Talk:Xinjiang

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[edit] Name

why use this "Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu"? is this English or pinyin? how about "Xinjiang Weiwuer Ziziqu"? --Yacht (talk) 08:39, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)

Some nationalities of China are officially written in variant form of Pinyin (similar to how Shaanxi is officially in a modified Pinyin). Another example: Chaoxian (Koreans) is officially written as Choson. --Menchi 10:52, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This is actually stated in the official rules for Pinyin orthography, the "Hanyu pinyin fang'an". Unfortunately the rules are not very clear and there are several options, e.g. I think "Uygur" could also be spelled "Uyghur"; the "Fang'an" also has some options for Pinyin spelling that I've never ever actually seen used, such as the use of a ligature for ng or z/c/s with circumflex instead of zh/ch/sh. Babelfisch; August 17th, 2004

[edit] Caucasoid

Is it really necessary to mention that some Uyghurs are fair-skinned and have Caucasoid traits? It sounds a bit like Nazi "science" to me... Luis Rib

Well, they do have such traits. You can phrase it a bit differently if you like. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 02:24, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

It wouldn't be necessary if we lived in a world in which race (whether considered a real or constructed category) was irrelevant. Unfortunately, that's not the case. The ethnic characteristics of Uyghurs play an important role in discussions of the relationship between Uyghurs and Han Chinese and thus how "Chinese" Xinjiang is or should be. In order to understand the politics of Uyghur/Chinese relations, it's important to know that these characteristics are commonly discussed. Sigrid 20:20, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Xinjiang in Uyghur

Where are Uyghurian names of Xijiang, why name of xinjiang's head are not in Uyghur, Where İ can find any information about Uyghur alphabet, İs any sites in Uyghur?

Uyghur name of Xinjiang -- no idea. If you know it please add it.

Name of the chairman of Xinjiang -- this is the English Wikipedia, so we don't usually put non-English names. Same goes for, say, the names of Arab or Persian people.

Uyghur alphabet

-- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 20:46, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Interestigly, that by Omniglot Uyghur has no letter ə, but in this page uyghur names are used with this symbol... but now Uyghur latin is like pinyin - script for transliterating only, Arabic now is officially in use... strange, that there are no any Uyghur in Wikipedia... -- untifler

That is correct. The translation currently on this page is wrong. I traveled to Xinjiang recently and the Uyghur people there told me that the translation of Xinjiang on this page was wrong. (I made a t-shirt with that on it.) Interestingly enough, they told me that it was perfect Kazakh, which the Kazakhs in the area confirmed for me. -- R'nway [ T C ] 00:16, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Uyghur is officially written in the Arabic script in Xinjiang. And there is a Uyghur Wikipedia, it's just that nobody's working on it. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 15:13, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Uyghur is not a very commonly used language on the Internet. There don't seem to be many pages in the native writing system, and there are several transkription schemes in use, most of which are based on the modern Turkish alphabet. Also Uyghur Wikipedia is written in one of those systems. I wonder if Uyghurs in Xinjiang can read that at all. "Xinjiang" is a Chinese word, it used to be spelled "Xinjiang" in the official Latin alphabet that was used for Uyghur until the re-introduction of the present Persian-Arabic script. In Uyghur it's شىنجاڭ. The letter ə was part of the Latin alphabet, it's now written ه, like Arabic h, but only the Arabic final and isolated forms are used in that sense, while the Arabic initial form stands for earlier Latin ḥ. The "Latin Alphabet for Uyghur" on the Omniglot site is not the official Latin alphabet, but one system which is now used by exiled Uyghurs on the internet. It's strange that they don't present the official Latin alphabet, but maybe that tells us something about their political agenda. Babelfisch November 15th, 2004

