Green Colonialism in China: Socialist Legacy and Kazakh Dispossession

This text by Guldana Salimjan examines indigenous (in particular Kazakh) dispossession by Han settler colonialism in the western province of Xinjiang, since the creation of the People’s Republic of China. In it, she denies the promises of Chinese multiethnic socialism and green development as narratives through which this dispossession is legitimized.

The People’s Republic of China is often overlooked as a settler colonial state, given its nation-building narrative steeped in rhetoric of anti-colonialism, revolution, and Third-World solidarity against Western imperialism. Yet, this narrative in fact legitimizes China’s violent annexation of Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia as a project of socialist liberation. And in doing so it masks a colonial political ecology in these regions under the guise of development. Autonomy as promised in the official titles and laws of these regions has been largely symbolic, with the central government consistently repeating empty slogans such as a “unified multiethnic family” that belies the genuine self-determination of these land-based peoples. Among the 55 “minority nationalities” officially recognized by the Chinese state are Kazakhs, along with Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongols, and many others. Despite being given affirmative recognition, they are often perceived by settler state actors as needing modernization and economic development, and their traditional lifestyles are labeled as “backward.” This outlook underpins the Chinese colonial framework in the western borderlands such as Xinjiang.