From Uyghur Lifeline to Chinese National Unity Symbol: The Politics of the 2026 Draft Karez Protection Regulation
By Ablet Turdi
The karez irrigation system has sustained oasis communities across East Turkestan (Uyghur Region) for centuries, carrying mountain groundwater through underground channels to farms and settlements in one of the world’s most arid environments. This summer, authorities are undertaking a major revision of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Karez Protection Regulation, first adopted in 2006. The revision comes as Beijing implements the new Law on the Promotion of Ethnic Unity and Progress and accelerates natural resource extraction, energy production, industrial agriculture, major infrastructure projects, and tourism across the region.
The proposed revision does more than update protections for an ancient water system. It expands the legal conception of the karez from water infrastructure to national cultural heritage and a symbol of ethnic unity, removes the 2006 regulation’s explicit references to individual ownership, and places karez protection within Xi Jinping’s project of forging a common Chinese national identity. At the same time, Beijing’s expanding development and extraction projects in the region are placing growing pressure on the water sources and fragile ecosystems that sustain the karez.
What Are the Karez?  Karez Sketch (Karez Study Society 2009) Karez (كارىز; 坎儿井) are underground irrigation systems that use vertical wells and gently sloping subterranean channels to carry groundwater to farms and settlements. Similar systems have long existed across Persia, the Middle East, Central Asia and other arid regions, where they are known by names including qanat and karez. Their underground design limits evaporation and makes agriculture possible in extremely dry environments. Karez exists across East Turkestan, but the city of Turpan contains its most expansive and best known network of more than 1400 wells. At their height, Turpan’s karez extended thousands of kilometers, sustaining vineyards, orchards, farmland, settlements, and everyday life in Uyghur oasis communities. Chinese official accounts trace the Turpan karez system to Han-era Central Plains hydraulic technology. China’s 2008 submission of the Karez Wells of Turpan to UNESCO’s World Heritage Tentative List advances this account, although UNESCO makes clear that Tentative List descriptions reflect the submitting state’s position rather than a finding by UNESCO. A 2019 geoarchaeological study that radiocarbon-dated eight Turpan karez instead found that the oldest systems examined originated during Uyghur rule. The dispute over the origins of karez in Turpan also sits within a broader official effort to recast Uyghur history within a Chinese national narrative. Beijing’s 2019 white paper Historical Matters Concerning Xinjiang, for example, explicitly states that Uyghurs “are not descendants of the Turks” and argues that Uyghur culture developed within and forms part of Chinese culture. As with official efforts to distance Uyghur history from its Turkic connections, Beijing’s account of the karez shifts attention away from its wider Central and Western Asian context and toward Han-era Central Plains origins. |
From Traditional Water System to Ethnic Unity Symbol
The 2006 regulation primarily treated the karez as functioning water infrastructure. It regulated groundwater extraction, pollution, maintenance, construction, mining, oil and gas development, and tourism. It also explicitly recognized both collective and individual ownership and gave owners and users significant roles in managing water and protecting the system.
The 2026 proposed regulation substantially rewrites that framework. The original 36 articles have been reduced to 32: five were deleted, three added, 26 amended, and only one retained unchanged. The revised framework now defines the karez through its dual attributes as water conservancy infrastructure and ethnic unity symbol.
More significantly, the legislative explanation from the July 27 meeting of the Xinjiang People Congress Standing Committee states that the revision takes Xi Jinping Thought on Culture and Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization as its foundation and incorporates Party leadership and “consciousness of the Chinese national community” into the regulatory framework. It describes the karez as an ancient water system “created by working people of various ethnic groups in Xinjiang,” an “important link for exchanges and integration of ethnic groups,” and a historical witness to Chinese national community consciousness.
The explanation grounds this new political meaning directly in Xi Jinping’s own treatment of the karez. At the 2019 National Ethnic Unity and Progress Commendation Conference in Beijing, Xi placed the karez alongside the Great Wall, Forbidden City, and Potala Palace (Buddhist fortress located in Lhasa, Tibet) among the “great projects” in the history of the Chinese nation. During his July 2022 visit to Turpan, Xi called for stronger protection and use of cultural heritage to “expand the international influence of Chinese culture” and “strengthen national pride and cultural confidence.” The 2026 legislative explanation identifies these instructions as fundamental guidance for the revision.
Protecting Heritage or Redefining Control?
The revision also changes how karez is governed. The 2006 regulation explicitly recognized individual as well as collective ownership. Article 6 provided that collective economic organizations managed collectively owned karez while individual owners managed individually owned systems. Other provisions required owner consent for certain uses and development activities and recognized collective consultation and water use associations.