There are three main Uyghur Latin writing systems. One used in Xinjiang in 1969 - 1987, the so-called ULY (as far as know, it is most widely used today) and Turkish-styled Latin script. In these three orthographies the name of the region is Xinⱬang Uyƣur aptonom rayoni, Shinjang Uyghur aptonom rayoni and Şincang Uyğur aptonom rayonı respectively. Don Alessandro 18:10, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The spelling of Xinjiang in Uyghur script must be wrong. All the letters exept the last one should be linked and the letter now used as a symbol for i is a y. This spelling is all over Wikipedia. Could anyone with access to an Uyghur font please correct this. Nahoj1 (talk) 06:04, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I have now surfed the official site of the of the local government of Xinjiang and they spell the Xinjiang Uyghur Aptonom Rayoni ﺷﯩﻨﺠﺎﯓ ﺋﯘﻳﻐﯘﺭ ﺋﺎﭘﺘﻮﻧﻮﻡ ﺭﺍﻳﻮﻧﻰ in Uyghur. A change of all the incorrect spellings should be made. Nahoj1 (talk) 07:15, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Pejorative political terms

I added this article to Category:Pejorative political terms because the name Xinjiang, which means "new frontier", is considered extremely offensive and insulting to the Uyghurs and other non-Han local cultures native to the region. (Even official names can be considered grossly pejorative.) - Gilgamesh 08:52, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This is an article about the place, not the term. East Turkestan should eventually redirect here. Similarly Northeast China redirects to Manchuria because "Manchuria" is often considered extremely pejorative to Han Chinese living in that region. And it is clear that the article Manchuria should not be in a "pejorative terms" category, because it already covers all possible names for that region. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 14:43, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

In the meantime, thanks for alerting me to this category. Since Xinjiang and East Turkistan remain separate, I'm going to add East Turkistan, because it is a deeply offensive term to most Han Chinese living in or out of Xinjiang. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 16:40, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

Actually, if Xinjiang should belong to this category, what keeps Manchukuo, Republic of Macedonia, Senkaku Islands, Recovered Territories, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and so forth out? All these carry names that are deeply offensive to at least one group of people involved, in the same way that Xinjiang does. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 16:49, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

I don't object to that. Though if the list grows big, perhaps a new category is needed, such as "disputed political names", perhaps a subcategory of pejorative political terms. - Gilgamesh 06:50, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Probably "disputed" is better than "pejorative". There's a difference between pejorative terms that everyone, including its users, agree are pejorative (such as racist terms); and terms that its users think are perfectly fine and not pejorative at all, but are disputed by others. Certainly blanketing all of these terms as "pejorative" isn't very NPOV. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 17:18, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Cultural extent

Is the cultural extent of Xinjiang and the political boundary of autonomous region of Xinjiang the same? Like the case of Tibet and Tibet Autonomous Region, and Manchuria. — Insta ntnood 08:32, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Depends on how you look at it. There are no significant Uyghur areas outside Xinjiang. But many areas of Xinjiang are predominantly Kazakh, Kyrgyz, or Mongol. -- ran (talk) 13:41, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Who are the members of the two East Turkistan republics in history? And how far did they control? — Insta ntnood 13:44, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

[1] It seems to be reasonably NPOV. -- ran (talk) 17:01, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. To clarify, I mentioned "the members of.." but I was in fact referring to which peoples, or ethnic groups. Did they (respectively) claim to represent only Uyghurs or represent all non-Han groups in the territories they claimed? What do you mean by IIRC by the way? &mdash Insta ntnood 17:31, Jan 28 2005, UTC

There ARE significant Uyghur populations in Uzbekistan (at least since 1962), but according to Uzbek census Uzbekistan's population is entirely Uzbek. Furthermore, there's a sizable Uyghur population in Almaty, Kazakhstan, which used to have a center for Uyghur studies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.129.248.103 (talk)

[edit] Census Data

According to Christian Tyler [2] (on page 214), the 2000 census undercounts Han Chinese in Xinjiang by almost three and a half million, omitting policemen, soldiers, and the entire workforce of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. This would make Han Chinese the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang and close to an absolute majority in the province. --MC MasterChef 14:26, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The XPCC article on the Chinese wikipedia states that the XPCC population is indeed counted into the population of Xinjiang. I'll ask the author where his info came from. (And policemen are omitted? I don't understand this statement... do you mean civilian policemen? If a Han Chinese or Uyghur or Kazakh or Hui takes a job as a policeman, he goes off the census?) -- ran (talk) 16:00, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

