Socio-Economic Development in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

Alessandra Cappelletti is Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations at Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University, China. She has a PhD at the Oriental University of Naples and was Joint Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of East Asian Studies (IN-EAST) and at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Research Center for Global Cooperation of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany.

• Introduction.- Previous scholarship, methodology and the concept of development.- Xinjiang Economic Development.- Social development in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.- Walking in Two Worlds: Kashgar and Shihezi.- Land use and acquisition dynamics in Kashgar: power struggles and social change in a contemporary oasis.- Uyghurs vs Uyghurs. Fragmented identities in contemporary Xinjiang.- Conclusions – The CCP and a “bridge society” in XUAR: ethnicity as a tool for social engineering and stratification.

“Cappelletti provides a highly nuanced and illuminating account of ethnic relations in the region and what it means to be a Uyghur. It is a valuable contribution to the scholarly literature on Xinjiang. … This is a detailed book that will be of interest to scholars researching Xinjiang, the situation of the Uyghurs, as well as research of internal colonies more generally.” (Anna Hayes, China Information, Vol. 35 (1), 2021)