Uyghur Scholar Kahar Barat

Wang Lixiong

The Chinese government uses frequently-lampooned language when it comes to official rhetoric on Xinjiang’s historical relationship with the rest of China proper. As with Tibet, the CCP asserts that Xinjiang has been a part of a Chinese polity or “nation” constantly and for a very long period time, almost invariably traced in official histories back to the embassy of Zhang Qian through Xinjiang to the Yuezhi in the 2nd century BC. Interestingly, by choosing Zhang Qian as a marker for the beginning of Xinjiang’s “Chineseness,” the party is obliquely saying that Xinjiang’s essential belonging-ness to China is predicated on Han presence in the region.

Is it really that simple, however? In this second installment of a conversation on Xinjiang history between Uyghur historian Kahar Barat and Chinese dissident and intellectual Wang Lixiong, Barat takes a historically informed but uncompromising view on the myth of unbroken Han presence in Xinjiang. Xinjiang history, Barat argues, demonstrably is a checkerboard of political, cultural, and religious influences both emerging locally and coming in – from all directions. Han participation in that exchange of wars, ideas, cultures, religions, and writing systems was only one facet, and even the most clear instances of Chinese involvement of the region could be accused of being only temporary, limited, or not even Han at all – the Tang imperial family itself belonging to a migration of pastoral nomads of the north filling in the vacuum left by the bloody Three Kingdoms period.

Delightfully, Barat ends this phase of the discussion with some fiery counter-rhetoric, implying that “Chineseness” is an artificial outgrowth of a monopoly that Chinese writing had on “culture” in the area up until the introduction of newer writing systems from the West – a delineation that marks today’s Uyghurs as belonging to a different cultural sphere than the Chinese. This, of course, isn’t the only controversial assertion Barat makes in this section, or the previous one, so I invite all readers to share any thoughts in the comments section!

Wang Lixiong: About how many significant expansions or colonizing activities have been carried out by Han Chinese in Xinjiang throughout history?

Kahar: Zhang Qian was an envoy of the Western Han, on his first journey he brought 100 men, on his second, 300 men. The frontier commandery he established lasted 70 years. Ban Chao was an envoy of the Eastern Han, on his first trip he brought 36 men; later, he brought reinforcements numbering 1800 men. Ban Chao was skilled at making local alliances and managed a standoff against the Xiongnu for 30 years. The Tang Dynasty dispatched large armies to Xinjiang. The Four Western Region Protectorates they established lasted 150 years.

Wang Lixiong: How long did the Qu Clan of the Gaochang last?

Kahar: About two centuries. The Tang Emperor Taizong would later take the entire Qu Clan nobility and send them to Henan under escort. They constituted an obstacle to Emperor Taizong’s ongoing conquest of the Western Regions. Emperor Taizong himself came from a clan similar to the Qu clan. It’s a very complicated situation, with layers upon layers.

Wang Lixiong: Was Emperor Taizong from this specific clan?

Kahar: No, he wasn’t from this exact tribe, but he did belong to another group of Sinicized Xianbei. Their surname, “Li” was actually created for themselves after the fact. After the Li clan established the Tang dynasty they still maintained their Altaic traditions and culture to a considerable degree. For example, first, from the Xiongnu up to the Gaochang Huihu Uyghurs and the Karakhanid Kingdom there was this custom of establishing two capitals, the Tang Dynasty of the Li clan did the same using Chang’an and Luoyang as their capitals. Second, traditionally our Khans had honorific titles, with some reaching up to 20 characters long. Chinese dynasties always strictly observed a naming format of regnal title, temple name, and posthumous name, but starting from the the Tang dynasty new honorifics were added. Third, our affinal relationships were always between royal and noble tribes, not just any woman from some random tribe could be married in and become Empress. When you investigate you see that a great deal of Tang dynasty Empresses came from other Xianbei clans. On these three points there are differences with traditional Chinese dynastic systems, proving that the Tang dynasty was an Altaic dynasty.

Wang Lixiong: Can Zhang Qian, who served only as an envoy and brought 180 men, really be considered an example of Han expansion into Xinjiang?

