasion. I'm also not convinced because when I think about, when I visited Xinjiang, for instance, guess what I saw first? The Chinese were globalized. The Chinese are, the young people are bringing their dates to McDonald's. That's a major event for them. It's a very cool, Western thing to do. The Chinese are, you know, driving cars and building modern structures. These are all Western, and the Chinese are learning English. What the Chinese bringing into minority regions are not necessarily the Chinese culture. It's more of a globalized environment now. The Chinese themselves can be also very upset. Their culture is being wiped out by globalization. Anyways, when I look at these reasons, no doubt they are part of the reason. I'm not denying these are not facts. They are facts, and they are, they contribute to the anger of the ethnic minority people all over China, but particularly in Xinjiang. I would offer another explanation, additional I should say, an additional explanation to this problem, the problem is partially derived from the state-sponsored affirmative action programs. If you look at the ethnic minority policies by the Chinese government, you see major effort to implement affirmative action programs such as religions, for instance. Religion is, although there is a control over religion on one side, if you look at these two pictures, one side is in a public school. It's says seven nos, banning religion in public places, but on the right-hand side is a mosque. In front of the mosque, I took this picture because it documents the number of times the Chinese government invested money in rebuilding renovating this place. If you think that the Chinese government doesn't want these people to believe in religion, why would it even invest in building and rebuilding renovating the mosques? Also, if you go to Tibet, for instance, you see major government effort rebuilding, renovating. very nicely. But on the other hand, if the Separatists movement want to use religion to, to achieve their goal, then the Chinese government has no negotiation, you know, no compromise. They will crack down, no doubt, but religion, relatively speaking, if it's not engaged for political purpose, it's quite free in these regions. The other examples of affirmative action programs in ethnic minority regions, there are quite a few of them. One is, if you are familiar with this family planning policy in China. One family can only have one child. That policy is not strictly implemented in minority areas, including Xinjiang. You have a, you would see, if you look at the population growth rates, you will see that the ethnic minority region would have much faster population growth rate. In 1949, there were three million Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Today, there are more than nine million. You see a much faster population growth rate. Then, you have education quota, tax breaks for minority businesses. Most interestingly, language, and that is what I showed you in the picture. The picture is word 10,000 words, right? They're trying to show you how successful Chinese government is in wiping out ethnic language. But, remember, I said I did a survey of the 1,600 elementary school students. Some of them are the Uyghurs. The top, if you look at the top bar, that's Han Chinese exposure to Han Chinese language in school, meaning they are learning math in Chinese. Chinese is the teaching language. Han Chinese, 100%. Then, the very bottom is Tibet, Tibetan students had about 59% compared with the Han Chinese 100%. You have 59% of Chinese language exposure, meaning, you can think it this way, only 59% of Tibetan students are learning math in Chinese. The second from the bottom is Uyghur students, 69%. For me, this is very shocking. If you think that China's government is very successful in wiping out ethnic languages, and these people, also from my personal visits to Tibet, to Xinjiang, you see a lot of schools are teaching in their own languages. So, this seems to be very, seems to be far from, at least, if I think about public schools in this country, the different ethnic groups, students in different ethnic groups, their English language exposure, I would say is much more equal than in China. The reason is, well, many different reasons. One is the Chinese government, at first, encouraged schools to use their own languages as teaching language. Then later, they wanted to implement a Chinese language teaching, but they didn't have resources. They don't have enough teachers. It's a problem, but it shows that there's a lot of gap in terms of language teaching, in terms of the situation created by affirmative action programs. Let me, I have a couple of minutes left. Let me just summarize what I've been saying. The affirmative action programs, the result of these programs is to increase the ethnic minority students' awareness as a member of their group. That feeling has been very, very strong. I am not only Chinese, but I'm a member of the group. Then, if you think