Uighur boy in the back streets of Kashi, South West Xinjiang. The Uighur, a people of Turkic descent, are one of the largest of the 56 “National Minorities” officially recognised in the P.R. of China today. Kashi was declared the capital of the independent Turkestan Republic formed in 1945, however by 1951 all serious organized armed resistance to Chinese authority in the area had been defeated.