Kahar: His fame comes from the fact that he was an envoy, his mission was to reconnoiter the situation of the Xiongnu. Back in those times the Emperors were foolish in the same way good old Mao was with this backyard furnaces. On hearing that the Ferghana valley was home to a breed of “blood-sweating horses,” the Han emperor ordered Li Guangli to lead tens of thousands of troops into the deserts and snow-capped mountains to seek out this horse. Very few returned alive, leading along just a few dozen horses. Sitting in Chang’an and giving orders is easy. Think about it, in those days passing through Gansu alone would heap up fatalities. Going from Dunhuang to Hami, from Hami to Turpan, from Turpan to Kashgar, all of it is endless desert, and then on top of that, one must pass through the snow-capped Pamir mountains to reach the Ferghana Valley, which is today in Uzbekistan, that’s enough to make several tens of thousands of soldiers tire to death on the route.

Wang Lixiong: During the Han dynasty, other than these military actions, did any colonizing occur? Was it just coming back after snatching up a few horses, or did anyone get left behind to start cultivating land?

Kahar: It wasn’t that simple, there still was the problem of the Xiongnu. They (the Han dynasty) were unable to fully vanquish the Xiongnu, it was quite an annoyance, right when their troops were prepared to pursue, the Xiongnu would fall back. After investigating this this they discovered that after dispatching their troops to the battlefield logistics was not a cause for concern among the Xiongnu, because they (the Xiongnu) were able to order the local city-states to prepare provisions that the troops were able to use anywhere at leisure, and consequently without cutting off the supplies between the Xiongnu and those city states, Xiongnu reinforcements were essentially limitless, and the Han would be incapable of destroying the enemy at their roots. Therefore the Han dynasty dispatched troops specifically to occupy these city-states located in Xinjiang, and the Han troops themselves set up tuntian ¹, causing the Xiongnu to lose their source of provisions and ultimately bringing about the defeat of the Xiongnu.

Wang Lixiong: And so what, then, is the connection between Uyghurs and the Xiongnu?

Kahar: Both belong to the Altaic language system. Göktürks were a large sub-component within the Xiongnu, the Xiongnu weren’t limited just to Göktürks, within the Xiongnu there were several other races. Of the ten largest tribal communities within the Xiongnu, the Göktürks were a relatively large group. Now, whether or not the Göktürks comprised, say, 50% or 60% of the Xiongnu, that we can’t clearly determine. Today Mongolians are saying they are the descendants of the Xiongnu, that is incorrect. They originated with the Donghu, who were the enemies of the Xiongnu.

Wang Lixiong: Can the city-states and small nations of those times be considered Uyghur? Or had the Uyghur race yet to form?

Kahar: At that time Uyghurs weren’t an independent tribe, they were a tribe within the Göktürks.

Wang Lixiong: Other than the Turks, such as the Uyghurs, that succeeded the the Xiongnu, where did the other peoples comprising the Xiongnu end up?

Kahar: The Xiongnu dispersed, their troops forming their own respective banners. This happened after the Han dynasty and so there’s no written record. Tribes migrated, becoming their own kingdoms, this is an issue that remains very hazy. These would later become a part of the history of the Göktürks, the Rouran, the Xianbei, et cetera. In the fourth and fifth centuries one branch under the leadership of Attila came close to conquering all of Europe.

Wang Lixiong: During that period of time how long did the Han presence in Xinjiang last?

Kahar: Probably not even a full century, after the Xiongnu were defeated the Han dynasty itself also disappeared, there really was no Western Region to speak of during the Three Kingdoms period.

Wang Lixiong: Right, during the Three Kingdoms civil war there really was no ability to manage the frontier. But during the Tang dynasty was Han expansion into Xinjiang considerable?

Kahar: During the Tang Dynasty the primary concern was war with the Western Göktürks and the Qu clan of Gaochang. Of the tens of thousands of troops dispatched by the Tang a good number of them surrendered to the contemporaneous Turkic tribes and the city states located in the western regions. We don’t know how many of these were Han. In China, the Three Kingdoms period was a bloodbath, some estimates say that over half the population was exterminated. The common people were scattered in all directions, and many fled into the forests and valleys of the south. The central plains of China were left in ruins, infested with bandits, leaving no way to plant crops or build buildings. As a result, the pastoral-nomads of the north migrated down in batches, and eventually settled. The central plains became the geographical foundation of the “Sixteen Kingdoms of the Five Barbaric Tribes.” The settled nomads studied Chinese writing. For a culture without a writing system, the discovering of writing is revolutionary, an exciting thing. As a result there was a revolution in the culture of the central plains, everyone studied Chinese, and not just the writing, but even more importantly the language of Buddhism. Buddhism was extremely instrumental in spreading the Chinese language. In the south, they encountered both Han culture and Buddhism. If you want to be able to read Buddhist texts, you had to study Chinese, you know?

