CHINESE COMMUNIST POLICY TOWARD MINORITY NATIONALITIES IN THE XINJIANG-UIGHUR AUTONOMOUS REGION IN THE CONTEXT OF THE SINO-SOVIET DISPUTE, 1956-1965

This study examines how the minority nationalities in the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region fit into the domestic and international affairs of the People's Republic of China between 1956 and 1965. The underlying premise is that the rationale of the need to protect China's national security was insufficient to displace the latent desire for self-determination among the minorities. Two principal elements figured in the Chinese Communist Party's domestic policy toward the Soviet Union. The first concerned the connection Chinese national security policy and the international balance of power. The second related to the interplay of national sovereignty and territorial integrity with a minority policy which alternated between repression and tolerance. The Chinese stress on territorial consolidation conflicted with the aspirations of the minorities for their own national self-determination.; The analysis first focuses on the domestic scene of Chinese policy and behavior toward the minorities in Xinjiang during the Hundred Flowers Movement and in the ensuing Anti-Rightist Campaign from 1956-1958. The scene shifts to important developments in Sino-Soviet relations which indicated Chinese perceptions of vacillating Soviet support for China's major objectives of national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Next an investigation of the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to its collapse in 1960 interprets how the CCP authorities implemented the directives for mass mobilization and collectivization in terms of a widening distinction between Chinese and Soviet practices and objectives in the area. The following chapter covers the evolution of the Sino-Soviet polemics from inter-Party dispute over the ideological character of policy statements for the Communist Bloc to interstate disputes over the validity of national boundaries and the legitimacy of the respective governments. The final chapter relates the issues of the Sino-Soviet argument to Xinjiang which reflected the need to restore the Party's credibility among the minorities and to protect national security against Soviet subversion or attack.; While the Chinese sought to restrict the minorities' political aspirations to the confines of regional autonomy, the CCP wanted the Soviets to sanction their adaptation of Marxism-Leninism. To the minorities, The Chinese remained oppressors who deprived them of political and economic rights.