Mao's forces "liberated" East Turkestan from local leaders in 1949. He was convinced that the territories held the resources China needed for an industrial future and the room for both its exploding population and atomic testing. Xinjiang became central to the communists' master plan for superpower status. Han settlers began to trickle into the Chinese frontier. They arrived in Islamic oasis towns unchanged since the Middle Ages, utterly different from the crowded East Asian villages. The pioneers were a mixture of fanatical young communists and the bedraggled remains of the trounced armies of the nationalist generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek. Many of China's own gulags, the laogai, were built in the region. Like neighbouring Siberia, Xinjiang was a desert of promise and exile during the Cold War. Rumours have circulated since the 1960s that the territory housed the largest prison camps in the world, with up to 500,000 inmates.  

Only in the past 30 years of reform has Beijing had the muscle and determination to turn East Turkestan into Xinjiang. The figures speak for themselves. Han Chinese constituted fewer than seven per cent of the population in 1949, climbing to 33 per cent by 1964 and 40 per cent by 2000. The Han are now the overwhelming majority in the northern and eastern parts of Xinjiang, although these numbers do not include army personnel serving in Xinjiang and their families or the large numbers of unregistered migrant workers, the floating peasants, who can be found in any Chinese region. Kashgar, at the foothill of the Pamir range and closer to Islamabad than even the regional capital of Urumqi, is the last stronghold of the Uighurs. 

The rules just got worse." Muhammad is a green-eyed driver with a taste for Uighur jazz — a fusion of recorded gunshots, trumpet and saxophone. "After the riots, the rules got worse." Muhammad is referring to how China carried out its occupation and how its grip has tightened since violent unrest broke out last summer. The Uighurs I spoke to claimed they were not allowed to leave the country and that children were banned from religious instruction, attending the mosque or Ramadan fasting. They say that they are allowed to pray using only a state-approved Koran at party-sanctioned mosques and that a job in the state sector means no headscarves or beards. 

They say Uighurs cannot own internet cafés, gather in large groups without a permit and are cut out of job opportunities. To campaign for independence, however non-violently, is banned. The use of the Uighur word for China — the originally Russian Kitai — is also banned. This only encourages its use. Xinjiang cannot work on a different time zone — China, despite its size, is one big time-zone — despite being further from Beijing than London is from Istanbul. All signs must be in Mandarin with Uighur as an option, despite locals estimating that fewer than 20 per cent of people there speak Mandarin. They say they are second-class citizens who find it much harder than the Han Chinese to get work. 

A wooden bicycle 

Uighurs are terrified that by mid-century they will have become the Apache or Cherokee of China's Wild West. They believe that Beijing plans to move up to 200 million Han to Xinjiang. 

In the East, the Chinese I meet are incredulous at the suggestion that the Uighurs are frightened of the future. Why are they not grateful for the millions of dollars and the impressive infrastructure lavished on the region? They are exempt from the one-child policy and have positive discrimination to attend university: how can they complain? Surely only a terrorist would want to exit the world's biggest booming economy in favour of creating another Islamic 'stan? Many are frightened of terrorism but most Han think all Uighurs are untrustworthy potential thieves. They seemed confused that Westerners could support Tibetan or Uighur rights. How would America react if China started supporting native American separatists?