ABSTRACT
The question of situating the Uyghurs between China and Central Asia has many aspects. First of all, it presupposes a dilemma between China and Central Asia. It seems to me that this formulation of the question is potentially ambiguous, since these terms imply different categories of meaning. The term ‘China’ implies a political category relating to the nation-state, even if a multi-ethnic one. On the other hand, ‘Central Asia’ is a geographical notion defining a certain region within the Asian continent. Difference in the level of these categories is similar to the difference between Siberia and Russia, or between the Volga region (Povoljzh’e) and Russia. Yet such a dilemma exists because of the contradiction between the non-Chinese Central Asian origin of the Uyghurs and the current incorporation of their homeland into the Chinese nation-state.
