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This is fun

The far northwestern region of Xinjiang is an “inseparable” part of China despite efforts by extremists to distort history and facts in a bid to split the country, the Chinese government said in a document published late on Sunday.

The government said in a white paper published by the State Council Information Office it was wrong to suggest members of Xinjiang’s minority Uighur Muslim community were descended from Turks, noting they had become the political tool of pan-Turkic and pan-Islamic groups.

They’re not exactly Han now, are they?

30 thoughts on “This is fun”

  1. Uighur Moslem *majority* until the CCP started importing Han Chinese colonists. At the last census they still outnumbered the Han Chinese colonists *even on Chinese figures*.
    Guardian = always wrong

  2. While I am no friend to the RoP –there is NO more evil gang of socialist shite on the planet than the Chinese Communist Party. As in 70 to 100 million of its own countrymen murdered.

    If the UN was other than a globo-elite tool it would be a good idea to have a resolution passed delineating the evil of the CCP and calling for it to declared an “Enemy of Mankind” and further calling for everyone on Earth to do all they can to see said organisation destroyed and its members punished–unless they change sides openly or covertly.

  3. Turks originally came from central Asia – see: Turkestan; so they could well be descended from Turks.

  4. Are the Uighurs also descended from the Tocharians, by any chance?

    WKPD: The Uyghurs have traditionally inhabited a series of oases scattered across the Taklamakan Desert comprising the Tarim Basin, a territory which has historically been controlled by many civilizations including China, the Mongols, the Tibetans and the Turkic world.

    It’s striking that WKPD’s list doesn’t include the Tocharians. I suppose the reason is so bloody obvious that it’s scarcely worth mentioning.

  5. @ dearieme:

    “Are the Uighurs also descended from the Tocharians…”

    I thought the Tocharians were sort-of Europeans i.e they had fair hair and wore plaid?

    The Tocharians or Tokharians (/təˈkɛəriənz/ or /təˈkɑːriənz/) were Indo-European peoples who inhabited the medieval oasis city-states on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin (modern Xinjiang, China) in ancient times.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocharians

  6. From wkpd on Tocharians

    “From the 8th century AD, the Uyghurs – speakers of a Turkic language from the Kingdom of Qocho – settled in the region. The peoples of the Tarim city states intermixed with the Uyghurs, whose Old Uyghur language spread through the region. The Tocharian languages are believed to have become extinct during the 9th century.”

    So the answer to dearieme’s question seems to be” no”

  7. Dearieme

    “Are the Uighurs also descended from the Tocharians, by any chance?”

    Well, as we know, Gingers are the worlds most persecuted group and officially ‘non-people’.

    Where do I go to collect my intersectional Pokemon points?

  8. I thought the Tocharians were sort-of Europeans i.e they had fair hair and wore plaid?

    Known to Sir Pterry fans as the McSweeneys, I believe.

  9. The government said in a white paper published by the State Council Information Office it was wrong to suggest members of Xinjiang’s minority Uighur Muslim community were descended from Turks

    I guess the only way to prove this one way or t’other is to show them a picture of Peter O’Toole and see if they try to have sex with it.

  10. So the answer to dearieme’s question seems to be” no”

    Funny that: I read the same wording to imply that the answer was “yes”. ‘Intermixed’ seemed to be the clue. In other words, I assume that the Tocharian language died out because the Ts intermarried with the Us. Even if it was just a case of the T men being killed and their women enslaved they would still have contributed to the U gene pool.

    Anyhoo, it leaves unanswered the question of why the WKPD list of civilisations in the Tarim basin excluded the Ts. Except for Recusant’s suggestion that they included too many ginger people to be classed as civilised. But on that argument the sideburns I used to sport would have ben classed as uncivilised, which is absurd. There must be more to it than that. What can it be?

  11. China has something like 8 languages on its banknotes, so they recognise the multitude of ethnicities. Propaganda is used more to sway those who don’t know, than to bullshit those who do. It’s intended for the people who aren’t sure if East Angular is in Barcelona, or the other way around.

  12. I do wonder if Xi and his cronies might be overplaying their hand generally. They are fighting on a lot of fronts: Hong Kong, Xinjiang, trying to keep a lid on Christians and Falun Gong, border disputes with all their neighbours; the B&R white elephant and the trade war. I think they really misjudged the mood in the US; it is not going back to appeasing China, even once Trump is out of the picture.

