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摘要

Birth restrictions imposed on China's ethnic minorities have always been lighter than those on the Han majority. Han Chinese are only now being granted the right to have two children; most minorities living in urban areas have long enjoyed it. Non-Hans living in the countryside are allowed to have three, and sometimes more. But although family-planning rules are now being relaxed in China, in the far-western region of Xinjiang, where ethnic Uighurs make up 50% of the population, the government is tightening controls. In 1983 Uighurs-never entirely happy with rule by a Han-dominated Communist Party based in far-distant Beijing-rioted when officials introduced the current limits. Some of them saw the restrictions as an affront to Islam. As a result, officials in some areas applied them more flexibly, even allowing couples in some far-flung places to have four or five children. Uighurs have fewer children than they used to, but since 2010 the birth rate has been rising again. In mainly Uighur Kashgar, a prefecture which borders on Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, it is four times the national average.