UCLA

More than seven years have passed since reports surfaced about the mass detention of Uyghurs and other non-Han peoples in the so-called Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. These accounts of family separations, deaths, and disappearances have illuminated the Chinese state's genocidal colonial project. Yet, this visibility has coincided with rising U.S.–China tensions, often reframing Uyghur dispossession within a binary geopolitical narrative. Within this framework, the Uyghur crisis has been largely overlooked by Asian American Studies, whose U.S.-centric, anti-imperialist focus leaves little room to grapple with communities like the Uyghurs, whose primary struggle is against the Chinese state. This thesis begins with a provocation: how might Asian American Studies reframe its political commitments to engage with diasporic groups like the Uyghurs, whose oppression does not easily align with the field’s dominant critiques of U.S. empire? While I may not fully answer this question here, I aim to sketch a framework for inter-imperial critique—one that examines the entanglements of U.S. and Chinese imperial formations from the end of the Cold War to the present, focusing on those marginalized by both powers. In Chapter One, I analyze Uyghur American cultural production and political life amidst intensifying colonial violence and shifting geopolitics. I theorize a distinct post-socialist Han-Chinese mode of settler colonialism that operates not through the elimination of the native, but through future-oriented surveillance infrastructures and assimilationist fantasies. Through close readings of Uyghur American poet Munawwar Abdulla’s Elegy for a Home Besieged (2023) and Sonya Imin’s untitled sculpture, I explore how Han-Chinese visions of colonial dominance imagine voluntary assimilation as the ultimate endpoint. Yet, this goal remains fundamentally unattainable for non-Han peoples, both within and beyond the national borders of the People’s Republic of China. Chapter Two examines the evolving racialization of Uyghurs by the U.S. government. Contrary to the image of the U.S. as a consistent advocate for Uyghur rights, I trace moments—especially during the Global War on Terror—when Uyghurs were cast as security threats and detained at Guantánamo Bay. I argue that U.S. support has been contingent, shaped by shifting relations with China. Guided by Shu-mei Shih’s concept of "relational comparison", this project aims to expose the co-constitutive dynamics of U.S.–China imperial formations and calls for solidarities that move beyond Cold War binaries.