America Be Wary of the New Silk Road
August 26, 2005
As the United States greets the Islamic world with increasing fear and hostility, China is embracing it with an astonishing enthusiasm, and young Muslim youths are responding in increasing numbers –– in effect, creating a modern Silk Road culture.
China’s boom in trade and technology is exerting a powerful pull. Its first-rate universities, tremendous employment possibilities and economic opportunities look increasingly attractive compared to those in the West. The price is right, too.
At a top U.S. university, a foreign student pays $25,000 per year in tuition. At Beijing University, it costs $2,500 or less.
Add to this the fact that security issues in the West have made it increasingly difficult for young Muslims to obtain visas for work or study. Even if they are able to get the documents for New York, Moscow or Paris, they face increasing discrimination from officials and the public.
The city of Urumqi in the Xinjiang autonomous region of Western China reflects the new migration. This ancient city is now a boomtown, with a skyline of tall buildings reminiscent of Chicago from a distance. It had more than $5 billion in trade last year, doubling on an annual basis. It is a magnet for chronically unemployed youth of Central Asia.
Siamak is a 24-year-old Kyrgyz pharmacy worker, translating between Russian, Uighur, Kyrgyz, English and Chinese for the thousands of traders exporting Chinese pharmaceuticals. He is completing an advanced technical degree at the University of Urumqi. “The Chinese are making everything,” he exclaims. “I think this is the best place to be to learn about electronics.” He shrugs off any difficulty with speaking Chinese. “It’s just another language. It took me about 3 months before I could understand the classes. Then it was easy.”
Shahrom, a young Tajik, transports goods to Dushanbe and Afghanistan. Now that the first road ever is open into land-locked Tajkistan, huge amounts of goods are transported during the six months of the year that the route is open. It costs less that $200 to transport a whole truckload from Urumqi to Dushanbe. Shahrom already knew Russian, Tajik and Uzbek, which is close enough to Uighur to make communication easy. After six months, he too, is almost fluent in Mandarin.
“I love it here,” Shahrom says. “Living is cheap, there is lots of work, food is good and I have a girlfriend. What more could I want? At home I could be unemployed or go to Moscow and work a construction job for little money and live in a basement with 16 other guys.”
In Beijing, Muslims from Central Asia and the Middle East are showing up in increasing numbers. Iran has a flourishing trade with China, and there are regular flights between the two nations. Bagher has been in Beijing for more than 10 years. He is an aficionado of Beijing opera, and a successful tea trader. “The Chinese don’t care what I do with my private life,” he says. “They may be hard on their own citizens who protest, but I am free to live as I like.”
Despite ethnic and economic tension between Han Chinese and Uighurs, Islam is widely tolerated, and many Muslims are ethnic Chinese. Islamic supermarkets dot the cityscape north of the Forbidden City in Beijing, and there are as many Arab, Persian and Central Asian customers today as Chinese. Mosques throughout Beijing create a welcoming atmosphere for these new pioneers.
As human ties strengthen, the natural resources of the Middle East and Central Asia will increasingly flow to China, rather than the West. The cross-fertilization of cultures that once made the Silk Road the economic engine that ran the world is about to be reborn, and the United States and its allies are in danger of standing on the sidelines watching the caravan move on.
William O. Beeman is professor of Anthropology, director of Middle East Studies at Brown University and a contributor to Pacific News Service.
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