about this kind of a less-used language as an example, language, the ethnic minority students have so, so much less, exposure to Chinese, but when they go to college, where Chinese is the standard teaching language, they are disadvantaged. They can't get into college. Even if they get into college, ethnic minority students spend five years, one more year than Han Chinese in school just to catch up with their Chinese. When they graduate, even if they graduate from college, their language skill still is not the same as Han Chinese. They have a problem finding jobs. When the employment is affected, the income, average income level for the group is lower. Then they feel like I'm not getting into schools. I'm not finding jobs because I'm a member of this group because this feeling of group identity is so strong, so strongly encouraged by the affirmative action programs, therefore, they start to, not blame themselves, but they start to blame the fact that because our group has this kind of background. Then they start to challenge the state. In my survey, I find that ethnic minority students have very, very strong feelings of nationalism. If you ask them, ask you proud to be Chinese? 90%, but then, are you proud to be your own ethnic group? 90%, so you have, the situation, what I call a high wire balancing act, is that minority students are saying I can be part of you as long as you allow me equality, autonomy, you know. Don't ask me to learn Chinese. As soon as the, there's any mistreatment problem, then it becomes and issue of, a group identity issue. That's why this picture shows that during the July 2009 riot in Xinjiang, demonstrators held Chinese flag against the Chinese state saying I'm your citizen, and so, you have to give me freedom or autonomy. I would offer this as an alternative explanation of what really happened there. I should probably end here. - [Alan Brody] What is the traditional language of the Xinjiang Uyghur population? How close is it to the languages of adjacent Turkmen countries or Kazak, Turkmenistan, and others? What are the cross-border relations with those adjacent countries of Central Asia? - [Wenfang Tang] As I mentioned in the beginning, I'm not an expert in the Uyghur culture, history. I think a lot of people, anthropologists, spend their entire career on a single group. So, all I know about the language is that it's a Turkic language. I'm not, I don't know how close that is to Turkey or to Arabic. So, that's how I can answer, and the relationship with the neighboring countries, Xinjiang actually has an increasingly active relationship with the neighboring countries, particularly, if you look at the border areas of Xinjiang, if the next country is Kazakhstan, there's a significant group of Kazaks actually living around the border. These people, increasingly, would go back and forth and visit each other. Also, from what I read, that the Uyghur people are allowed to go to Mecca, to go to Middle Eastern countries for religious holidays, increased number of them have been traveling to the Middle East. That's all I know. - [Alan Brody] Why did the government handle the riots in Xinjiang differently than Tibetan riots? For example, in Xinjiang, foreign journalists were allowed in, while Tibet was closed off, two, will a post, who and when government treat Xinjiang differently, and three, what role does language education have on Han-Uyghur tensions? - [Wenfang Tang] Will a post? - [Alan Brody] The present leadership of Xinjiang. - [Wenfang Tang] Oh, oh, who and when government treat Xinjiang. Oh, okay. These are excellent questions. They're big questions. About media, for media in Xinjiang and Tibet, I think the one lesson the Chinese government learned in Tibet, which happened in March 2008, was the Chinese government learned, decided not to let the foreign reporters into Tibet to report. So there's a lot of misreporting or misunderstanding, a lot of complaint. So when the riot in Xinjiang took place, the Chinese government decided, well, just go and see. It is that situation. You know, there's a lot of insecurity on the Chinese government side and suspicion of the agenda of Western media. The Chinese government is convinced that the Western media has an agenda just like the United States government or Western, other government in Western democracies, try to make Tibet separate or possibly Xinjiang separate from China, so China can be weakened. That kind of a belief probably is behind a lot of suspicion and hostility between China's government and Western media. Will the post, will the next Chinese government treat Xinjiang differently? I doubt it. I think they're gonna treat Xinjiang, since 1949, I think the policy in Xinjiang has been consistent under the Communist party. If you ask me whether they will teat Taiwan differently, that's possibly, there might be more difference there than Xinjiang and Tibet. The role of language, education, Han-Uyghur tension, as I mentioned, I think over-emphasizing ethnic language