[alisonatwork]

What does "participate in Chinese culture" mean, and why shouldn't the culture of China's Xinjiang province count as "Chinese culture", assuming we accept the official description of China as a 多民族國家 multi-ethnic country?

I do get what you mean about language, insofar as most people of the Hui ethnic group do tend to speak the dominant Sinitic language of the region in which they live and not an entirely different language family like most Uyghur people. But that's more of a geographic inevitability than some kind of fundamental cultural difference - people from Inner Mongolia don't speak a Sinitic language either, does that make them equally as un-Chinese as people from Xinjiang? And if that matters so much, why does the Chinese government insist on holding on to these provinces whose culture is apparently unacceptably divergent from what they deem to be Chinese?

In any case, even Hui face some degree of discrimination in China, documented most recently in national anti-halal actions that expanded well beyond Xinjiang[0]. Like most minority ethnicities in the country, their culture is often joked about or dismissed in ways that "mainstream" Han culture is not. While this may not be blatant bigotry, the discrimination is something that would not be considered appropriate in countries whose people are more welcoming of ethnic diversity.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-religion-islam-idUS...

[thaumasiotes]

> But that's more of a geographic inevitability than some kind of fundamental cultural difference

No, speaking a different language is the most fundamental cultural difference there is.

> And if that matters so much, why does the Chinese government insist on holding on to these provinces whose culture is apparently unacceptably divergent from what they deem to be Chinese?

I asked this question of a Chinese high school student once. His response was that the Chinese didn't want to be conquered by the people of those regions. (Which notably happened in the 13th and 17th centuries.)

Wikipedia says that when the Qing dynasty fell, the idea was brought up that Xinjiang and similar regions should be divested from China as not being Chinese; they see the retention of non-Chinese territory as more a matter of no one being willing to take the responsibility/blame for the country getting smaller.

[thaumasiotes]

> assuming we accept the official description of China as a 多民族國家 multi-ethnic country?

Responding separately to this bit of inanity, if we're going to take Chinese official descriptions at face value, the Uyghurs aren't being oppressed in any way. They're in charge of their own 自治区.