PERSPECTIVES | China’s new white paper on Xinjiang

This article appeared in UTS:ACRI's Perspectives on September 24 2025. Perspectives is the commentary series of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS:ACRI), offering research-informed viewpoints on developments and debates in the Australia-China relationship.

The Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) released a new white paper on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Guidelines for Governing Xinjiang in the New Era: Practice and Achievements on September 22 2025. 

The paper is the first Xinjiang-focused document to be published by the State Council since two papers on population dynamics in Xinjiang and ethnic minority rights in 2021. According to a brief explanatory note published by China Daily, the latest document provides ‘a thorough understanding of the situation in Xinjiang’ and ‘a profound reflection’ on the CCP’s policies in the region.

While the former claim is largely false, the latter is in fact close to the truth as the document underscores three primary themes regarding the CCP’s contemporary approach to Xinjiang: the continued manipulation of the region’s history to conform to the Party’s prevailing narrative; the Party’s ongoing commitment to a securitised and ‘fusionist’ mode of governance in Xinjiang; and the central role of Xi Jinping in ‘steering’ that course. 

Who controls the past controls the future

History for the CCP, as Harvard political scientist Tony Saich has noted, is ‘intended to do more than simply order and retell the past’ but also to establish the Party as the ‘correct interpreter of the past’ and ‘the ideological authority’ defining present and future policy. Each of these elements are evident in the new white paper. 

The Party, as Indiana University academic Gardner Bovingdon concisely put it, has always striven to historicise the PRC’s ‘modern invention’ of China’s ‘ancient claim’ to Xinjiang. Thus, most official statements on Xinjiang begin with the boilerplate that the region has been an ‘integral’ part of China since ‘ancient times’.  The first State Council paper on the region’s history published in May 2003, for instance, asserted that the region ‘has been an inseparable part of the unitary multi-ethnic Chinese nation’ since the ‘Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-24 A.D.)’. 

The new paper presents the latest iteration of this narrative. It does so, however, with a somewhat surprising admission that China-based states did not in fact rule Xinjiang uninterruptedly for millennia. ‘Depending on their strengths’, it notes, ‘imperial dynasties in the Central Plains maintained varying levels of relations with the Western Regions, and their administration of the Xinjiang region differed in intensity’. 

However, it is quick to follow this refreshingly honest observation with the historically dubious claims that not only did ‘all the imperial dynasties’ consider ‘the Western Regions as an inalienable part of their territory’ and ‘exercised jurisdiction over it’, but that ‘local regimes in the Western Regions also held a strong sense of being an integral part of China, considering themselves either tributaries or vassals of the imperial dynasty in the Central Plains’.

The purpose of these mental gymnastics is to establish the position that the prevailing dynamic in relations between China and Xinjiang throughout history was ineluctably toward the ‘great unity’ of ‘Chinese civilisation’. This historical ‘fact’ carries two major contemporary implications:  ‘unification has always been at the core of China’s core national interests’ and ‘a strong and unified country is fundamental to the future of all ethnic groups’. 

This historical narrative informs the Party’s contemporary emphasis in its governance of Xinjiang on the necessity of the ‘forging’ of ‘diverse cultures’ with ‘mainstream values’ and ‘traditional Chinese culture’ so that all ethnic groups in the region will be ‘tightly knit like the roots of poplar trees’.

Here, ‘Chinese culture’, as the white paper frames it, becomes ‘the harbour and cultural home of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang’ and ‘the driving force for the development of their respective cultures’.

This, as La Trobe professor James Leibold has recently argued, reflects one of the defining characteristics of Chinese policy in the region under Xi’s leadership: the systematic effort to effectively ‘recast’ Uyghur identity by ‘stripping away’ the ‘corrupting’ influence of Uyghur language, culture and Islamic religious belief and replacing them with ‘proper deportment, thinking and loyalty’ based on the inculcation of Party-approved Chinese cultural norms. 

The historical narrative elucidated in the new white paper is therefore not simply the Party asserting its preferred understanding of Xinjiang’s history but also prescribing the fundamental ideological objective of its governance in the region as achieving the ‘great unity’ of the region’s ethnic minorities with ‘Chinese civilisation’.

Toward ‘lasting peace and security’

This over-arching ideological objective is required as far as the Party is concerned to achieve ‘lasting peace and security’ in Xinjiang. Indeed, under Xi’s leadership this objective has arguably been at the heart of what the white paper frames as the Party’s ‘systematic and holistic approach’ toward ‘maintaining stability and driving development in the region’. 