education, which, one fact is that if you believe in the National Geographic picture, you'll believe that every Uyghur speaks Chinese. But, if you believe my survey, it shows that Uyghurs, a lot of them don't. A third of them, in schools, don't, not mentioning these who were educated or not educated. You know, many of them don't speak Chinese. That, I think, increases the divide, ethnic divide. This may sound not politically correct, but if you have everyone speaking the same language, you are in an economic environment where the language is Chinese. If you work in different areas, if you work in a restaurant, you know, the boss may want you to be able to speak to different customers, and if you don't speak the language, then that is a disadvantage in this. China also is a very much increasingly a market economy. A lot of times it's not based on government order, who you can hire, who you don't hire. It's really based on market competition. Finding jobs, a lot of times, is based on profit consideration, not political reasons. These people without language skill are in the disadvantaged position in this market competition. That does hurt their economic interests. Language probably should be, education probably should be improved, in my opinion. - [Alan Brody] You're not off the hook yet. What relation do you feel simple racism and anti-Uyghur sentiment shared by many Han might've had to do with the rioting in July of 2009, and would you care to share Uyghur stereotypes with us? That is the way they are viewed by Han, but I would add, I think both ways would be useful. - [Wenfang Tang] I will share a stereotype which I read in the National Geographic piece written by a British traveler in the 1930s. They eat mutton. We eat pork. Wait. What was the first part of the question? - [Alan Brody] About whether racism played a part in this. - [Wenfang Tang] Oh, yes, yes. No doubt. The Chinese are far less sophisticated when it comes to different race. This picture, well, that's not China. They show it. They are not subtle about it, about any difference. They would openly show their feeling about, if they think it's strange, they will show it on their face. They will talk about it. So there's no doubt racial bias in China, particularly among the majority Han people, but I would say that that's a common problem in any society with dominant majority. In many societies, that's a problem. What I also would like to mention is the other side of this affirmative action policy among Han Chinese. The riot actually started, I don't know whether you remember this or not, from an ethnic Uyghur 600, 700, 800 of Uyghur workers working in a region from one of the least developed regions of Xinjiang, Souther Xinjiang. From somewhere here, Southern Xinjiang's generally considered to be lesser valued, and the government wanted to get them to improve their income. So they shift six or eight, I can't remember the number, several hundred of them to one of the highest, most developed regions of China, here, so that they can, they can get rich fast, right? But they were grouped together in that part of China and isolated from other Han Chinese workers and causing a lot of resentment among Han workers, thinking why can't, why do you have jobs and we have to fight for our jobs? That kind of backfired. The affirmative action policy is very much reflected in this riot in that sense. - [Alan Brody] I have a related one coming on that. How does the Chinese government enforce the one-child policy in other provinces and not in Xinjiang? I would think it would be easier to enforce in minority provinces. It's a continuation of your past piece. - [Wenfang Tang] The short answer is that this policy is not enforced very well throughout the country. In many places, in rural particularly, rural China, it's a pretty standard practice to have two. In many cities, people are deciding not to have children because it increases the cost of living and decreases the quality of life. It's a very complicated question. In many particularly urban areas in China, people willingly do not want to have kids or have more children. In rural China, it's more relaxed. In ethnic regions, why is it easier? I'm not sure. To have family planning policy, I think the appeasement, the desire to appease the ethnic minorities and also, international human rights criticism of China makes it a lot harder for Chinese government to enforce family planning policy in Tibet and in Xinjiang. I'm not sure whether I understood the question correctly. - [Alan Brody] I would just add that that's an official policy not to enforce the one-child policy in the minority areas. I think that goes back to the beginning of the one-child policy which was mid 70s, wasn't it? Late 70s. We hear that China is tearing down mosques and homes in cities like Kashgar. Is this justified? Well, I think first we have to say is this true, and then, is this justified. - [Wenfang Tang] I learned this just from the same sources, probably as you did. Is