ABSTRACT
The fortieth anniversary of the establishment of the Xinjiang Uyghur
Autonomous Region was celebrated on October 1st 1995 with a series of
meetings and seminars, and the construction of a 100-foot high monument to
commemorate the arrival of the Peoples Liberation Army and the ‘peaceful
liberation’ of Xinjiang in 1949. An eighty-strong delegation of senior political
figures from Beijing, several of them with Xinjiang connections, arrived in
Urumqi on September 29th. The delegation was led by Jiang Chunyun who is a
Deputy Prime Minister and member of the Politburo. It included Tomur
Dawamat, now Vice-Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National
People’s Congress, but formerly Chairman of the Xinjiang regional government,
Ismail Amat, member of the State Council, Vice-Chairman of the Committee of
the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and Minister of
the State Nationalities Affairs Committee and the veteran Seypidin Azizi
(Saifuddin) CPPCC National Committee Vice-Chairman and founding titular
head of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region government when it was
established on October 1st 1955, all three of them Uyghurs. Yu Yongbo, member
of the Central Military Commission and member of the General Political
Department of the PLAwas the other senior member of the delegation, reflecting
the importance of the military in Xinjiang.1