During that time, the language that Kumarajiva² spoke was Tocharian. Tocharian is unique in that it’s a type of European language, roughly similar to today’s Lithuanian language. The royal courts of that area would spend manpower and money to translate Buddhist texts; Kumarajiva would stand and speak, and then several dozen people would record his translations. Buddhism was unable to persuade Han followers of Confucius and Lao Tze, but thoroughly penetrated the barbarian believers of Shamanistic religions. During the Northern Wei period Buddhism entered a Golden Age.

Wang Lixiong: At that time were many peoples already using Han writing? Perhaps established practices in teaching and translating Han writing lead to Chinese becoming the primary language of transmission for Buddhism.

Kahar: That’s correct, when the Xianbei arrived a translation of Buddhist texts into Chinese had long ago been completed in the central plains. In fact, Chinese characters were really what brought about the Han ethnicity, without these characters there would be no Han ethnicity. The Han ethnicity really is just over a hundred peoples assimilated into one body. This process is still continuing. China had 56 ethnicities, after the past 50 years there’s probably only 6 left. In fact, over half probably exist entirely in name only.

Wang Lixiong: Did Uyghur writing already exist at that time? Why didn’t Uyghur adopt Chinese characters? Is it because there were too few Uyghurs?

Kahar: It’s like this, Chinese writing managed to go beyond so many high mountains and wild forests, going as far as Vietnam, even jumping over the ocean to Japan, however, it never managed to climb over that wall right next to it – over Great Wall, to where we Turks live. By the time Turkic peoples needed writing, they had already studied phonetic scripts coming from the West. Those scripts were much simpler, 40 characters, much more convenient thatn Chinese. Having tasted a sample of a phonetic script, who would then go and study Chinese?

Wang Lixiong: In that case, why didn’t the sixteen kingdoms of the five barbaric tribes go and study Turkic writing?

Kahar: Turkic script appeared in the 8th century, the Xianbei existed in the 5th century. With the sudden rise of the Turkic Huihu Uyghurs, all Turkic Huihu Uyghur inscriptions refer to the Tang as Tabghac, the “Tuoba people” and the “Tuoba language.” The Tuoba clan aws a branch of the Altaic Xianbei peoples, speakers of a Turkic language. The Chuvash people living in Russia today may well be the direct descendants of the Tuoba. Histories written in Chinese simply have no way of capturing the linguistic and cultural background of the times. It’s similar as to what happened with the Manchu peoples, later. After just three generations they had completely forgotten their original script. It had to do with the fact that materials in their language were so scarce.

The Tuoba peoples went south early, the rise of the Turkic races came later. The Tuoba settled in the Yellow River basin, abandoned their nomadic lifestyle, and gradually became a settled people, became Han.

Wang Lixiong: There have always been people who say that assimilative abilities of Chinese culture are quite significant, taking other cultures and absorbing them, do you think this is because Chinese characters appeared early and were adopted as a tool by other ethnicities, that assimilation occurred mainly through Chinese writing?

Kahar: Chinese writing is just one aspect, it’s also because Buddhist scriptures were first translated into Chinese. Writing in and of itself is advantageous, its better than not having writing, that goes without saying. Chinese characters have recorded many valuable things. If I were a tribesman of that day, I’d definitely want to study a writing system, but during that time there simply was no choice, just Chinese characters. Naturally, Han characters are quite backwards compared to phonetic writing systems. Chinese writing is what made China, just as the Chinese people created by Chinese characters don’t mesh with the rest of the world, wherever they go, they make Chinatowns.

[2]:^ Kumarajiva was a Buddhist monk from Kucha whose mastery of several languages, including Sanskrit, enabled him to make many vital translations of religious texts. See his article at Wikipedia for more information.

Some of you may have noticed about a week ago an article in the New York Times by correspondent Edward Wong titled, “The Dead Tell a Tale China Doesn’t Care to Listen To,” about the famous preserved corpse uncovered in the Tarim Basin and dubbed the “Loulan Beauty.” So the Loulan Beauty looks European and this doesn’t jive well with the continual and enthusiastic insistence on behalf of the Chinese government that Xinjiang has always been a part of Chinese territory. Like almost all the articles written about Xinjiang in mainstream media outlets there was nothing strikingly new about the content and the article itself relied mostly on the “wow” factor one usually can get from telling your average Joe how weird Xinjiang is. Michael over at The Opposite End of China made a great post recently on the eye-rolling factor of the article and we just let the article slip by all together here at The New Dominion.

