Burhan Shahidi
Burhan Shahidi ( Uighur بۇرھان شەھىدى, Yengi Burⱨan Xəⱨidi , Chinese 包 尔 汉 , Pinyin Bāo'ěrhàn , Russian Бурхан Шахиди , Tatar Borhan Şähidi , occasionally also Burhan Shaxidi ), actually Bao Erhan (born October 3, 1894 near Kazan , Russia; † August 27, 1989 ) was a Uighur politician who served the People's Republic of China for a long time .
Early years
There are contradicting information about his origins, his parents are said to come from the western Chinese district of Aksu . Most sources referred to him as a Uyghur, others at least his mother as Tatar . According to Chinese and some other information, Burhan was also born in Aksu ( Aksu Konaxeher district ) and the family did not emigrate to Russia until 1908.
After the fall of the monarchy in China in 1912, he returned to Xinjiang from Russia and ran a workshop. From 1929–1933 he is said to have studied in Berlin. Then he was 1933-1937 lieutenant governor of three provinces in the region and 1937 Chinese consul in the Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, but imprisoned in 1938-1944 by the warlord Sheng Shicai .
After the national Chinese Kuomintang Sheng had deposed in 1944, Shahidi was first district governor of Urumqi . After the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union and national China fought for dominant influence in the region. Shahidi was appointed to a revolutionary coalition government in 1946 and conducted secret negotiations with the Soviet Union for the Kuomintang in 1947 in Nanking.
As a compromise candidate, Burhan Shahidi was appointed by the Kuomintang as the last governor of Xinjiang in December 1948 and formed a provisional government in Urumqi.
On the part of the People's Republic
After the emerging victory of the communists over the national Chinese, Shahidi conducted secret negotiations in January 1949 to turn away from the nationalists, and from February 1949 the People's Liberation Army also marched into Xinjiang. Shahidi joined the Chinese Communist Party in September, was elected to the National People's Congress and remained provincial governor until September 1955. Together with the Hui Chinese Da Pusheng and the Uyghur Yiming Mahesum, he made his first official pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia via Pakistan in 1952. In the same year, Shahidi was appointed director of the semi-state Chinese Muslim Society (Da Pusheng became deputy), which in 1956 formed its own offshoot for Xinjiang.
From 1954 to 1964, Shahidi was the representative of the Uyghurs of Xinjiang and vice-president of the National Committee of the Consultative Assembly of the Chinese Peoples (Nationality Committee of the Political Consultative Conference).
In addition, the central government in Beijing had bigger plans for him. They put Shahidi at the head of a cultural delegation that conducted unofficial negotiations on the establishment of diplomatic relations on their travels in the Middle East. The aim was to isolate the national government who had fled to Taiwan and isolate them in the UN. As early as 1956, after talks with Gamal Abdel Nasser , Schukri al-Quwatli and Muhammad al-Badr , Shahidi had personal success: Egypt, Syria and Yemen were the first Arab states to recognize the People's Republic of China; Jordan and Saudi Arabia at least provided funds for the Chinese Muslims in Xinjiang. On his second pilgrimage to Mecca he was honored by King Saud ibn Abd al-Aziz .
Finally, in March and July 1959, Shahidi was the mastermind behind the attempted communist overthrow of Mosul and Kirkuk in Iraq. These coup attempts failed, as did the attempts by China and the Soviet Union to replace Taiwan in the UN with the help of their Middle Eastern allies. Shahidi's star began to decline with the beginning of the so-called Cultural Revolution (which was hostile to any religion and tradition in general) in 1966, the Xinjiang's already with the successful atomic research in 1963/64. Shahidi's Chinese-Islamic Society printed atheist propaganda instead of the Koran, and Shahidi himself was deposed in 1966.
In Soviet exile and back in China
After tens of thousands of Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Uyghurs fled the famine caused by communist collectivization to the USSR on their horses in 1962, Shahidi finally emigrated as well. On the one hand, he had been accused of having too close contacts with the Soviet Union and, on the other, of a capitalist orientation for Xinjiang. In Soviet Central Asia he even set up an army in exile and advanced to general of the Soviet Union, while China and the Soviet Union were heading for a military conflict.
Returned to the People's Republic after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Shahidi was again Vice-President of the National Committee of the Consultative Assembly of the Chinese Peoples from 1978 until his death, but was not reappointed chairman of the Society of Muslims of China. Most recently he was honorary president of the company.
family
Burhan Shahidi left eight children with his wife, Rashida Khanum, who was originally from Gulja . Their descendants, in turn, married Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Tatars, Uzbeks and Han Chinese and now live in China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
- Shahidi's eldest daughter Suum married the Uyghur politician Oegur, who was one of the first Uyghurs to join the Chinese Communist Party with his father-in-law in 1949. Oegur and Suum studied in Moscow, Oegur first became the Chinese Vice Consul in Kazakhstan, then Vice Director of the Xinjiang Academy of Sciences, where he wrote a brief history of the Uyghurs.
- Shahidi's son Mulati and his wife Kamar studied in Beijing and work in Xinjiang's oil industry, while Kamar's parents emigrated to the Soviet Union.
- Shahidi's son Murad Burhan is a professor at the Academy of Sciences in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan.
literature
- Aryeh Yodfat: The People's Republic of China and the Middle East . Brussels / London / New York 1977.
- Yitzhak Shichor: The Middle East in China's Foreign Policy 1949–1977 . Cambridge 1979.
- Marie-Luise Näth: State interest and ideology in the foreign policy of the PR China . In: Socialism in theory and practice . Berlin / New York 1978.
- Joseph E. Khalili: Communist China's Interaction With the Arab Nationalists Since the Bandung Conference . New York 1970.
- Hashim Behbehani: China's foreign policy in the Arab World 1955–1975 . London 1981/1985.
- Hashim Behbehani: China's foreign policy towards the Palestinian Resistance Movement and the Arabian Gulf 1955–1975 . 2 volumes. Oxford 1978.
- Free Corps for Sinkiang . In: Der Spiegel . No. 8 , 1970 ( online ).
Web links
- Shahidi's son Murad Burhan in a Tatar-Russian portal about his father
- A Deep Love Of The Motherland - People's Daily about The Burhan's Family
- Bao Erhan in China Vitae
- The Formation of Islamic Organizations and Their Activities in China . aboutxinjiang.com
Individual evidence
- ^ The International Who's Who 1988-89 . Fifty-second Edition, London 1988, p. 1377.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Shahidi, Burhan |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Şähidi Borhan; Bao Erhan |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Uighur politician in the service of the People's Republic of China |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 3, 1894 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | near Kazan |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 27, 1989 |