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Paper abstract:

This paper examines the discursive positioning of animal husbandry (چارۋىچىلىك) as a modern sector of the economy and society by Uyghur-language state newspapers in Xinjiang during the mid-late 1950s. At first glance, the more extensive forms of animal husbandry practiced across much of Xinjiang seem at odds with an early-PRC-era vision of development that is often understood as above all else emphasizing industry and grain-based agriculture. Nonetheless, Uyghur-language state newspapers such as the Xinjiang Géziti and Kashgar Géziti rendered animal husbandry as a not-so-distant third important modern industry through such discursive techniques as interpreting husbandry work as production (ئىشلەپچىقىرىش), the reporting of output (livestock numbers) using the same emphasis on exact statistics and year-on-year growth as industry and agriculture, and detailing the importance of science-based veterinary practices and pedigree improvement for Xinjiang’s livestock herds. The newspapers thus applied a modern vocabulary and interpretive framework to animal husbandry to transform it into a modern industry. In so doing, such newspapers also implicitly imbued the multiple environments in which livestock raising occurred—including mountains and grasslands—with the modern, creating a unique form of modernizing discourse with which the province’s many remote, out-of-the-way locales could be incorporated under the umbrella of the modernity-bestowing PRC state and society. The paper therefore offers evidence for the utility of newspaper coverage of animal husbandry and Xinjiang’s remote spaces for understanding the early PRC project in Xinjiang.