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"Making the past serve the present": the testimonial tourist gaze and infrastructures of memory in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), China
[journal article]
Abstract In this article, we explore how tourism in Xinjiang is politically weaponised. Commodifying Uyghur cultural heritage for tourism allows the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to insist it is not committing cultural genocide, but actually "conserving" Uyghur culture. This directly bears on the CCP's inter... view more
In this article, we explore how tourism in Xinjiang is politically weaponised. Commodifying Uyghur cultural heritage for tourism allows the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to insist it is not committing cultural genocide, but actually "conserving" Uyghur culture. This directly bears on the CCP's internment of Muslim minorities in "re-education" camps, ostensibly to target Islamic "extremism." We explore how tourism to Xinjiang is presented as a "success" of the camps and conscripted into the “Sinicisation” of the region and the secularising of minorities' cultures. Places and practices are deconstructed as cultural heritage, and reconstructed to provide tourists with "exotic" experiences of "wonderful Xinjiang." This transforms the "tourist gaze" into a "testimonial" one: tourists to Xinjiang are made into witnesses that "Xinjiang is beautiful" and Uyghurs are "happy." In this, touristic development and tourists themselves are key agents in the CCP's territorialisation of Xinjiang, the sinicisation of Uyghur culture, and the legitimation of the violence of the camps.... view less
Keywords
China; tourism policy; minority policy; ethnic group; cultural heritage; repression; regional policy; legitimation
Classification
Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture
Free Keywords
Sinkiang; Staat; Straflager; Uiguren; Verhältnis Bevölkerungsgruppen - Staat
Document language
English
Publication Year
2023
Page/Pages
p. 256-286
Journal
Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 52 (2023) 2
Issue topic
Politics of Memory, Heritage, and Diversity in Modern China
ISSN
1868-4874
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed