Saifudin (c. 1914-), Uighur political leader who served the so-called East Turkestan Republic as minister of education and head of the Hi youth organization. In December 1949 he became vice chairman of the Sinkiang provincial government, and in February 1950 he joined the Chinese Communist party. He was elected chairman of the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region in October 1955.

Born into a Uighur merchant family of Artush in the Kashgar district, Saifudin received his early education in Sinkiang. He then went to the Soviet Union, where he studied law and politics at the University of Tashkent, became fluent in Russian, and reportedly joined the Russian Communist party. After returning to Sinkiang, he took part in the Uighur independence movement at the time of the disorders that accompanied the intrusion of Ma Chungying (q.v.) into Sinkiang. With the downfall of Ma Chung-ying and the consolidation of power by Sheng Shih-ts'ai (q.v.), Saifudin went to the Soviet Union. He later moved to Afghanistan, where he spent several years. The withdrawal of Russian representatives from Sinkiang, the political demise of Sheng Shih-ts'ai, and the extension of the authority of the National Government into Sinkiang in 1943-44 prompted Saifudin's return to political activity in his native province. In November 1944 a major anti-Chinese revolt broke out in the three northwestern districts of Sinkiang that were adjacent to Soviet Central Asia. This so-called Hi revolt led in January 1945 to the establishment of the so-called East Turkestan Republic, with Saifudin as minister of education and head of the Hi youth organization. The political orientation of the Hi regime was patently anti-Chinese, and it enjoyed Soviet support stemming from Russian interest in encouraging anti-Kuomintang unrest among the non-Chinese ethnic groups of Sinkiang. In an effort to bring peace to Sinkiang, the National Government appointed Chang Chihchung (q.v.) provincial governor. After protracted negotiations, agreements were signed in January and June of 1946 between the Chinese Nationalists at Urumchi and Akhmedjan and other senior leaders of the Hi rebel regime. In the coalition government established in Sinkiang under these agreements, Saifudin became commissioner of education at Urumchi and a member of the provincial assembly. The coalition was short-lived, however, and Saifudin soon became one of the leaders of the movement that developed in early 1947 in opposition to continued Chinese domination of Sinkiang. The coalition fell apart after the appointment of Masud Sabri (q.v.) as provincial governor. Saifudin resigned his post and left Urumchi in June; Akhmedjan and others also departed for Hi in July; and the Hi regime resumed its strongly anti- Kuomintang stance. From the time of the November 1944 revolt the Hi area, for all practical purposes, had been independent of Chinese authority, be it Nationalist or Communist. In August 1948, however, the Hi leaders announced the establishment of the Sinkiang League for the Protection of Peace and Democracy (Hsin-chiang pao-wei ho-p'ing min-chu t'ung-meng) ; its name had a definite Chinese Communist ring. Saifudin was prominent in the new league, which issued a proclamation attacking both past and present Chinese rulers of Sinkiang. Despite this statement, the Hi leaders continued to disagree about what their future relationship with the Chinese Communists should be. In September 1949, following the defection of the senior Chinese Nationalist military commander in Sinkiang, Burhan (q.v.) and other leaders at Urumchi surrendered to the Chinese Communists. By this time, a three-man Hi delegation led by Saifudin had arrived in Peiping to participate in the establishment of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China. At year's end, the Chinese Communists quietly announced that another Hi delegation had been lost in August when the plane in which it was traveling had crashed in Manchuria. It is interesting to note that this delegation included Akhmedjan, the chief Hi spokesman for true Uighur autonomy in Sinkiang, and several other prominent Uighur nationalist leaders whose attitudes toward the Chinese Communists were unclear.

At the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in September 1949, which he attended as a "specially invited" delegate, Saifudin articulated the new Chinese Communist analysis of the Sinkiang political situation. He now interpreted the Hi uprising as a "movement of liberation" rather than a rebellion of Sinkiang's non-Chinese peoples against Chinese rule. True liberation, he said, came only with the Communist victory in China proper: "the victory of the People's Liberation Army is also the victory of the liberation movement of the Sinkiang people." With the problem of Sinkiang's political orientation "basically solved," he added, the area henceforth would be "an independent Sinkiang under the leadership of the Central People's Government." Saifudin was elected to the Central People's Government Council and the nationalities affairs commission of the Government Administration Council. In December 1949 he was named vice chairman of a new Sinkiang provincial government, headed by Burhan. He also became a member (later vice chairman) of the Northwest Military and Administrative Committee, vice chairman of that organ's nationalities affairs committee, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and a member of the national committee of the Chinese People's Committee for World Peace.

In February 1950 Saifudin led a Sinkiang delegation that went to Moscow to participate in Sino-Soviet negotiations directed, for the Chinese, by Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai. He thus was concerned with the agreements bearing on Sinkiang that were concluded at the time of the signing of the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance. On his return to China, Saifudin was admitted to membership in the Chinese Communist party on 28 February 1950. He also became vice chairman of the Sinkiang branch of the Sino- Soviet Friendship Association. In 1952 he was made a vice chairman of the Government Administration Council's nationalities affairs commission.

In September 1954 Saifudin attended the National People's Congress as a delegate from Sinkiang, and he later was elected vice chairman of the congress's Standing Committee. In the governmental reorganization of 1954, he was confirmed as vice chairman of the Sinkiang provincial government and was named to membership on the newly established National Defense Council at Peking, and in December of that year he was made a vice president of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association. When Sinkiang province became the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region in October 1955, Saifudin was elected chairman and was appointed deputy commander of the Sinkiang military district. He also became second secretary of the Chinese Communist party committee of the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region. At the party's Eighth National Congress in September 1956, Saifudin was elected to alternate membership in the Central Committee.

Saifudin's role as a leading non-Chinese in the People's Republic of China also led to his participation in international affairs. In April 1955, having become a member of the board of directors of the Sino-Indian Friendship Association, he visited New Delhi. In 1956 he became a member of the newly formed Asian (after 1958, Afro-Asian) Solidarity Committee of China. He visited Moscow in July-August 1957 and then went to Finland to head a Chinese delegation representing the National People's Congress. Three months later, in November 1957, Saifudin was again in Moscow, this time as a member of the Chinese delegation headed by Mao Tse-tung that participated in the fortieth-anniversary celebrations of the Russian Revolution. At that time, he also visited Prague as a member of the Chinese delegation, led by Li Hsien-nien, that attended the funeral of Antonin Zapotocky.

Saifudin continued to enjoy prominence in both Sinkiang and national affairs in the 1960's. He participated in the second and third National People's congresses as a delegate from Sinkiang, continued to serve as a vice chairman of that body's Standing Committee, and continued to hold membership on the National Defense Council at Peking. In September 1962 he was deputy chairman of a National People's Congress that visited North Viet Nam. Saifudin was reelected chairman of the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region in 1959, and he was named president of Sinkiang University in 1964.