Blaine Kaltman, Under the Heel of the Dragon: Islam, Racism, Crime, and the Uighur in China

摘要

Kaltman describes his book as "an ethnographic study of the attitudes, behaviors, and interactions of Han Chinese and Uighur" (p. 1). The methodology he used was to conduct a total of 217 in-depth interviews in four Chinese cities (Urumqi, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen) of 92 ethnic Uighur and 125 ethnic Han between March 2004 and February 2005. His major finding are that "the Uighur believe that the Han discriminate against them in almost every aspect of their lives, and this perception of racism provides impetus for the Uighur to harbor their own prejudice against the Han" (backcover). Although the subject of ethnic Uighur in China is not particularly new, Kaltman's book offers an important insight by linking the Uighur-Han relationship and the origins of Uighur crime. For instance, he observes a striking 99 per cent of the Han respondents claim that they might be victims of a Uighur-committed crime, while an even more striking 100 per cent of the Uighur respondents in Shanghai claim that they might be the victims of a Han-committed crime (p. 137). To the author, these findings serve to explain what he coins as "criminal stigmatization" regarding the Uighur (p. 73). This is an interesting topic that has been studied little by others.