Sinkiang

Sinkiang (Pinyin: Xinjiang) is a large region of north-western China, bordering Mongolia, Russia (Siberia), Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan (Azad Kashmir) and India (Kashmir) as well as the Chinese provinces/regions of Gansu, Qinghai and Xizand (Tibet). Its formal name is the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and it is the largest administrative district in China, with an area in excess of 1.6m sq km. The capital city is Urumqi.

The area came under the rule of the Chinese Empire in the eighteenth century and the name Xinjiang ('New Frontier') was first ussed in 1768. Xinjiang was constituted a province of the empire in 1884, following the repression of a Moslem uprising in the 1870s. Xinjiang has a non-Han Chinese majority; the main group, Uyghur, being a Turkic people (an obsolete alternative name ofor Xinjiang was 'Chinese Turkestan'). There has been significant immigration of Han Chinese since the area was occupied by communist forces in 1949..