Go East, Young Man -- Follow the New Silk Road
Pacific News Service, Commentary, William O. Beeman, Posted: Aug 01, 2005
Editor's Note: Young Muslim men from Central Asia are traveling to China seeking economic opportunity -- and finding it. The United States may find itself watching an important axis of trade and energy development from the sidelines.
URUMQI, Xinjiang, China--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.
Young people in the Middle East and Central Asia, long oriented toward Russia, Europe and North America, are beginning to discover that a brighter future lies to the east, in China.
The boom in trade and technology in China promises to make that nation the great economic engine for the world. This promise is exerting a powerful pull. China has first-rate universities, tremendous employment possibilities and economic opportunities that look increasingly attractive compared to those in the West. The price is right, too.
Education and training are inexpensive compared to the United States and Europe. At a top U.S. university, a foreign student might pay $25,000 per year in tuition. At Beijing University, the same student could pay $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 that would allow them to study, travel or do business in 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 this new migration. This ancient city is now an astonishing boomtown, with a skyline of tall buildings that makes Urumqi look like Chicago from a distance. With more than $5 billion in trade last year, and trade figures doubling on an annual basis, the city is a magnet for the chronically unemployed youths of Central Asia.
Siamak is a 24-year-old Kyrgyz man who works in a pharmacy, 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 explains. "I think this is the best place to be to learn about electronics." When it is pointed out to him that he has to learn Mandarin Chinese to carry out his studies, he simply shrugs. "It's just another language," he says, showing his notebook full of Chinese characters. "It took me about 3 months before I could understand the classes. Then it was easy."
Shahrom, a young Tajik, has also settled in, transporting goods to Dushanbe and Afghanistan. Now that the first road ever is open into land-locked Tajkistan, huge amounts of goods are transported every day for the six months of the year that the route is open. Shahrom gets orders by telephone, the payment is made through bank transfer, and the goods are sent. It costs less that $200 to transport a whole truckload of goods 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 booming 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 is a successful trader in tea. "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 as a faith is widely tolerated in China, where 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 from the Middle East.
Right now the number of Central Asians and Middle Easterners staking out a future in China is small, but there is no question that the numbers will grow as news of the great opportunities in the East spreads. As human ties between the regions 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.
PNS contributor William O. Beeman is Professor of Anthropology and Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. He has been working in the Middle East, Central Asia and East Asia for more than 30 years.
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