Dissertation
"Go West, Young Han: State Agents in Containing Armed Insurgency in Xinjiang"
My dissertation focuses on a puzzle that is important for both scholarship on civil war and contemporary politics: Despite numerous features that could have led to full-scale civil war in Xinjiang, China’s northwestern peripheral province, why have conflicts in that region persisted at a low level in terms of the degree of militarization since 1949? Peripheral regions often pose a significant challenge to state building due to their susceptibility to foreign intervention, difficult terrain, and ethnic diversity, which have beleaguered even “strong” states like China. How has communist China projected power in Xinjiang?
I approach these questions by focusing on the state agents for counterinusrgency and thus unpacking a heretofore black box – the space between the Chinese state and Xinjiang’s would-be rebels. Contrary to classical theories that consider commitment to private property central to state strength, I argue that it is precisely the atrophy of private ownership and the Chinese state's monopoly over the market that have allowed Beijing to control Xinjiang without the occurrence of civil war. Specifically, China’s ability to allocate essential means of production has enabled it to avoid principal-agent problems commonly seen in counterinsurgency by other states.
Evidence is drawn from my ethnographic fieldwork in Xinjiang and archival data from over 500 historical annals. Using process tracing and quasi-experimental designs, I find that the state had been able to control Xinjiang without the occurrence of civil war during the Maoist period (1949-75) by resettling two million Han Chinese youths from inland China to Xinjiang and become state agents for containing armed insurgencies. Importantly, the Han agents did not compete for lands with the Xinjiang indigenes, avoiding the indiscriminate use of violence by military seen in other countries. By contrast, the 1978 market reform allowed for the reemergence of armed rebellion by weakening the state’s ability to sustain the same level of Han employment.
My dissertation focuses on a puzzle that is important for both scholarship on civil war and contemporary politics: Despite numerous features that could have led to full-scale civil war in Xinjiang, China’s northwestern peripheral province, why have conflicts in that region persisted at a low level in terms of the degree of militarization since 1949? Peripheral regions often pose a significant challenge to state building due to their susceptibility to foreign intervention, difficult terrain, and ethnic diversity, which have beleaguered even “strong” states like China. How has communist China projected power in Xinjiang?
I approach these questions by focusing on the state agents for counterinusrgency and thus unpacking a heretofore black box – the space between the Chinese state and Xinjiang’s would-be rebels. Contrary to classical theories that consider commitment to private property central to state strength, I argue that it is precisely the atrophy of private ownership and the Chinese state's monopoly over the market that have allowed Beijing to control Xinjiang without the occurrence of civil war. Specifically, China’s ability to allocate essential means of production has enabled it to avoid principal-agent problems commonly seen in counterinsurgency by other states.
Evidence is drawn from my ethnographic fieldwork in Xinjiang and archival data from over 500 historical annals. Using process tracing and quasi-experimental designs, I find that the state had been able to control Xinjiang without the occurrence of civil war during the Maoist period (1949-75) by resettling two million Han Chinese youths from inland China to Xinjiang and become state agents for containing armed insurgencies. Importantly, the Han agents did not compete for lands with the Xinjiang indigenes, avoiding the indiscriminate use of violence by military seen in other countries. By contrast, the 1978 market reform allowed for the reemergence of armed rebellion by weakening the state’s ability to sustain the same level of Han employment.
