Whether a nation can develop and grow, the number of people is a hard indicator. The Uighurs in Xinjiang certainly won't be an exception.
In 2010, the sixth national census counted the total Uyghur population of 10.1715 million. The latest report is that between 2010 and 2018, the Uyghur population rose from this figure to 12.7184 million, an increase of 2.5469 million, an increase of 25.04%. As far as the overall population of Xinjiang is concerned, from 2010 to 2018, the permanent population of Xinjiang rose from 21.8158 million to 24.8676 million, an increase of 3.0518 million, an increase of 13.99%. [i]
That is to say, from 2010 to 2018, the total population of Xinjiang increased by 3.0518 million, the Uyghur population increased by 2.5469 million, and the population of other ethnic groups increased by less than 510,000.
Among the existing ethnic groups in Xinjiang, the ethnic groups with a population of more than 100,000 are Uyghurs, Han Chinese, Kazakhs, Hui, Kyrgyz, Mongolians and other ethnic groups. The Han population ranks second after the Uyghur population. In the same period from 2010 to 2018, the Han population in Xinjiang rose from 8.8299 million to 9.0068 million, an increase of 176,900, an increase of 2.0%.
That is to say, from 2010 to 2018, the han population in Xinjiang grew by less than 10% of the Uighur population. It is not difficult to see that from 2010 to 2018, the increase in the Uyghur population was not only higher than the increase in the population of xinjiang, but also higher than the increase in the population of other ethnic minorities, and more significantly higher than the increase in the Han population.
However, what has been the historical situation of the Uyghur population? Let's start with the Republic of China at the end of the Qing Dynasty.
Yuan Dahua was an official at the end of the Qing Dynasty, and in the early winter of 1910, he was transferred from the Inspector of Jiangxi to the Inspector of Xinjiang, and was the last Inspector of Xinjiang. After he took office, he presided over the work of the Xinjiang Tongzhi Bureau as an inspector, asked the outgoing envoy Wang Shufeng to serve as the general editor, and gathered some alternate officials and retired officials, which lasted two years to compile the "Xinjiang Tuzhi", totaling 1.5 million words. According to records such as the Xinjiang Atlas, in 1908, the Uyghur population in Xinjiang was about 1.57 million.
It should be noted that at that time, there was no concept of "Uyghur" as we now say. "Uyghur" is a national self-designation, which is generally considered to mean "unity", "unity" and "assistance". In different historical periods, Chinese literature has different translations of this family name. In 4th-century literature, it is called "Yuan Qi". In the literature of the late 6th and early 7th centuries, it is called "Wei Qi". Before 788, it was called "Huiyi" in the literature. From 788 to the 1670s, it was called "Uighurs". From the 1670s to the 1640s, it was called "Fearful Vulture". From the 1640s to the early 20th century, it was called "Huibu" and "Entanglement". It began to be called "Uyghur" in 1935 and has been used ever since.
Obviously, the "Xinjiang Tuzhi" is talking about "fearing the Wu'er", but this is only a difference in the title and does not affect the actual number of the population. In this regard, we pushed the time forward to the beginning of the Qing Dynasty.
Miao Pusheng, born in November 1948, graduated from Northwest University majoring in history, and successively served as deputy director of the research office of the Institute of History of the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences, deputy director and director of the Institute of History. He presided over the projects of the National Qing History Compilation Committee, "Ethnography of Uyghur Chronicles" and "Translation of Qing Dynasty Chahatai Literature", and served as the full-time deputy director of the editorial board of "General History of Xinjiang". According to Miao Pusheng's research and calculations, as well as historical records such as the Great Qing Huidian, in 1761, there were 59,581 Uyghur households and 208,390 mouths in Xinjiang. However, later experts and scholars further supplemented this figure according to historical data, and inferred that the Uyghur population in Xinjiang in the early Qing Dynasty was about 250,000 people. [ii]
He Bingdi, historian, Jinhua, Zhejiang. He graduated from Tsinghua University in 1938 and received his Ph.D. in British History from Columbia University in 1952. After that, he turned to the study of national history. Representative works include "Population Decline in the Early Ming Dynasty and Its Related Problems", "Theory of Social History in the Ming and Qing Dynasties", "Cradle of the Orient", "Sixty Years of Reading History", etc. According to He Bingdi's research and calculations, the population of the early Qing Dynasty (1650-1700) should be between 100 million and 150 million, but other scholars believe that the population of the early Qing Dynasty was not so much, and gave a figure of 70-80 million people. If we take the middle number, the population in the early Qing Dynasty was about 110 million.
After that, there was little controversy about the national population figure, and by the 27th year of Qianlong (1762), the population reached 200 million, by the end of the 18th century, it reached more than 300 million, and in the late Qing Dynasty it exceeded 400 million. That is to say, from the beginning of the Qing Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty, the net increase of Chinese mouth increased by more than 300 million. There is an important reason for this, that is, in the late Ming Dynasty, the introduction of high-yield crops such as sweet potatoes, corn, peanuts, etc., which were further promoted and popularized during the Qing Dynasty made Qing Dynasty China capable of supporting a much larger population than the previous generation. But even so, the Uyghur population increased from 250,000 in the early Qing Dynasty to 1.57 million in the late Qing Dynasty, a growth rate higher than the national growth rate from 100 million to 400 million.
