ABSTRACT
The Chinese names for the western provinces in China imply their position in the Chinese empire: Tibet is not called ‘the land of snows’, as it is in Tibetan, but rather ‘Xizang’, which means ‘western storehouse’ or ‘western treasure-house’. China’s communist leaders have attempted to profit with only limited success from this vast western territory-a treasure-house of minerals and resources, but one that is largely uninhabited and impoverished-in their forty years of rule over the region. Xinjiang, the huge region populated by Uighur (pronounced ‘vigour’), Hui (pronounced ‘h-weigh’), and other Muslim peoples in the north-west of what is now China, means in Chinese, ‘new border’ or ‘new frontier’. Yet many of the Muslims who live in this ‘new frontier’ have fought to make large parts of it into independent regions.
