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Education as a Political Tool in Asia Edited by Marie Lall and Edward Vickers London and New York: Routledge, 2009 xiii + 248 pp. $160.00 ISBN 978-0-415-45259-5

that Chen cites hardly discusses these groups, nor does he refer to literature examining the education of indigenous populations in colonial contexts, or in contexts of statebacked encroachment by immigrant settlers. A fuller discussion of the history and politics of Uyghur relations with the Chinese state and the dominant Han ethnicity might have suggested more appropriate comparisons and alternative theoretical frameworks. However, Chen devotes only one paragraph to the history of the Uyghurs, citing Hoy’s claim that “Uyghur ethnicity may be an artificial construct” (p. 34). Gladney – whose work Chen also references – asserts that Han ethnicity is likewise an artificial or “imagined” construct (see Dislocating China, University of Chicago Press, 2004) though no reference to that argument is found here. Chen is clearly constrained, or influenced, in his analysis by the very sensitivities surrounding “minority” history and politics in China that he acknowledges in his discussion of the broader context of the boarding school scheme. He also appears to take for granted a number of controversial aspects of Chinese education policy and practice – from eugenicist “health checks” (that resulted in the expulsion from this school of two Uyghur girls and sparked protests from their classmates) and the “harsh military training” undergone by newly enrolled students during orientation (p. 100), to a reference in passing to the cancellation in Xinjiang schools of a Uyghur language course and its replacement with a “politics” course (this in a discussion of the often fraught relations between southern and northern Xinjiang) (p. 108). Notwithstanding its somewhat sanitized account of Xinjiang history and politics, and of China’s broader “minorities” policy, this study is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the role of schooling in promoting, or undermining, the integration of these “minorities” within Chinese society (another volume to be published in the same series, by Zhiyong Zhu, looks at a neidi secondary school for Tibetans). Chen could perhaps have demonstrated more awareness of the way in which his status as a Han male may have affected his findings, both in terms of his own education and prior understanding of the Uyghurs and Xinjiang, and in terms of his relationships with the Uyghur students he was studying (although these seem to have been relatively friendly). The latter was one comment made by a Uyghur postgraduate student of mine after having read this book. However, the same student also remarked that this was “the most balanced work written by a Chinese scholar that I have ever read.” This is almost certainly the most balanced and thoughtful study available in English of the impact of Chinese education policies on Xinjiang students, and of their responses to these policies.