I've been looking around on the government websites of Xinjiang and XPCC, especially the statistics bureaus. Nothing concrete so far, the closest that comes to suggesting that the population of XPCC is included into Xinjiang's population is this: [3]: in a report issued regarding the 2000 census, the total population of 19.25 million is shown as the sum of prefectures, cities, etc., one of which is Shihezi, a city that is completely under the jurisdiction of the XPCC. If stats were counted separately, then Shihezi should not be part of the sum. (The other five cities controlled by the XPCC were all nominally administered by prefectures in 2000 (2 still are today), so there's no way to tell from the chart.)

As I said, this is not "concrete" proof, so I'm still looking. -- ran (talk) 20:15, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

You may be right on this - unfortunately I don't speak Chinese myself, and Tyler does not cite a specific source for this claim, so I'm led to assume that he got this from looking at the original Chinese-language census. The quote from his book I was going on before claims that

A census in 2000 showed 7.5 million Han in a population of 19.25 million, or more than 1 in 3. According to the official figures, the Uighurs were the largest group, with 8 million, the Han next, and other minorities — Mongols, Hui, Kazahks, Kyrgyz — made up the rest. But the census did not count as residents the million or so members of the armed forces (soldiers and police), nor the professional advisers, nor — more importantly — the 2.5 million Han Chinese living under the umbrella of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corporation. If these are added, the number of resident Han is nearer to 12 million, making them not only the largest ethnic group but close to becoming an asolute majority in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

I'm still looking for statements to corroborate this; this speech [4] by Uyghur nationalist Enver Can also makes the claim that the 2000 census explicitly "excludes those from the departments not under the jurisdiction of the regional administration, which mainly involves the People's Liberation Army, the Armed Police Force, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps", but I'm unable to judge the accuracy of that since I'm unable to read the original Chinese-language census myself. --MC MasterChef 23:48, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

At the end of this source[5], it said the statistics is count on regular local residents, and Chinese sometimes don't change their local residency, or Hukou when they work in another city. In most cities, the police is response for the application of local Hukou. Xingjiang Hukou is one of the least attractive Hukous. --Skyfiler 20:03, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

Yep, this is one big problem with population censuses in China. -- ran (talk) 21:13, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Invitation to join Wikipedia:WikiProject Uyghurs of Western China

Hello, I am looking to organize a WikiProject focusing on creating and expanding articles relating to the Uyghurs, including their history, cultural life (including Islamic practices), politics (separatist movements past and present, overseas disapora, etc), as well as information about the Xinjiang area more broadly. I'm fairly new to Wikipedia so any help interested parties can offer on this undertaking would be much appreciated, thanks! --MC MasterChef 23:28, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] War

I just read an article comparing Sinkiang to Chechnya, suggesting that China had some sort of civil war or attempted separatist movement in the region. This article doesn't seem to touch on that much, should it say more? (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 12:10, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

...well, there certainly isn't a war going on right now. Does the article give a time frame for the war? -- ran (talk) 21:56, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

I believe this is referring to the bombings in Xinjiang over the past few years that have been attributed to Uyghur militant separatists. Information on this topic should be added to a section of the East Turkistan independence movement article, which Xinjiang should link to in a section on provincial politics. --MC MasterChef 23:34, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Uyghur subdivision names

