Tacheng, China

History

In the mid-19th century, Chuguchak was considered the most important commercial center of Western China after Ghulja (Yining), being an important center of trade between China and Russia, in particular in tea. The city, surrounded by an earth wall, was the residence of two Qing ambans and had a garrison of some 1,000 Chinese soldiers and 1,500 Manchu and Mongol soldiers.

Chuguchak suffered harshly in 1865 during the fighting between the Qing forces and the Dungan and Hui rebels.

From March to May 1962, 58,000 Chinese citizens, predominantly ethnic Kazakhs, left Tacheng by crossing the border into the Soviet Union, in what would become known as the Yi–Ta incident. The emigrants were driven by deteriorating living conditions in Xinjiang brought by the Great Leap Forward and false rumours of Soviet citizenship.

Tacheng is the site of an internment camp for Turkic Muslims such as the Uyghurs and Kazakhs; it is one of many such camps in Xinjiang. The Chinese government maintains that they are "vocational education centers" for citizens to learn trade skills and the Chinese language, and that the camp was shut down in 2019. However, satellite imagery shows that the camp expanded five-fold later that year.

From the History section of Tacheng on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.