SANITISED VISIBILITY, SOFT DISCIPLINE, AND STRATEGIC CO- PERFORMANCE: CONSTRUCTING CONTROLLED DIVERSITY IN URUMQI

This study explores how Hetian Second Street (HSS) in Urumqi, Xinjiang, exemplifies the governance of ethnic difference through ?controlled diversity?. Based on forty days of ethnographic fieldwork, it analyses how Uyghur and Han actors navigate a hybrid commercial space where ethnic identity is visibly curated yet politically neutralised. It develops a tripartite framework: first, examining how visual ethnicity is selectively encoded through architecture and bodily aesthetics; second, how technical regulation filters ethnic presence via licensing and inspections; and third, how strategic co-performance enables actors to negotiate governance through mimicry and calibrated ambiguity. The study advances debates on authoritarian urbanism and the aesthetics of power, arguing that controlled diversity is not a static condition but a fragile, continually negotiated process shaped by state agendas, market forces, and everyday social practices.