Turkic Chinese soup: A barometer of anti-Chinese sentiment
By James M. Dorsey
A heavy soup made of pulled noodles, meat, and vegetables
symbolizes Central Asia’s close cultural and/or ethnic ties with China’s
repressed Turkic and Hui Muslims. It also explains growing Central Asian unease
with China’s re-education campaign in its north-western province of Xinjiang
and its signature infrastructure and energy driven-Belt and Road initiative.
Named Ashlan Fu and introduced to Kyrgyzstan in the late 19th
century by Dungans, exiled Chinese Hui Muslims who fled over the Tien Shan
Mountains after a failed rebellion in 1877, the soup has become a staple of
Kyrgyz cuisine.
Made of Laghman noodles, starch preserves, onion, garlic,
chilli, dark vinegar, and egg, Ashlan Fu is “the best
cure for a hangover,” says Aman Janserkeev, a Kyrgyz student.
It’s also indicative of the potential fallout of China’s
crackdown on Turkic and increasingly Hui Muslims that amounts to the
most frontal assault on Islam in post-World War Two history and of commercial
terms underlying Belt and Road-related Chinese investments in
Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia.
Some 150 members of Kyrgyzstan’s far right Kyrk Choro (Forty
Nights) group last month protested
outside the Chinese embassy in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek against the
inclusion of ethnic Kyrgyz in the up to one million Muslims detained
in re-education camps in Xinjiang as part of the Chinese crackdown.
In a sign of the times, Kyrk Choro, a nationalist group that
has gained popularity and is believed to have the support
of the Kyrgyz ministries of interior and labour, migration and youth, and the
National Security Committee (GKNB), focused in its protest
exclusively on ethnic Kyrgyz in Chinese detention.
Acting as vigilantes, Kyrk Choro four years ago raided clubs
in Bishkek in a campaign against prostitution and accused Chinese nationals of
promoting vice. In a video of an attack on a karaoke club, a Kyrk Choro leader
showed a receipt that featured a girl as one of the consumed items.
Yet, while standing up for the rights of ethnic Kyrgyz and
Kyrgyz nationals, Kyrk Choro has also called for Uighurs, the Turkic Muslims
that populate Xinjiang, to be booted out of Bishkek’s most popular clothing
bazaar and replaced by ethnic Kyrgyz.
During December’s protest, Kyrk Choro also demanded the expulsion
of illegal Chinese migrants. It further insisted that the government check the
documents of migrants, including those who had obtained Kyrgyz citizenship over
the last decade, including 268 Chinese nationals who are in majority of Kyrgyz
descent.
Kyrk Choro’s contradictory demands and claims reflect not
only a global trend towards ethnic and religious nationalism with undertones of
xenophobia but also concern that Belt and Road-related projects serve Chinese
rather than Kyrgyz and Central Asian interests.
The Kyrgyz government recently reported that 35,215
Chinese citizens had arrived in the country in 2018, many of them as
construction workers on Chinese-funded projects.
Political scientist Colleen Wood noted that social media
activists were linking criticism of Chinese commercial practices with China’s
crackdown in Xinjiang.
“One widely-shared image, which declares “Don’t
let anyone take your land,” depicts a strong fist — adorned with a
Kyrgyz flag — stopping a spindly hand — marked by a Chinese flag — from
snatching factories and a field,” Ms. Wood wrote in The Diplomat.
Ms. Wood said some activists compared Chinese practice to
the demarcation in 2002 of the Chinese-Kyrgyz border during which the
Central Asian nation handed over 1,250 square kilometres of land to China.
Another Facebook page, Kytai baskynchylygyna
karshybyz (We’re against Chinese aggression) posted articles about Chinese
mining companies operating in Kyrgyzstan, a target of Kyrgyz
protesters, alongside articles depicting the intrusiveness of the crackdown in
Xinjiang, according to Ms. Wood.
Ashlan Fu, the popular Dungan soup, could prove to be a
litmus test of the depth of mounting anti-Chinese sentiment.
An Instagram account with a Stop China feed publishes
xenophobic content about Chinese culinary habits as well as regular updates on
the crackdown that is expanding into the autonomous region of Ningxia Hui.
Ningxia Hui recently signed a cooperation agreement on
anti-terrorism with Xinjiang in a bid to learn from the crackdown on the Turkic
Muslims or in the words of the
Global Times, a Communist Party organ, “to learn from Xinjiang's
experiences in promoting social stability.”
In advance of another protest at the Chinese embassy in
Bishkek scheduled for January 17, Kyrgyz First Deputy Prime Minister Kubatbek
Boronov called
this week on the public not to believe anti-Chinese postings on social media.
In an acknowledgement of Kyrk Choro’s appeal, Mr. Boronov
asserted that the group had denied participating in the December protest.
The government, much like Turkey
and the vast majority of Muslim countries, has so far evaded taking China to
task on its crackdown for fear of jeopardizing its relations with the People’s Republic.
Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jeenbekov insisted last month
that “the ethnic Kyrgyz of China are citizens of China, who obey the laws of
their country. How can we intervene in their
domestic matters? We can’t.”
If Kazakhstan where the
issue of ethnic Kazakhs detained in China has flared up is anything
to go by, the Kyrgyz government is walking a tightrope.
Asyla Alymkulova, a
Kyrgyz national recently established the Committee to Protect the Kyrgyz People in
China after her husband, Shairbek Doolotkhan, a Chinese-born Muslim, vanished
in October on a business trip to Xinjiang.
Mr. Doolotkhan’s company subsequently advised Ms. Alymkulova
that her husband had been "sent away to study" in a camp.
A
Kyrgyz diplomat was among representatives of 12 non-Western countries whom
China in the last week invited to Xinjiang to counter criticism of the
crackdown and showcase economic and social progress. A group of
foreign journalists was invited separately.
Short of a reunion with her husband, there is little that is
likely convince Ms. Alymkulova or the relatives of thousands of other Central
Asians, including at least 2,500 Kazakhs, that Chinese policy towards Muslims
is benign and benefitting the community and the region’s progress.
That in turn will not make things easier for the Kyrgyz and
other Muslim governments at a time that ethnic and cultural identities in a
nationalistic and at times xenophobic environment are becoming prevalent. Kyrgyz
attitudes towards Ashlan Fu may be the barometer.
Dr.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture,
and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast.
James is the author of The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title and a co-authored
volume, Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and
the Middle East and North Africa as well as Shifting
Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa
and just published China
and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom
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