However, while those of us who have gone a little beyond the surface here in Xinjiang may just roll our eyes and sigh at Wong’s cliche observations, it of course is inevitable that legions of Chinese who lay their eyes on the article would get their feelings hurt and begin the nationalistic backlash. Spearheading the effort is the Global Times, a simmering, sensationalist tabloid that has a reputation for being sentimental and patriotic. Their article titled “American Media Dares to Use Loulan Beauty to Cast Doubt on Chinese Sovereignty” was too much to not write about.

The American newspaper “The New York Times” recently had the gall to publish an article absurdly using the “Loulan Beauty” to speculate that Xinjiang is not a part of the territory of China. That article states that since the “Loulan Beauty’s” appearance is evidence of her not being Chinese and also since her arrival to modern-day Xinjiang vastly predated emissary Zhang Qian’s arrival to the Western Regions, this constitutes proof that Xinjiang is not part of the territory of China.

The article is a short one. It gets right to the point by incredulously stating the NYT article’s goal of proving via the Loulan Beauty that Xinjiang is not a part of the territory of China, then picks a few choice quotes from the original article to display to the disgust of the Chinese readers. Finally, the author brings in two experts, a historian and the head of the Central Asia Research Institute in Xinjiang, to deal the killing blows to Wong’s thesis. The head of the institute, Pan Zhipang, observes that solid control over Xinjiang by a Chinese government was established in Xinjiang as early as 60 B.C. and Zhang Qian was only a part of that effort – a thousands year old mummy is irrelevant to that historical establishment. Historian Zhang Wei invokes international law, remarking that China’s continuous and effective rule over Xinjiang today fits in with the agreed upon definition of sovereignty and renders the origins of a 3800 year old mummy irrelevant. If thousands year old claims rather than effective governance defines sovereignty, the Global Times writer snarkily quips, then Americans should give America back to the Indians. And thus the article ends.

After supping on  this delightful buffet of sarcasm and righteous indignation for a little bit I found myself choking and gagging on one little chicken bone – namely,  nowhere in the article does Edward Wong argue that Xinjiang is not a part of the territory of China.

Sure, Wong’s article undeniably is soaked in a skeptical tone aimed at the current Chinese government, but while Wong makes a number of arguments, Xinjiang not being a part of China is clearly not one of them. For example, the title of the Times article – “a story that China doesn’t want to hear.” China obviously means the Chinese government, but is the story “Xinjiang is not a part of China?” Not quite.

An exhibit on the first floor of the museum here gives the government’s unambiguous take on the history of this border region: “Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of the territory of China,” says one prominent sign.

But walk upstairs to the second floor, and the ancient corpses on display seem to tell a different story.

So as we begin reading Wong’s article, he’s trying to get us to cast doubt on the statement, “Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of the territory of China.” Here’s where things get a little messy – when we’re looking at the predicate “has been” the tense implies a kind of permanence and uninterruptedness, whereas the Global Times author starts of by quoting this quote of a translation of a quote (yeesh), writing in Chinese, 新疆是中国领土不可分割的一部分, in which the subtlety of the tense “has been” gets sucked into Chinese grammar as the verb 是 which will inevitably be interpreted by native language readers as “China is an inalienable part of the territory of China.”

For a moment let’s ignore the stupidity of a sentence that was conceived in Mandarin, turned into a standardized policy statement, translated into English to be placed on a museum sign, was seen by a Chinese-American reporter, was quoted in an American newspaper, and then was seen by a Chinese reporter who took the phrase and translated it back into Chinese. Ha ha.

The difference between calling doubt upon “has been an inalienable part” and calling doubt upon “is an inalienable part” is pretty huge. The first one questions a long, unbroken claim of authority that snakes deep into the past without a clear end. The second one questions a sovereign nation’s right to rule its own territory today. When we acknowledge this difference we actually can find some common ground between Wong and the indignant expert interviewed in the Global Times article.

