Cotton and Water in Rural Xinjiang

Turfan began to export raw cotton to Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was not the first time Xinjiang had exported cotton to a long-distance market, although the increasing exports of Turfan cotton indicated a growing integration of Xinjiang’s economy within the global division of labor in textile production. How did the new development impact the political economy of Xinjiang, and in particular, its rural production? This paper explores the change of water management and land tenure in Turfan in an attempt to provide a preliminary answer to this question. It argues that the expansion of the global cotton commodity frontier in Central Asia contributed to the rise of agricultural production in Turfan, sustained by speculative capital investment in irrigation and land and accompanied by the commodification of water.