  13. I reckon they are bitterly regretting having taken back Hong Kong. Because they can’t forever concede to popular demands (essentially for autonomy and democracy) there and keep the other less-integrated parts of China in line. Yet if they don’t then things just get hairier. Yesterday’s protests, around 430,000 people. That was smaller than the earlier protests, and is still roughly equivalent to 3.5 million people marching in London. So even martial law isn’t a serious option.

    This is not a genie that will ever go back in the bottle now, and it’s impossible to keep the news out of the mainland, there are too many contacts, and even protesters handing out leaflets to mainland tourists arriving at Hung Hom.

    I was in HK during the 2014 “umbrella” protests, which passed off far more peacefully than these have (and the duration alone, and disruption caused, would not have been tolerated anywhere in the west). HK has become something of a third home for me It will be fascinating, if maybe slightly disconcerting this time, to be back there.

  14. BiG,

    Just checked a note in my wallet. 6 languages, all say “People’s Bank of China”. On the Mao side it’s in simplified Chinese characters. Then on the scenic side there 5 more. Pinyin, Arabic and three that no one I’m with know. One looks like really ancient Chinese, one possibly Burmese and another in the Latin Alphabet, maybe Turkish…

  15. “”People’s Bank of China Ten Yuan” written in 5 different languages. From top to bottom and left to right: Mandarin pinyin, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur, and Zhuang languages.”

  16. so my ‘ancient chinese’ one must be Mongolian, the Arabic is Uyghur, the Burmese looking one must be Tibetan and the Latin one Zhuang (whoever they are). Thanks Tim.

    Amusing none of the Han I’m with knew or even cared.

    The Uyghur’s problem is most Chinese think of them the way we think of pikeys so they get little sympathy. Poor fuckers.

  17. The Uyghur’s problem is also that the rest of the world will be disinclined to take their side because ………

  18. Zhuang is the old southern Chinese. Guangdong – Zhuangdong. Of the Thai/Lao language group.

  19. The Latin one is pinyin – Zhongguo is ‘China’. Chinese friends tell me they often have great difficulty making sense of pinyin if it has no indication of the Mandarin ‘tones’ – there are just too many Chinese ideograms that transliterate to the same Latin characters.

  20. Dearieme, if you were born on the Isle of Man would you still pride yourself on your Manx ancestry? Uyghur descent from Tocharians seems to be similar

  21. As the Iron Duke observed of his Irish birth: “A man may be born in a stable, but that does not make him a horse.”

  22. “They’re not exactly Han now, are they?”

    In the end, it doesn’t really matter. These statements are just excuses used to justify the repression. I mean, if the Chinese government achieves sufficient dominance they’ll be talking about how *Montana* ‘is an “inseparable” part of China despite efforts by extremists to distort history and facts in a bid to split the country . . .’

  23. @D: but the point isn’t pride, it’s why a WKPD chap missed it off his list.

    @CM: The Duke was being silly. He was born a subject of the King of Ireland.

  24. The Iron Duke was born in 1769, during which period Ireland remained a separate country (until the Act of Union in 1800 created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland).

    Since The Crown and Parliament Recognition Act 1689 made William III the King of Ireland, a title that was inherited by William’s successors and by George III at the time of the Iron Duke’s birth.

    So I don’t think the Iron Duke would actually dispute giving fealty to the King of Ireland.

  25. The Duke registered as a “gentilhomme Irlandais” when he studied at a French military academy.

    When George III interrogated Wellington’s (as he then wasn’t) aunt as to why he had at some point returned to Ireland, the good lady replied “because he is an Irishman”.

    Why Wellington indulged himself in his silly denial I don’t know. Could it have been an effect of three years at Eton? Was he ragged by the other boys?

  26. Sebastian Weetabix

    He didn’t. He never said it. It was an insult aimed at him by O’Connell. The actual quote was “the poor old Duke, what shall I say of him. To be sure he was born in Ireland, but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse”

    Protestants being “the English garrison”, you see.

  27. @SW: thank you. That makes a lot of sense. It’s obviously part of the Roman Catholic/Nationalist Irish attempt to paint all other sorts of Irishmen as not valid Irishmen at all. Anywhere else I suppose that might be called racism, especially as it is used to justify ethnic cleaning, both past and future.

    Hey ho. I should have remembered my Irish grandfather’s wisdom: “all Irish history is false”. He meant the history favoured by his own tribe, the Roman Catholic slum-dwellers.

    By the way: I recently saw a tale about the origin of the Cromwell family – that of ‘orrible Ollie. In the time of Thomas Cromwell – another family member of a firm disposition – it was understood that his father’s family originated in Ireland. Ironical, eh?

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