HIV/AIDS in Xinjiang: A Growing Regional Challenge

HIV/AIDS in Xinjiang: A Growing Regional Challenge

Bates Gill & Song Gang*

Introduction

Jutting into Central Asia and bordering on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia, and on the disputed Jammu and Kashmir and Aksai Chin regions, Xinjiang presents Beijing with an array of opportunities and challenges. The region is rich in tapped and untapped natural resources and makes up nearly a sixth of China’s landmass. It provides Beijing with a significant strategic foothold in the heart of the Eurasian landmass and a claim to exert its national interests in this increasingly important part of the world.

Xinjiang – its official name is Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, with “Xinjiang” translating as “New Frontier” – is also home to some of China’s most difficult political and social ills. The challenges posed to Beijing by the Uyghur separatist movement and localized unrest –including occasional acts of violence and terrorism – are well known. But Xinjiang is also an area of growing transnational concern. Chinese authorities suspect that some Uyghur and other ethnic
separatists train abroad, such as in Afghanistan or Pakistan, in order to return to China or to carry out violent activities elsewhere. About 60 percent of Xinjiang’s population is composed of ethnic groups – largely Uyghur, but also with significant populations of Kazakh and Hui
minorities as well – which have familial, linguistic, cultural, historic, and religious bonds across China’s western border to Central Asia. The autonomous region also serves as a convenient drug trafficking route, lying between opium growing regions of Afghanistan and the Southeast Asia and heroin markets in Central Asia, Russia, and Europe. Not surprisingly, intravenous drug use has become a major problem in Xinjiang, especially among ethnic populations in Xinjiang’s cities, such as Urumqi, Yining and Kashi.

Many of these domestic and transnational challenges converge on the growing problem of HIV/AIDS in Xinjiang. Neither Beijing nor the international community has focused sufficient attention on the HIV problem in Xinjiang, and how it relates to broader transnational concerns of drug trafficking, the spread of infectious disease, and political discontent. To dig deeper into these issues, this article examines HIV/AIDS in Xinjiang and considers the transnational security threats it may pose to China and its neighbors in Central Asia.

Full Text
http://www.silkroadstudies.org/new/docs/cef/quarterly/august_2006/gillgang.pdf