Tom Cliff

Neo Oasis: The Xinjiang Bingtuan in the Twenty-first Century

Military-agricultural colonies have long been a feature of Chinese frontier policy, but in the late twentieth century the bingtuan underwent an unprecedented transformation of form, function and rhetorical justification that raises questions regarding the contemporary bingtuan’s motives, mechanisms and role models. By examining these questions, this article sets out to determine the role that is being played by the twenty-first century bingtuan, and how it diverges from the militaryagricultural colonies of the past. In 1982 Deng Xiaoping declared that the bingtuan ‘‘should be different from military farms’’ (Seymour, 2000, p. 182), and in 1998 the bingtuan (which translates as Corps) officially became a corporation (a move that I shall term Incorporation). These changes were not simply rhetorical. The bingtuan had by 1999 undergone a series of major structural changes. Whereas in 1954 the organisation was subject to the authority of the XUAR government, by 1999 it had been gradually promoted to the same bureaucratic status as the XUAR government. The bingtuan has occupied expanding areas of Xinjiang since 1954, and the bureaucratic promotion of 1998 effectively made it a ‘‘state within a state’’. Despite these changes, Chinese and Western authors continue to refer to the twenty-first century bingtuan as little removed from Dynastic era forms of militaryagricultural colony. Within this discourse, there is an assumption that the bingtuan of 1954 is the same organisation as the bingtuan of 2005. James Seymour says that the bingtuan ‘‘should be thought of as an institution designed to carry on a twothousand year-old policy in central Asia’’ (2000, p. 188). The State Council issued a White Paper on Xinjiang in 2003, stating that the bingtuan’s historical origins are Han dynasty policies of stationing troops to reclaim wasteland and defend the

The Partnership of Stability in Xinjiang: State–Society Interactions Following the July 2009 Unrest*

Most analyses of central government policy in Xinjiang focus on “the Uyghur problem”. This article demonstrates the coexistence of a significant “Han problem” in Xinjiang, and thereby throws a different light on relations between center and periphery in China. Central government reactions to the Ürümqi riots in July 2009 suggest that stability among the Han population of Xinjiang is the centers primary objective, and that this stability is seen to be facilitated by a particular style of development. Furthermore, state–society interactions in the immediate aftermath of the 2009 riots show that Han in Xinjiang perceive themselves to possess collective—if limited and contingent—influence. This perception is the product of the mass frame through which, I argue, the Han mainstream view their relationship with the central government. I call this mass frame “the partnership of stability”.

Post-Socialist Aspirations in a Neo-Danwei

The socialist-era danwei lives on in contemporary, ever-reforming China. Ironically, the processes of reform helped to enable the perpetuation of the traditional danwei’s paternalistic practices by concentrating monopoly power in selected, partially market-listed, centrally owned enterprise groups. The Tarim Oilfield Company is an outstanding example of this balancing act between socialist and market structures—a neo-danwei. This article maps these structures using detailed ethnographic data gathered over two years working in the company. Multiple subjective viewpoints show that distinctions between different categories of employee are crucial to maintaining the danwei in the midst of marketization. Like the socialist-era danwei, the oil company produces dependency and constrains social mobility. Yet, amidst glorification of open competition and individual achievement, the desire to enter a danwei is as strong as ever. The certainty of danwei life is highly valued; stability becomes a status symbol.

Concept Essay One: Ignoring the Attention-Seeking State

The implicit demand voiced by the state is to pay attention to it. At the same time, ignoring the state, in one area of life or another, is a condition of informal life politics. Informal life politics actions are informal precisely because they do not “seek redress” for wrongs or relief from threats to their existence through appeal to the state, or “higher” political power. This ignoring—the lack of attention to the state and its institutions—constitutes a form of indirect political contention.

Survival as Citizenship, or Citizenship as Survival? Imagined and Transient Political Groups in Urban China

Is it the quest for survival, rather than the quest for citizenship per se, that drives enactments of citizenship? This chapter examines the complex relationship between survival and citizenship through a longitudinal case study of a rural migrant workers’ NGO in peri-urban Beijing, finding that survival and citizenship are virtually inseparable: one often follows, or is seen to follow, from the other. Contesting citizenship brings political risk. In this case, the survival strategies taken by the NGO to hedge against such risk cause people with diverse natural loyalties to enact citizenship-by-extension-of-citizenship-to-others. The result is an enlarged “political group” with a particularly high level of political potency.