July 26, 2019 -- China issued a white paper on historical matters concerning Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Sunday.  

China is a unified multi-ethnic country, and the various ethnic groups in Xinjiang have long been part of the Chinese nation. Throughout its long history, Xinjiang's development has been closely related to that of China, said the white paper issued by State Council Information Office.

It said, however, the region has been affected by external hostile forces, especially separatists, religious extremists and terrorists, in past decades, and these forces tried to split China and break it apart by distorting history and facts.

It also reiterated that Xinjiang has never been the so-called "East Turkistan." The region has long been an inseparable part of Chinese territory, it said.

Yan Shuai, an analyst specialized in counter-terrorism study from the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said the so-called "East Turkistan" is a geographic term but used as a political tool by separatists.

The so-called "East Turkistan" never existed as an independent country in history, and it is only a geographical term created by some writers and scholars, he argued. The term "Turkistan" refers to the region roughly covering the area from southern Xinjiang to Central Asia, and the Pamir Plateau lies in the middle of the area, and therefore scholars come up with the geographical term, he elaborated.

In the last two years, the U.S. and other Western countries criticized China's Xinjiang policy because they attempted to use these allegations as tools to deter China's development, he went on to say.

Both China's central and local governments have taken huge efforts to fight terrorism and to improve people's standard of living, Yan said. And now Xinjiang is one of the safest regions in China, and there was no terror attack in the past 30 months.