Most of the Uyghur names for the subdivisions are wrong. Someone just transcribed them back from Pinyin or from another language than Uyghur. Just two examples: wrong: كاراماي (Karamay), correct: قاراماي (K̢aramay); wrong: ھوتان (H̢otan), correct: خوتەن (Hotǝn) – Latin Uyghur spelling (yengi yezik̢) in brackets. It's just not possible to guess the correct Uyghur spelling from the official Pinyin spelling, even if the latter is closer to Uyghur than to Chinese. Babelfisch 01:19, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Are the autonomous prefectures called "wilayat" or "oblast" in Uyghur? The article on the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture has "oblast", and this article has "wilayat". And I've been unable to verify the Uyghur names of "Tumshuke", "Alar", and "Wujiaqu"; I believe that at least "Tumshuke" is not correct, it could be "Tumxuk̢", but definitely not "تۇمشۇكە / Tumxukǝ". Babelfisch 02:23, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

I have no idea... what sources are you using for Uyghur spellings, by the way? I would love to be able to help out and verify some of the names.

Another thing... do you know the exact status of the letter ya ي in Uyghur? It seems that two separate letters are distinguished, one with the two dots and one without; however in some of the names, e.g. Shihanza شیھانزا the ya with dots is used throughout. -- ran (talk) 02:47, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Spelling! Abstrakt wrongly changed the correct spellings of ق/K̡ and ئۆ/Ɵ to Ķ and Ö. What for? Go brush up your Uyghur before making such changes. And there is a clear difference between ى and ي in modern Uyghur spelling. ى (without dots) is a vowel (i in Yengi yezik̡) and ي (with dots) is a consonant (y in Yengi yezik̡). ى cannot stand at the beginning of a word, it has to be preceded by ئ like all vowels, while ي can stand at the beginning of a word. "Shihanza شیھانزا" is definitely wrong, but I have yet to find out the correct spelling. Babelfisch 01:29, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

ى (no dots) doesn't seem to connect correctly to the next letter for me. I've tried both IE and Firefox, apparently I have one font that connects correctly but adds two dots out of the blue, and another one that doesn't connect at all. What font would you use to view these correctly? -- ran (talk) June 28, 2005 20:50 (UTC)

Actually, I'm not sure which font I Firefox decides to use for which code range. I've installed several Arabic and Unicode fonts. It's difficult to find out. When I copy-paste from Firefox to Word, the font of the Uyghur is displayed as "Mangal", but in fact it isn't. If I copy text into OpenOffice, the font is displayed as "Tahoma", but it isn't Tahoma either. Ridiculous. Arial Unicode MS seems to work, but it's very ugly.

Something else: The spelling of place names should generally follow the official spellings used by the United Nations and given in Zhōngguó dìmínglù 中国地名录 / Gazetteer of China (Beijing, Zhōngguó dìtú chūbǎnshè 中国地图出版社 1997), ISBN 7-5031-1718-4.

And: The two templates Xinjiang and Xinjiang Administrative Divisions are a mess, and they overlap. —Babelfisch 03:40, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Export Import figures confusion

I see under the "economy" section, that the export and import figures in US dollars are listed as 30.47 and 25.88 Is is so riduculously low? or is it in millions? please clarify since i know nothing and came across this possible erroneous statement.--Idleguy 10:02, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The meaning of "Xinjiang"

Very interesting to see it's emphazied here what does "Xinjiang" mean. As a Chinese, i never thought about that (none of the names of the provinces actually). i thought it was just a "name". so it's quite nice to learn it means "new frontier". ^^ --User:Yacht (talk) 05:39, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

same here, i did realize what the "New Territory" of Canada meant though. 68.145.119.230

Qing government used the name Xinjiang for the place because the Russian tried to occupy the land from the Qing Dynasty. Qing General Zuo Zongtang led the troop to re-capture the land and since then the land is called Xingjian. [Gomeying]

[edit] Disputed territories

the article does not explain the includion it in thre category:Disputed territories. AFAIK separatist movements are not included in thes category. Am I missing something else?

