Chinese Tatars


Chinese Tatars form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China.
Their ancestors are Volga Tatars tradesmen who settled mostly in Xinjiang and Crimean Tatars who suffered from Joseph Stalin's expulsion in the 1940s.
The number of Chinese Tatars stood at 3,556 as of the year 2010 and they live mainly in the cities of Yining, Tacheng and Ürümqi in Xinjiang. Their titular homeland is Daquan Tatar Village in Qitai County of Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang.
Chinese Tatars speak an archaic variant of the Tatar language, free from 20th-century loanwords and use the Arabic variant of the Tatar alphabet, which declined in the USSR in the 1930s. Being surrounded by speakers of other Turkic languages, Chinese Tatar partially reverses the Tatar high vowel inversion. They do not have a writing system.
Chinese Tatars are mostly Sunni Muslims.
Jadid schools were founded in Xinjiang for Chinese Tatars in the early 20th century.

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