ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how China and the United States have viewed Xinjiang and the Central Asian region since 1990, but with the main attention paid to the period since the 11 September 2001 incidents in New York and Washington. It gives a good deal of focus to the ways in which developments in the situation in Xinjiang and Central Asia have impacted on the interrelationship between China and the United States. Both China and the United States consider Xinjiang to be part of China, though China with far more passion than the United States. In the context of this chapter, Central Asia is defined as the contemporary nation states Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, all of which were republics of the Soviet Union until that enormous state collapsed at the end of 1991. This treatment takes two particular events as particularly important to the world as a whole and the Central Asian region in particular: the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 and the September 11 incidents of 2001.