it justified? That is a question not for me to answer. You know, for the people there. It is a, you know, the National Geographic piece I mentioned also talks about that, implying that the Chinese government is forcefully doing that. It's a public opinion survey question. Sure, you can find people who are very dissatisfied with moving away from where they grew up and the house they grew up, but I cannot think of one friend of mine in China who still lives in the same place he or she was born. It's a country of a construction site. It's a country of change. I would say at least some of these people want to move. They want to have running water. They want to have modern facilities. That's an improvement. It's a delicate question. I don't know how to answer it. It really depends on, you know, if 99% of the residents want to move, one person, one family doesn't. How do you do it? It's happened in China several times. One person would burn herself to death. The other would keep staying in her house. When the bulldozers were starting construction around the house. It happens all the time. - [Alan Brody] I think, again, picking up from that question, this questioner notes that one finds Uyghurs in all the cities of China, especially involved in the street-side food service industry and other things in trade. Do you have any figures on Uyghur migration into the Eastern parts of the country? - [Wenfang Tang] I don't. There are quite a few of them. If you go to large cities in China, you'll see the Uyghur neighborhoods. In Beijing, there was a big one. In Guangzhou, I know there's a big one, and they're selling, sometimes you'll see them selling food on the streets. I don't have a specific number. Oh, also, you'll see bands, Uyghur bands in Beijing bars. - [Alan Brody] When I was there, there was a club where people danced on tables. That was quite exciting too. There's a question here relating about the Turkish recognition of East Turkestan and asking why are the Turks so resistant then to the recognition of the Kurds. Would you comment? I don't know if you care to comment on that or not. You don't have to. - [Wenfang Tang] I don't know. I have to say I don't know the answer to that question. You're talking about why Turkey does not want to recognize Turks in Iraq, Northern Iraq? - [Alan Brody] The Kurdish people in Eastern Turkey. - [Wenfang Tang] Oh, oh, I see. - [Alan Brody] They have their own minority in Eastern Turkey. - [Wenfang Tang] I don't know. I really don't know. - [Alan Brody] You're moving outside of his region. It's not fair to him. Last question, picking up from those. Does affirmative action create minority identity, or is it an effort to integrate a people or a group that already has a strong sense of minority identity? - [Wenfang Tang] This is an excellent question. I would say the first. At least from my view. The affirmative action program is not, it's created to bring minority disadvantaged, socially, economically disadvantaged groups to the same level to compete with the majority. Once they are brought to the level, probably, the program should disappear, but if you keep this program, then on the other hand, to make it worse as modernization in China. It becomes more of a market competition. Then it just creates stronger identity. By the way, I didn't mention the former Soviet Union. It was also under this kind of affirmative action program. When the Soviet Union collapsed, and you see such an increased tension between ethnic groups, I would say that's also partially the result of affirmative action programs under socialism. - [Alan Brody] Thank you very much on behalf of the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council. We want to thank Professor Tang for sharing with us today his presentation on China and the Uyghurs. I also wish to thank our sponsors, International Programs at the University of Iowa, and of course, our community sponsor, River Products Company. Dr. Tang, as a token of our appreciation and a memento of your talk with us today, I wish to present you with the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council mug. These look excellent on a mantelpiece, and they are equally at home on a desk with the steam and scent of jasmine tea rising. - [Wenfang Tang] Thank you. I thought you already showed me your appreciation by letting me jump the queue. - [Alan Brody] If you have any questions about joining ICFRC, please call our office at 319-335-0351. If you enjoyed listening to this program on the radio or TV, please also consider supporting the Council's work by sending a contribution to ICFRC, 1111 University Capitol Center, Iowa City, 52242. Last, but it seems not least, in recent weeks, our visitors have gotten so excited about the presentations and work, and are thinking only about that and have had a tendency to walk out without returning your name tags. So, please do not forget to return your name tags, and next time, bring those ones from home. We're running short, thank you very much.