Favorable geopolitical conditions rather than climate promoted societal development in historical Xinjiang region, China

The contemporary renaissance of the ancient Silk Road through China’s Belt and Road Initiative has brought Xinjiang—a pivotal hub along this historic trade corridor—worldwide attention. This resurgence highlights a critical academic lacuna: despite the profound significance of the past social development in Xinjiang in comprehensively understanding Chinese history, the key factors governing its long-term social evolution remain unclear. Such limitation is probably constrained by fragmented frontier historical records and the lack of comprehensive quantitative analyses integrating socio-natural systems. This study innovatively employs multi-proxy historical records from 200 BCE to 1912 CE, in particular systematically categorized warfare data, using Pearson’s correlation, multivariate regression modeling, and Granger causality analyses at annual resolution. Our findings reveal that the historical social development in the Xinjiang region is fundamentally driven by favorable geopolitical situation rather than pleasant climate, especially during the unified administrations of the Han, Sui-Tang, and Qing dynasties. Specifically, while climatic factors exhibit limited correlation and almost no causation with (geo-)political and socio-demographic dynamics, three distinct causal chains are identified with different war types: (1) central government-initiated military campaigns (primary focus of this study), (2) local rebellions, and (3) external/nomadic invasions. Regression models indicate that garrison reclamation is the most influential predictor, with 1-unit increase corresponding to around 0.8-unit growth in agricultural immigration ( β = 0.8), substantially exceeding the impacts of central government-waged war ( β = 0.16), institutional establishment ( β = 0.52), and agriculturalist immigration ( β = 0.38) when garrison reclamation serves as the dependent variable. These results establish a coherent framework explaining the social dynamics in the Xinjiang region over the past two millennia, and offer an empirically-grounded historical case for the sustainable development in current Xinjiang under climate change as well as valuable supplements and new insights into the simplistic perspective of climatic-environmental determinism.