If there is a separetist movement in Xinjiang, please add the corresponding article to category:Sovereignty movements. Thank you, mikka (t) 19:15, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] History section should be split

It should. savidan^{(talk) (e@)} 10:20, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of administrative divisions of Xinjiang

I've recently been compiling this list, and I've gotten as many names possible from the Uyghur Wikipedia. However, I'm not a Uyghur-speaker, so I might have made mistakes, and there are several blanks for names I can't find. Any help would therefore be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! -- ran (talk) 04:29, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Western Regions vs. Xinjiang

Please maintain civility and do not accuse good faith edits of vandalism, Ksyrie. As I have told you repeatedly before, I think that a reference to Western Regions is out of place in the first paragraph of an article on Xinjiang. Besides, the source you have attached is a PRC government sponsored site.

Western regions does not cover the same territory as Xinjiang and the term is separated from today by more than 1800 years. Including a reference to Western Regions here gives preference to Chinese historiography of a multi-ethnic region and makes Chinese sovereignty look more coninuous than actually was. We should avoid oblique references like that in a controversial article like this. There is already an article on the history of Xinjiang and a separate article on Western Regions, which gives full justice to episodes of Chinese sovereignty in the area.--Niohe 23:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

But I just want to know,why do you keep another turkestan while deleting another name Western Regions which cover the same regions?

What's more the Turkestan and Western Regions cover the same regions.If you want to keep one,you should keep the two,if you want to delete one, your should delete the two.--Ksyrie 02:47, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Look, it is hard to have a discussion if you ignore what I have said and just keep repeating your argument.

I am not talking about Turkestan, I'm talking about East Turkestan. As I have said a number of times already, East Turkestan is a widely used term for the same area as Xinjiang. The Western regions, on the other hand, refers to a larger area supposedly controlled by China 1800 years ago. There is no equivalence here. As to whether Turkestan and Western Regions are synonymous or not, it is up to you to find a credible academic source in support of your argument. I also hope that you can come up with a better source than the Xinhua News Agency.

I cannot accept the idea that once you include East Turkestan in the first paragraph of this article, you also have to include Western Regions. The context, the area in question and timing are entirely different. Xinjiang and East Turkestan are more or less equal terms, and should both be included in the first pararaph for reasons of WP:NPOV. Inclusion of Western Regions, on the other hand, tilts the balance significantly, since it privileges an official Chinese interpretation of the history of the region.--Niohe 03:18, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

you are very clever to make discard the turkestan just add a eastern or chinese in the front of it.--Ksyrie 04:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Clearly you are not interested in engaging with what I have said. You only need to follow the links above to see the difference between Turkestan and East Turkestan.--Niohe 04:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Be of good sense,the East Turkestan cann't exclude the link with Turkestan.Don't tell me there are no direct relation between the two terms.Furthermore,Since the Western Regions once cover the nowadays Xinjiang,why bother to metion it?--Ksyrie 05:04, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Now you are misrepresenting what I said again. Is that how you avoid dealing with my argument? Just because I make a distinction between Turkestan and East Turkestan doesn't mean that I deny any connection. Where did I say that?--Niohe 05:10, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Xinjiang is often referred to as "East Turkestan". Is it often referred to as "the eastern portions of the Western Regions"? I've never had that impression.—Nat Krause^{(Talk!·What have I done?)} 05:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Exactly, and the source Ksyrie keeps posting to this page is not helpful at all and until he provides us with a credible source to prove his claim that this is a common name in current use, we have every right to remove it without being accused of vandalism.--Niohe 12:40, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Why is a PRC government source or Xinhua news agency source apparently unreliable? It is just as reliable as any other governmental site. 195.195.166.31 17:58, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Because it is making statements and interpretations about Chinese history, which are designed to justify status quo in a contested territory. I would not use any government websites to support claims about history.--Niohe 19:32, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by 'contested territory'? 195.195.166.31 10:42, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually I meant disputed territory, or rather, a region where you have competing claims of sovereignty. On one hand you have the current PRC government and on the other various groups that are fighting for independence. The interpretations of Xinjiang/East Turkestan history that these entities put forward are necessarily colored by their political view, and I don't think it is a good a idea to quote them on history.--Niohe 14:52, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Niohe, personally, I think that since this is an article about Xinjiang AR of the People's Republic of China, you should really use sources that complement what this article is describing. I think that you should argue the independent groups' view of the region's history in another article, if it exists, that is primarily about Xinjiang independence movements. Thank you 195.195.166.31 20:54, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I have no problem with PRC government websites when describing the present situation in the Xinjiang AR, especially when it comes rather mundane factual stuff. But I strongly object to using government-sanctioned websites as reliable sources for history - especially history that goes as far back as the Han or Tang dynasties. I hope you can understand why.--Niohe 21:06, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

