“Making the Past Serve the Present”: The Testimonial Tourist Gaze and Infrastructures of Memory in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), China

Abstract

In this article, we explore how tourism in Xinjiang is politically weaponised. Commodifying Uyghur cultural heritage for tourism allows the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to insist it is not committing cultural genocide, but actually “conserving” Uyghur culture. This directly bears on the CCP’s internment of Muslim minorities in “re-education” camps, ostensibly to target Islamic “extremism.” We explore how tourism to Xinjiang is presented as a “success” of the camps and conscripted into the “Sinicisation” of the region and the secularising of minorities’ cultures. Places and practices are deconstructed as cultural heritage, and reconstructed to provide tourists with “exotic” experiences of “wonderful Xinjiang.” This transforms the “tourist gaze” into a “testimonial” one: tourists to Xinjiang are made into witnesses that “Xinjiang is beautiful” and Uyghurs are “happy.” In this, touristic development and tourists themselves are key agents in the CCP’s territorialisation of Xinjiang, the sinicisation of Uyghur culture, and the legitimation of the violence of the camps.

Politics of Memory, Heritage, and Diversity in Modern China

“…These two key cases underscore China's use of selective historical representation as a tool for world-making. In the context of intensified campaigns to sinicise minority regions, such as in Xinjiang, heritage-centred tourism contributes significantly to the fabrication and naturalisation of an entirely new materialcultural landscape (Brown and O'Brien, 2022). Operating at a continental scale, the BRI "seeks to reinscribe and then naturalise China's new place in a shifting global time-space" (Mayer, 2018(Mayer, : 1235.…”

“…As such, this pre-Qing dress movement is shown to be animated by a sense of losing authentic Han-ness and conflicted racial memories associated with the Qing dynasty. Brown and O'Brien (2022) explore the interactions between the commodification of Uyghur cultural heritage in Xinjiang and the rise of politically weaponised tourism. Tourism, when seen as an affective memory infrastructure that works to create "futureoriented histories" through intensive immersion, becomes a means of achieving several simultaneous objectives.…”

“…When associated with consumption and entertainment activities, memory infrastructures play a crucial role in linking official cultural memories with personal experiences and emotions with the purpose of creating comprehensive “cognitive maps designed to shape collective memory over time” (Maags, 2023: 17). An intimate overlap of “conceptual, emotional and physical” dimensions of memory (Brown and O’Brien, 2022) is achieved through an individual immersive experience and the commercialised performance of tourist interactions. At the same time, infrastructures must remain malleable as the party-state changes what counts as “monumental history” in light of new geopolitical circumstances and ideological shifts.…”

“…Brown and O’Brien (2022) explore the interactions between the commodification of Uyghur cultural heritage in Xinjiang and the rise of politically weaponised tourism. Tourism, when seen as an affective memory infrastructure that works to create “future-oriented histories” through intensive immersion, becomes a means of achieving several simultaneous objectives.…”

“…For instance, new questions were raised in the entanglement of China's spectacle economy and collective memories formed via immersive and interactive elements of memory infrastructure. Immersive “affective” memory infrastructure not only increasingly blurs re-enactment, historical experience, and personal memories, but also grants an “aura of authenticity” to highly sanitised and curated cultural heritage and artefacts (Brown and O’Brien, 2022), which are in fact disguised narratives of monumental history that the party-state aims to enshrine in collective memory. The multiplication of such an “aura of authenticity” through images and stories of participants indicates the growing impact of social media; both digital platforms and virtual reality are positioned to accelerate the digitisation of memory practices, suggesting new ways in which the party-state exercises power through rewiring personal and collective memories.…”