“As early as 60 B.C., China’s Western Han government had already established a protectorate in Xinjiang, the highest level administrative structure established by the Han dynasty in the Western Regions.” says Pan, “That China had established a local government there is proof that Xinjiang has since ancient times been a part of China’s territory.” Basically Pan is blasting what he is told Wong is claiming about the Loulan beauty by astutely pointing out that indeed there is a beginning boundary to Chinese rule over Xinjiang -the establishment of a protectorate there during the Han dynasty – and what happened before then is irrelevant to Chinese rule today. In this sense, Pan and Wong can both agree – imagining Chinese sovereignty into the 2nd millennium BC would be kind of absurd.

However, it’s not Chinese sovereignty that Wong is questioning, and that makes the Global Times’ impassioned criticism a big, smelly red herring, completely irrelevant. Instead what Wong is questioning is the more subtle idea that a “Chinese identity” could be projected beyond the first Han protectorate, far beyond 1st century BC; that regardless of the presence or absence of Han Chinese control in the region, the individuals were Chinese at heart – not “China” the ethnic Han cultural body, but “China” the multiethnic nation-state. This idea is insidious in its own way, because it depicts a people predating Chinese rule who nonetheless were clamoring in their hearts to be members of the great minzu family, an desire which was fulfilled when the Han dynasty came in the 1st century BC – an Eastern twist to the “heathens need Jesus” rationale that provided the spiritual and social impetus for colonization by European nations.

Does this idea exist in the Chinese leadership? I think it does. We can look back to Pan’s own words. While on one hand he quite correctly, in my opinion, stresses the difference between the concepts of “ethnicity” and “country,” right afterwards he strangely goes on to say, “Westerners often conceive China only to be composed of Han Chinese, but in reality China is an integrated, multiethnic country, and even though the “Loulan Beauty” is not Han, she still may be Chinese” [Emphasis mine]. Furthermore, one of the central writing points of Wong’s article is the befuddling insecurity on behalf of Chinese scientists preventing them from allowing genetic analysis by international scholars of the Loulan Beauty and other Xinjiang mummies. Beyond that, anyone who has visited the Autonomous Regional Museum and Urumqi can tell you much of it is a grand exercise in insecurity, with constant reminders in multiple languages to museum-goers that Xinjiang, no matter from what angle you’re looking at it, is a part of China and don’t even bother to question that axiom in front of all this overwhelming historical evidence.

If there’s no disputing that territorial integrity and sovereignty is all about who is effectively administering a region at a given time, why is there this shroud of paranoia and insecurity around the Loulan Beauty? Why are scientists so protective about her genetic makeup, and why do Chinese social scholars have to qualify their statements about her with “She still may be Chinese?” It’s because the issue runs deeper than sovereignty. As an unelected government, the CCP and even the autonomous regional government are obsessed with rationales, and justifiably so. Without the stamp of popular approval bestowed by elections, the CCP instead has to convince its modern-day subjects that it knows what’s good for them anyways and is providing that – for example, the unending stream of rhetoric about stability and economic prosperity, which, to be fair, in many cases, is not untrue. Ethnic regions that are historically less “Han” but are part of the PRC play a special role in this self-justification. If the titular minorities of these autonomous regions not only desire benevolent Han rule, but also are entitled to it with their long history as “proto-Chinese” peoples, then the non-elected government of, say, Xinjiang, is legitimate, even if real power lies mostly with the party organs consisting primarily of appointed Han Chinese.

As a private individual with a strong interest in Xinjiang, I do not have any objections to the PRC’s territorial integrity and sovereignty over Xinjiang. It’s a fact, just as historian Zhang Wei observes. What I do object to, however, is the sustained educational drive (including things like the Regional Museum in Urumqi) to to depict pre-Han dynasty peoples of Xinjiang as somehow belonging to the multiethnic “Chinese” identity. In addition to displaying the traditional insecurity of the Communist Party and being pretty unnecessary in light of international conventions regarding sovereignty, I consider this stubborn belief contributing to the “you were made for this and you asked for this” narrative that places the “big brother Han” on far higher ground than the other, ostensibly equal minorities of China. Wong is a journalist. His interest in the novelty of Xinjiang, Uyghurs, and the Loulan Beauty is strictly business and he’s writing for a broad audience, and so his article doesn’t delve deeply into the challenges the Loulan Beauty present to the idea of a pan-ethnic primordial Chinese identity. That, however, is still what he’s doing – not suggesting Xinjiang is entitled to become its own nation because a 3800 year old mummy looks European.

