China Scapegoat: The Diplomatic Ordeal of John Carter Vincent

reveals persistent Han control. This is at sharp variance with the formal identification of Xinjiang as a "Uighur Autonomous Region." By all evidence, Uighur autonomy, except perhaps at the local level, is a pure fiction. Despite Peking's efforts, however, Xinjiang did not march in lockstep with central China during most of this period. On the contrary, as its most powerful political figure from 1949 to 1966, Wang En-mao systematically balanced local needs and attributes against central directives and the basic goal of integration. Wang's success in this regard proved to be his undoing in the Cultural Revolution. Events since Mao's death, however, have not only restored Wang to power in another region but also restored a balance to policy in Xinjiang. Given the scope of the work and the elusiveness of reliable evidence on so remote an area, it is perhaps inevitable that the author's scholarly rigor should flag at times. The intensity of Sino-Soviet polemical exchanges cautions against accepting Soviet sources as having "verified" Red Guard activities in Xinjiang (p. 196) or having "disclosed that skirmishes had taken place all along the Sino-Soviet border from Xinjiang to Manchuria continuously since the outset of the GPCR" (p. 227). The assertion that both Urumqi Radio and Xinjiang Daily "had been rather silent for several weeks" in 1967 suggests that the author possessed a complete file of both media and could attribute missing data to inactivity. If so, a supporting footnote to this effect would have made the point credible. His repeated assertion of security concerns linked with the Lop Nor nuclear test site is spurious. No important production facilities are located there; in fact, it resembles the former U.S. test site in Nevada, and as such is expendable.