My two cents:

Based on my experience of the terms "East Turkestan" and "Xiyu", I can understand why User:Ksyrie is objecting to the use of the term East Turkestan: in contemporary China, that term is used almost exclusively in association with the Xinjiang independence movement; an added dimension of negative connotation results from the association of such independence movements with terrorist acts in China, and terrorist organisations outside.

What's more, the orthodox view in China is that the term "East Turkestan" was invented or revived in the West by Russian imperialists in the 19th Century (partly) in order to justify annexation of the area as part of the greater "Turkestan" which was controlled by Tsarist Russia. Both of these elements combine to make the term heavily imbued with secessionist and generally anti-China flavour in China.

However, the term does not appear to carry the same connotations in English. It is usually regarded as a fairly neutral term, and in any case is a fairly common term. I speculate that this may be because it is easier to pronounce than either "Xinjiang" or "Uighur" or, indeed, Xiyu.

I agree with User:Niohe that the term "Xiyu" or "Western Regions" is far less common in English. It should be noted that "Xiyu" in Chineses is an archaic term. I also agree that Xiyu does not correlate with Xinjiang. In fact, my Chinese dictionary has the following definition for xiyu:

"In the Han Dynasty, those parts of Xinjiang and Central Asia that lie west of Yumen Guan"

Two things need emphasis here. Firstly, the term is archaic. By the time the region was conquered in the Qing Dynasty, it had become Xinjiang, and so it remains to this day. Even in the Qing Dynasty, the word xiyu was used to refer to Xinjiang only in a poetic sense. Secondly, xiyu includes parts of both Xinjiang and Central Asia. It is not the same as Xinjiang.

In any case, it is quite clear that the two terms are not on a par: East Turkestan as a name for Xinjiang is alive and well, as evidenced, for example, by the myriad People's Front of Judea-type movements bearing that name. By contrast Xiyu never corresponded with Xinjiang, and what's more is archaic.

To give an analogy, The Low Countries were once part of Francia, an archaic term which does not correspond with "the Low Countries". Do we include a reference to Francia in the opening to "The Low Countries"? No.

I think the fact that parts of Xinjiang were included in the xiyu deserves a mention somewhere - in the history of Xinjiang, for example. However, it is not nearly notable enough to be at the top, given that the term is so obscure in English.

Finally, the "Western Regions" is not the ideal translation for "Xiyu". Not only is it context-dependent (as in, you have to know you're talking about China), even in the context of China it would be easily mistaken for "西部地区" --Sumple (Talk) 13:10, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] area

i removed the {{Fact}} tag next to the statement of the province extent to be one 6th of the country area. The area is documented in the infobox, and one can check that of China and do the math (and what i'm talking about here excludes the disputed territories, so...). As concerns the figure for the area, the one here matches my 1972 Petit Larousse, and that of http://www.china.org.cn/e-xibu/2JI/3JI/xinjiang/xinjiang-ban.htm where it also does give the 1/6th proportion.

Jerome Potts 03:59, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2000 China census

Does anyone have access to the 2000 China census data for all 56 nationalities, for all of China? Thanks! Ling.Nut 05:45, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notification

Some sweeping changes have been suggested to the content of the History of Xinjiang. Please see Talk:History_of_Xinjiang#Sweeping_changes. An editor has proposed replacing it with the History of Xinjiang/Sandbox. You feedback would be appreciated. Mkdw ^talk 10:34, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Recent history

The New York Times has reported on a 500-person protest being shut down by Chinese authorities. This should be mentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.69.118.1 (talk) 23:39, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

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