The ‘systematic’ approach has been characterised by a two-layered policy framework. First, the erection of a comprehensive apparatus of both human-centred and technology-enabled surveillance tools has enabled ‘social sorting’ of the Uyghur population based on racialised ‘signs’ of ‘extremism’. These tools have permitted the state to ‘proactively identify… those who show manifestations or “sprouts: of extremism, and then seek pre-emptively to eliminate those dangers through intrusive monitoring and “transformation through re-education” work’, including well-documented ‘re-education camps’. 

Second, the Party over the same period has emphasised the need to accelerate socio-economic development of the region to ‘dig out the roots’ of ‘extremism’. This has focused on large-scale state-led infrastructure investment and industrial development, coerced population transfers, displacement and dispossession of Uyghurs, and rapid urbanisation in order to demographically, economically and physically transform the region into a ‘normal’ province. As such it is an inherently settler colonial project that seeks to not only ‘hollow out’ Uyghur identity but to construct a ‘new Xinjiang’ dominated by Han Chinese modes of political, economic, and cultural life.

The white paper explicitly reinforces that this dual approach will continue to drive the Party’s governance of Xinjiang. 

The comprehensive apparatus of surveillance is hailed as providing a ‘long-term’, ‘law-based, targeted and timely’ mechanism for not only for the ‘rigorous crackdown on violent and terrorist acts’ but also a ‘comprehensive prevention and control system for social security’. A central element of this ‘prevention and control system’ is the Party’s efforts to consolidate ‘the common ideological and political foundations for ethnic unity and progress’ through ‘specialised education centres’ which promote the ‘inherent values and contemporary relevance of traditional Chinese culture’, ‘popularise science and raise awareness of the law’, promote the use of Putonghua and encourage ‘interpretations of religious doctrines and precepts that align with contemporary development and with traditional Chinese culture’. In this way ‘modern values’ and ‘modern lifestyles’ will take root and thereby ‘enhance cohesion and forge the nation’s soul with shared ideals and convictions’.

Continued economic development, meanwhile, will continue to be geared to increasing ‘interactions, exchanges and integration among all ethnic groups’. The white paper leaves little doubt here that the objective remains the ‘fusion’ of people of all ethnic groups, noting that ‘urban and rural construction planning and the allocation of public service resources’ is designed ‘to advance all-round integration for the people of all ethnic groups physically, culturally, economically, socially, and psychologically, so that all are closely united like the seeds of a pomegranate’.

For Australia, the themes set out in the white paper have relevance. Canberra has continued to express concern over human rights conditions in Xinjiang, which has periodically strained its relationship with Beijing. Taken as a whole, the document suggests little prospect of policy change, ensuring the issue remains an enduring backdrop to the bilateral relationship.

General Secretary Xi ‘at the core’

Finally, the white paper is notable for how it explicitly lauds Xi’s leading role in overseeing the Party’s policies in Xinjiang. 

The ‘Central Committee with Xi Jinping at its core’, it proclaims, has ‘systematically planned all work related to Xinjiang’,  while Xi personally ‘has always paid close attention to the work related to Xinjiang, from a place of care for the people of all of its ethnic groups’. Through his ‘speeches’, ‘remarks’ and ‘instructions’, he has provided ‘strategic direction and guidance’ and steered the course of Xinjiang’s development at ‘each critical stage’. As scholars of contemporary Xinjiang have argued, there is thus now little doubt that Xi has been central to the securitisation and ‘fusionist’ turn in Chinese policy in the region. 

More broadly, the white paper stresses that the ‘full, accurate and faithful implementation’ of the Party’s ‘guidelines for governing Xinjiang in the new era’ is essential to ‘consolidating the ideological foundations for social stability and lasting peace and security’. As such, the document forthrightly concludes that the ‘firm leadership’ of the Party is ‘the greatest political strength for Xinjiang’ as it looks to add ‘Xinjiang’s chapters to the annals of Chinese modernisation’ by turning ‘into reality the grand blueprint… drawn up by the Party Central Committee with Xi Jinping at its core’.

For external observers, including Australia, this emphasis points to how Xinjiang policy will remain a consistent feature of Beijing’s broader political trajectory and a continuing factor in the bilateral relationship.