From Yalta to UN Resolution 2758: The Disappearance of Uyghur Statehood in International Law

November 12, 2025

A UHRP Insights column by Asiye Uyghur, Writer

In the middle of the twentieth century, the Uyghur people twice sought to build an independent state. The most remarkable attempt emerged in the Soviet-backed East Turkestan Republic between 1944 and 1949. Yet the great-power deals struck after the Yalta Conference and, later, the adoption of UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 in 1971 erased the very possibility of Uyghur sovereignty. These decisions, made in rooms where Uyghurs had no seat, continue to shape how the world understands nations and self-determination today.

The principle of self-determination is written into the United Nations Charter, particularly in Article 1, paragraph 2, as one of the cornerstones of modern international law. It is meant to guarantee that all peoples can choose their own political destiny. In practice, however, it has rarely been applied consistently. For many newly decolonized nations in Africa and Asia, the Charter offered a legal basis for independence and nationhood. But for others—like the Uyghurs—the principle was stifled by the geopolitical calculations of the Cold War.

Before the Yalta Conference, the Soviet Union supported the East Turkestan Republic both for ideological and strategic reasons. Moscow’s backing reflected its broader anti-imperialist narrative and its desire to establish influence in Central Asia. Supporting the Uyghur-led government in the Ili region also weakened the Chinese Nationalist government and curtailed Western influence along the Soviet border — a reference that primarily denoted the Anglo-American bloc, as both Britain and the United States supported the Republic of Zhonghua during this period. The brief existence of the East Turkestan Republic created a space for genuine local governance and de facto autonomy, however short-lived.

After Yalta, everything changed. The Soviet Union shifted its priorities and decided to back the Chinese Nationalist government in exchange for recognition of Outer Mongolia’s independence. This pragmatic tradeoff reflected a larger strategy: to secure a stable eastern frontier and avoid further confrontation with Western powers. For the Uyghurs, this meant that their political aspirations were sacrificed on the altar of great-power diplomacy. By 1946, Soviet pressure forced the East Turkestan leadership to negotiate with the Chinese government in Nanjing. Their republic was reclassified as Xinjiang Province, effectively ending its independence. Three years later, Soviet support vanished completely. When key Uyghur leaders died in a mysterious plane crash en route to Beijing in 1949, their statehood experiment came to a tragic end.

From 1949 to 1971, the Chinese government consolidated its control over the Uyghur region through military deployment, administrative restructuring, and a series of political campaigns. During this same period, Uyghur exiles abroad made quiet efforts to gain international recognition or at least raise awareness, but their appeals were muted by the logic of Cold War alliances. The world had entered the Cold War era, as the newly founded People’s Republic of China disengaged from the U.S.-led Western system and aligned itself with the Soviet-led Eastern bloc.

This dynamic was cemented in 1971, when the United Nations adopted Resolution 2758. The resolution recognized the People’s Republic of China as the sole legitimate representative of “China” and expelled the Republic of China (Taiwan) from its seat. While the move was framed as a pragmatic correction of diplomatic representation, it never revisited the question of which territories or peoples were included within the definition of “China.” Neither the Uyghurs, Tibetans, nor Taiwanese were considered as distinct political subjects. The decision codified “China” as a single, indivisible entity—an act that validated Beijing’s territorial claims and erased alternative sovereignties from the international imagination.

This outcome was not inevitable. Before 1971, the UN had never explicitly ruled on which government or state truly represented all the lands claimed under “China.” That ambiguity, though small, left a sliver of space for debate or recognition of distinct identities. Resolution 2758 closed that window entirely. From that point on, international law effectively treated “China” as an undivided whole, regardless of the histories or aspirations of the peoples within its borders.

The very word “China” had once referred to a vast and diverse cultural region, more comparable to “Europe” or “Africa” than to a single nation-state. By enshrining it as one unified sovereign identity, the United Nations helped transform complex historical realities into a monolithic political fact. This linguistic and legal shift carried profound consequences. It turned the Uyghurs from a people with a record of statehood into a “minority group” contained within a larger entity that now claimed absolute territorial integrity. Their political identity was silenced not by war, but by the quiet power of international terminology.

In the early years of the People’s Republic, Beijing projected an image of multiethnic unity—through censuses, cultural recognition, and the rhetoric of national harmony. Yet these gestures always operated within the assumption of indivisible sovereignty. Combined with Marxist-Leninist ideas of progress and later nationalist drives for modernization, the framework created by the UN and reinforced by Chinese state ideology legitimized a vast assimilation project. International institutions provided the language of sovereignty; domestic politics supplied the rationale. Together, they built the structure under which Uyghur history and culture could be systematically erased while the world looked on.

The disappearance of Uyghur statehood was not merely the product of domestic repression. It was also the result of global choices—decisions made by powerful states and codified in international law. The Yalta Conference marked the moment when the Soviet Union traded principle for pragmatism. UN Resolution 2758 ensured that no global body would ever again question China’s territorial claims. Together, they created the legal and diplomatic conditions under which an entire people could vanish from the map of nations.

Today, this history still resonates. The legacy of those mid-century decisions continues to define the boundaries of international empathy and recognition. When the global community accepts sovereignty as immutable, it also accepts silence as the cost of order. Remembering the Uyghur struggle is not simply about revisiting the past—it is about asking whether the world we have built leaves room for peoples without a seat at the table.

Image credit: John Hall Paxton Papers (MS 629). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.