The 2026 revised draft removes references to individual ownership. This does not necessarily extinguish underlying property rights under other Chinese laws, but it removes the original regulation’s explicit recognition of individual owners from the karez legal framework. The omission may have consequences beyond property law. In communities where households and farmers still rely on karez for irrigation or domestic water, reducing the legal visibility of individual owners could weaken the position of those people whose livelihoods and traditional ways of life remain tied to karez.
The proposed revision also raises a broader question about what cultural preservation means. Karez may be restored, legally protected, promoted internationally, and displayed to tourists even as the state assumes greater authority over their management and meaning. But is preservation simply a question of whether the physical structures survive, or should it also consider who controls them, who benefits from them, and who has the authority to define their history?
The revision also comes amid development pressures far greater than those of 2006. Beijing is expanding oil and gas production, coal and coal chemicals, mining, petrochemicals, industrial agriculture, transportation corridors, and energy infrastructure across an already water-stressed region. The original regulation anticipated some of these threats. It restricted mechanical groundwater wells and construction around karez and specifically addressed roads, railways, oil and gas pipelines, petroleum extraction, blasting, exploration, mining, and tourism. It required protective measures and, in some circumstances, remediation and compensation for damage.
Protection Amid Expanding Extraction
The revision comes as Beijing expands many of the industries that place pressure on the region’s land and water. The regional government’s 2026 work report calls for increased oil and gas production, expanded coal and coal-chemical projects, mineral development, industrial agriculture, and major energy and transport infrastructure. In Turpan, decades of groundwater overexploitation have already lowered water tables and contributed to the drying of karez systems.
The 2006 regulation explicitly recognized these risks. It imposed restrictions on groundwater wells and required protective measures for roads, railways, oil and gas pipelines, extraction, mining, blasting, and tourism; projects that damaged karez could also face remediation and compensation requirements.
Twenty years later, many of the activities the original regulation treated as threats have become pillars of Beijing’s development strategy. But will the revised rules meaningfully constrain large-scale development and groundwater use or deepen state control over the Uyghur communities that depend on the karez while simultaneously recasting their lifeline as a symbol of Chinese national unity?
Preserve, Promote, Reinterpret
The reframing of karez takes place within a broader effort to weaken distinct Uyghur identity while selectively preserving and repurposing elements of Uyghur culture within a state defined Chinese national identity. The new Ethnic Unity and Progress Law gives this project a national legal framework, placing language, education, culture, history and public institutions with the drive to forge Zhonghua minzu community consciousness. The approach does not require every visible marker of Uyghur culture and identity to disappear. Selected traditions and heritage remain visible after the state detaches them from histories, identities, and collective consciousness that conflict with its preferred national narrative.
The karez illustrates this process particularly clearly. For Uyghurs, it forms part of the cultural landscape of oasis life, sustaining agriculture, settlement, local knowledge, and community life for generations. Yet as Beijing invests in promoting the karez, it is increasingly recasting this heritage as a symbol of Chinese national unity and Xi Jinping’s vision of a shared Chinese national identity.
China’s 2008 UNESCO Tentative List submission already linked the Turpan karez system to Han hydraulic technology. Under Xi, that narrative has acquired a more explicit political purpose. The 2026 revision explicitly grounds the regulation in Xi Jinping Thought on Culture, Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, and the project of forging consciousness of the Chinese national community. The result is cultural redefinition. Some Uyghur heritage, like the karez, remains visible but repurposed so their history and meaning are increasingly recast as Chinese.
Why The Proposed Revision Matters
The 2026 overhaul of the Karez Protection Regulation should be read alongside the new Ethnic Unity and Progress Law. Both place culture and history within Beijing’s broader effort to forge a common Zhonghua identity. The karez demonstrates how that project can operate through physical preservation. Distinctive heritage can survive physically while the state progressively incorporates its history, governance, and meaning into a national narrative of shared Chinese identity.
The revised regulation may help preserve the karez, but what survives with it? Uyghur communities that historically built, maintained, and depended on the karez face growing pressure from resource intensive development and potentially diminished recognition within the draft regulatory framework. More than the lifeline of the oasis, the karez is increasingly a political, cultural, and economic asset through which Beijing can assert authority over East Turkestan’s resources while also advancing a larger narrative about who built the region, how its peoples became part of a “unified Chinese nation,” and who now have the authority to define its cultural and environmental future.
The draft regulation remains open for public comment until September 3.