In August 1944, Sheng Shicai stepped down and the Kuomintang began to directly rule Xinjiang. At that time, Xinjiang had 10 regions with a total of 79 counties, the most populous kashgar district had 957,000 people, and Dihua District (now Urumqi) had only 410,000 people. The total population is 3.9534 million, and the Uyghur population is less than 2 million.
On September 25 and 26, 1949, Xinjiang was liberated through peaceful means, opening a new page in the history of the Uyghurs and people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang. On December 17, the Xinjiang People's Government was established with BaoErhan (Uyghur) as chairman, Gao Jinchun and Saifuding (Uyghur) as vice chairmen, and representatives of all ethnic groups and all walks of life in Xinjiang. At that time, there were 13 ethnic groups, including Uyghur, Han, Kazakh, Hui, Daur and Tatar. [iii] Xinjiang has a total population of 4.33 million and a Uighur population of about 2.2 million. At that time, the population of the country was about 540 million people. By 2010, the total population of the country was 1.34 billion, the total population of Xinjiang was 21.8158 million, and the total population of the Uyghur ethnic group was 10.1715 million. In 51 years, the country's population has increased by 800 million people, and the average population growth is far lower than the population growth of Xinjiang and Uighurs.
Through the above data, it is not difficult to see that from 2010 to 2018, the Uyghur population grew very rapidly, and it can even be said to be amazing. Analyzing the reasons for this, there are nothing more than these two aspects: first, the state's ethnic policy is good, and there are many preferential policies for ethnic minorities; second, the Uyghur people's life is good, especially in recent years, there have been earth-shaking changes in medical care, health, education, and so on. The first "good" is the generation of the second "good", and without the first "good" there is no second "good".
Finally, let's talk about history. According to the "Book of Han and The Biography of the Western Regions", during the Han Dynasty, there were 36 states in the Western Regions (later split into 50 countries, which were actually small city-states, and the reason why people called them "states" at that time was to avoid the name of Liu Bang, the founding emperor of the Western Han Dynasty), with a population of only 847,000 people. At the end of the Qin Dynasty and the beginning of the Han Dynasty, due to the sharp decline in the population of the long-term war, the population of the Western Han Dynasty was only 13 million people left at the time of its establishment, and after the recuperation of the early Han Dynasty, by the first year of the Han Dynasty (134 BC), the national population was about 36 million people, and the population of the late Han Wu Emperor due to heavy military service in foreign wars was sharply reduced to 32 million, and the Han Zhao Emperor and the Han Xuan Emperor successively raised the army and the people, and by the last year of the Xuan Emperor (49 BC), the population had reached about 50 million people. Throughout the Han Dynasty, the population of the country never exceeded 65 million.
This was the ratio of the population of the Western Regions to the population of the whole country at that time, and based on the 50 million people in the last year of Emperor Xuan, the population of the Western Regions was about one-sixtieth of the national population. This ratio is similar to the ratio of Xinjiang's population of 24 million today's population of 1.4 billion. However, there was no concept of Uighurs at that time. In the middle of the 9th century, the Uighurs in the north of the desert were defeated by the Uighurs. The Uighur tribes scattered, some were captured by the Jurchens, some moved south to the interior, but most moved to the western region, into the territory of the Anxi Capital Protectorate and the area west of Khotan. Others reached western Gansu and defected to Tubo. It was the beginning of the migration of Uyghur ancestors to the Western Regions.
Historical records record that some of the Uighurs who migrated westward entered the eastern region of Tianshan Mountain. In 866, the Uighur leader Gugujun, who lived in the area around Beiting and Turfan, attacked from Beiting, defeated the Tubo general Shang Fear Fever, and seized xizhou, beiting, luntai and other important places. Since then, the Uighurs have established the Uighur Kingdom of Gaochang with Gaochang as the center. Its sphere of influence extended from Hami in the east, Aksu in the west, to the Ili River in the north, and to Tubo (present-day Hotan and Dunhuang) in the south. Another part entered the steppes of Central Asia.
Ge Jianxiong believes that in the fourteenth year of Tianbao in the Tang Dynasty (755), the national population of the Tang Dynasty was between 80 million and 90 million people, which was the peak of the Population of the Tang Dynasty, and the Uighurs began to migrate on a large scale from 840, and the Zizhi Tongjian recorded that they were divided into two parts: the southward and the westward migration, the southward migration was integrated with other ethnic groups, and the westward migration gradually merged with other ethnic groups in the western region to form the Uyghurs. The nearly 20 tribes that migrated west, with an estimated population of less than 300,000 people, is one-third of the total population of the Tang Dynasty's 90 million people, which is not the same as today's 12 million people who are nearly one percent of the country's population of 1.4 billion.
[i] "Latest Study: Uyghur Population Growth Higher Than Xinjiang Population Growth" (China News Network, January 7, 2021);
[ii] Li Zhansheng, "Demographic Change and Changing Trend of Uyghur People" (Knowledge and Power Magazine, sponsored by the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Science and Technology Association, 2018/4);
[iii] Hao Wenming and Wang Tiezhi, eds., The Chinese Nation (Minzu University press, March 2001)
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