The Systematic Unmaking of Uyghur Identity Behind China’s ‘Stability’ Narrative. (Image for representation/AI)
China claims that stability and modernization in Xinjiang have led to prosperity, but the truth reveals a systematic erosion of Uyghur cultural identity. Cities have been redesigned, traditional languages marginalized, and religious sites demolished, all contributing to cultural displacement.
Authored by: Rishabh Madhavendra Pratap
Times Now World | Nov 26, 2025
China insists that “stability” and “modernisation” in Xinjiang have brought prosperity. But away from official tours and curated videos, an uncomfortable reality persists: the slow, methodical dismantling of a people’s cultural identity. What has unfolded is not organic change — it is a structured effort to weaken every pillar of Uyghur cultural life.
From re-engineered cities and state-written history books to language restrictions and vanished religious sites, the process is deliberate. And its consequences go far beyond one region; they reveal how a powerful state can reshape identity with astonishing precision.
A Homeland Reconstructed to Look Unrecognisable
One of the most dramatic shifts is physical. Cities once shaped by centuries of Uyghur history now resemble uniform urban grids.
Take Kashgar, long considered the cultural heart of Uyghur civilisation. Its old quarters were cleared and rebuilt under “heritage protection,” leaving behind a sanitised version that prioritises tourism and state-approved imagery. Streets that once hosted traditional shops and prayer halls now showcase architecture meant to fit Beijing’s narrative of a “harmonious” Xinjiang.
Entire neighbourhoods across the region have been redesigned, eliminating spaces that once sustained community networks. Residents describe a visual transformation so sweeping that they struggle to recognise the streets where they grew up.
This isn’t modernisation. It is cultural displacement engineered through urban planning.
Language Restrictions That Strike at the Core of Identity
Language is central to any culture, and Uyghur is no exception. But in Xinjiang, Mandarin-first education has pushed Uyghur into a marginal status in classrooms.
Textbooks in Uyghur have been quietly removed. Uyghur-medium instruction has been curtailed. Parents fear speaking the language openly in public institutions. In many schools, children now learn almost exclusively in Mandarin from early grades, severing a direct link to homegrown literature, oral traditions, and social memory. For a culture that has preserved its script and poetry for centuries, this linguistic transition is a fundamental rupture. When a people’s words disappear from daily life, their worldview disappears with it.
Religious Spaces Transformed or Removed
Religion has always been tightly linked to Uyghur life. But many of the region’s mosques have been closed, repurposed, or renovated into generic, state-managed structures. Shrines — long visited by families for generations — have been demolished or fenced off.
This is more than the removal of physical sites; it is the removal of collective memory.
Families once gathered at shrines during festivals; now, they cannot. Traditions rooted in specific places disappear. Without these sites, rituals fade and younger generations lose the spiritual geography that shaped Uyghur identity.
Literature, Music, and Art Under Pressure
Writers, poets, musicians, and historians have been silenced, detained, or pushed into obscurity. Academics whose work preserved Uyghur cultural knowledge have disappeared into detention facilities or prisons.
Meanwhile, artistic expression has become state-approved. Traditional dances and songs appear on official stages—stripped of nuance, political memory, and spiritual meaning. They become decorative, not lived.
Outside China, Uyghur musicians and writers try to preserve what they can. But they do so with the weight of knowing that their creative peers back home cannot express themselves freely, even in private.
Renaming Places, Rewriting History
China has renamed towns, neighbourhoods, and landmarks to remove references to Uyghur heritage. These changes are subtle but powerful. A renamed village erases the story behind its original name. A historic site reclassified as “tourist infrastructure” loses its past. A street given a patriotic slogan no longer carries the local history it once honoured.
History books reinforce these shifts, reframing Xinjiang’s past through a state lens, downplaying native stories, and stressing integration. When names and stories change, so does identity.
Technology as a Tool for Cultural Control
Xinjiang’s surveillance architecture is widely documented. But beyond monitoring movement, it monitors behaviour that ties people to their culture.
Algorithms track attendance at religious gatherings, use of Uyghur-language apps, purchase of religious material, travel to heritage towns, and communication with cultural leaders. In a space this tightly controlled, preserving cultural habits becomes a risky act. Technology becomes the mechanism through which cultural life is not only managed but also reshaped.
A Culture Survives, But Under Strain
Despite heavy pressure, Uyghur culture endures: families preserve language at home, artists abroad maintain music and poetry, rituals continue quietly, and storytelling survives in diaspora communities.
But survival in exile is not enough. Uyghurs should not choose between safety and identity. Yet this is Xinjiang’s growing reality.
Why This Matters Beyond China
The weakening of Uyghur culture is not a localised issue. It sends a deeper message: powerful states can redesign identity at scale if unchecked. For India, and for democracies worldwide, this raises immediate questions about human rights, regional geopolitics, and the ethical use of emerging technologies.
Uyghur culture is not disappearing on its own; it is being systematically pushed aside. Understanding this reality is crucial—because protecting any culture requires a collective global will.