What really needs to be acknowledged by all sides is that when something is almost four millenia distant from the present, modern day concepts such as ethnic identity or national identity are completely irrelevant. Professor Pan, as far as the article went, gets close to this understanding – but not close enough. To turn the Global Times reporter’s misguided sarcasm on its head, claiming that the Loulan Beauty could retroactively be considered a member of the multiethnic Chinese nation state is as illogical as claiming the pueblo Indians of the 10th century were dyed in the wool red white and blue members of the United States of America melting pot eight centuries before the USA even existed. The Loulan Beauty beauty isn’t “Chinese” because “Chinese” didn’t exist back then, nor, it must be said, is she Uyghur. She should be nothing more than a representative of prehistoric life in Xinjiang that can be appreciated by the young, the old, Han, Uyghur, and foreigner – without any devaluing political baggage.

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If you can read Chinese, I also recommend you peruse the comments section to the Global Times article for a nice sampling of typical angry youth (愤青) rage. Lots of amusing yet red herring remarks on giving Alaska back to Russia and America back to the Indians. If there are any intelligent comments that do more than just illustrate angry youth contempt it may merit a future post.

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Full translation of the Global Times Article below:

Global Times Special Correspondent Shang Bin

The American newspaper “The New York Times” recently had the gall to publish an article absurdly using the “Loulan Beauty” to speculate that Xinjiang is not a part of the territory of China. That article states that since the “Loulan Beauty’s” appearance is evidence of her not being Chinese and also since her arrival to modern-day Xinjiang vastly predated emissary Zhang Qian’s arrival to the Western Regions, this constitutes proof that Xinjiang is not part of the territory of China.
The “Loulan Beauty” the article mentions refers to a preserved body unearthed in the Lop Nur region of Xinjiang, China, discovered by Chinese archaeologist Mu Shunying in 1980. At approximately 3800 years old, it is the oldest body uncovered in Xinjiang to date.

The article, published on November 18 in the New York Times, is titled “The Dead Tell a Tale China Doesn’t Care to Listen To.” The author notes the Chinese government’s assertion that “Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of the territory of China.” “However, the corpses seem to tell a different story.” He writes that from the appearance of the “Loulan Beauty” one can determine that “she does not look like what one thinks of is Chinese,” and that “the very first people to settle the area came from the west — down from the steppes of Central Asia and even farther afield — and not from the fertile plains and river valleys of the Chinese interior.”

The author also mentions that Chinese officials, when offering proof that Xinjiang is a part of Chinese territory, often mention Zhang Qian’s mission to the Western Regions, “but the mummies show, though, that humans entered the region thousands of years earlier, and almost certainly from the west.” The author says that the “Loulan Beauty” is 3800 years old, and that the time of Zhang Qian’s mission to the Wesern Reigions was during the Western Han dynasty, in the second century B.C.

The head of the Central Asia Research Institute at the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences, Pan Zhiping accepted an interview with a Global Times correspondent and said regarding this fallacy that the article has made a “conceptual error.” The concepts of “ethnicity” and “country”, he argues, are two completely different concepts. Westerners often conceive China only to be composed of Han Chinese, but in reality China is an integrated, multiethnic country, and even though the “Loulan Beauty” is not Han, she still may be Chinese. Furthermore, as early as 60 B.C., China’s Western Han government had already established a protectorate in Xinjiang, the highest level administrative structure established by the Han dynasty in the Western Regions. That China had established a local government there is proof that Xinjiang has since ancient times been a part of China’s territory; Zhang Qian served only as an emissary to the Western Regions, and his activities there are not considered the conclusive evidence that Xinjiang belongs to Chinese territory.

Historian Zhang Wei told a Global Times correspondent that what is determined by the history of territorial claims and what is determined by the present reality are also completely different concepts. According to international legal conventions, what determines a place’s status as “territory” is a  nation carrying out continuous and effective management of that place. The Western Han central government established a protectorate in the Western Regions in 60 BC, and for over 2000 years since that time the Chinese central government has basically maintained continuous and effective control over the Xinjiang reason. Zhang Wei states that the article’s comparison of the 3800 year old corpse of the Loulan Beauty with the Chinese government’s over 2000 years of continuous effective rule over Xinjiang is completely lacking in logic. Should the argument of the article be implemented, then American should be returned to the Native Americans.