Editor's note: Keith Lamb is a University of Oxford graduate with an MSc degree in Contemporary Chinese Studies. His primary research interests are international relations of China and China's "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics." The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

I recently wrote about my first-hand experiences with the Uygur ethnicity in Eastern China and the different opinions they hold regarding the Chinese government. I found some felt they had been left behind developmentally, while some were taking full advantage of China's development and supporting the government.

The second group never gets mentioned in the Western press. Reporting on them would break the narrative that China purposely represses "Uygurs for being Uygurs". This is essentially the transposition of Western colonial racism, which justified the shoddy treatment of other ethnicities based on a hierarchy of racial superiority.

Clearly, from the benefits ethnic minorities get in China, such as more accessible entrance into university, there is no evidence for a crude transposition of historical Western injustices taking place against China's ethnic minorities.

My long trip to Xinjiang was started after a conversation with three Uygurs in 2015, who looked at me incredulously and denied the picture of Xinjiang I presented to them, which had, in turn, been presented to me by the Western press. Eventually, they lost patience with my questioning and said, "go yourself".

In 2016, I boarded a high-speed train traveling to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. I traveled around Xinjiang for three weeks, and as with most of my trips, I'm more fascinated with observing the daily lives of the people than seeing tourist attractions.

What I saw and my many interactions confirmed two things. Firstly, the lack of development that I had previously heard about was rapidly being remedied.

Secondly, the situation with the Uygurs is extremely complex and what I observed in Xinjiang mirrored what I had encountered in the east of China. Namely, there are Uygurs dissatisfied but also many who were steadfastly loyal to the Chinese government.

Two taxi rides that I took in Xinjiang sum up this complex state of affairs.

I have always found taxi rides a good place to feel out the "vibe" of a place. The driver, who knows the area well and comes across customers from all walks of life, is usually willing to chat for the journey's duration. This, combined with not having any prospect of meeting the same driver again, can lead to very frank conversations.

Traveling around Xinjiang by train, I decided to break my journey to Kashgar and look at Xinjiang's non-touristy parts. I stopped at the small city of Aksu, which I found to be as neat and clean as any in China's East.

What struck me here was that the policemen and local administrative staff were predominantly made up of the Uygur minority, which is incongruous with Western media reports of racial subjugation.

In contrast, during the ethnic tensions in Northern Ireland, few Catholics would have joined the police force, and likewise, in the U.S., it's not common to see predominant black policing in black areas.

In the taxi ride back to the train station, I talked with a Uygur driver about his life in Xinjiang and his political views. While his Mandarin was strained, he could make his point vividly understood.

He told me that a two-story building was rare when he was young, and the donkey was the mode of transport. Nevertheless, he personally was not enamored with a greater Chinese identity even though he accepted China's achievements as a whole.

Pulling up at the station, I was greeted by a young Uygur police officer. Uygurs are a diverse looking ethnicity some look European, some look middle-eastern, and some look East Asian. While the taxi driver looked nearly indistinguishable from a southern Chinese man, this policeman looked Caucasian.

His Mandarin was fluent, and we spent a few minutes chatting. He seemed just as surprised to see a foreign tourist in Aksu as I did a Caucasian looking man in a Chinese police uniform. When I mentioned that he could pass for a European, he earnestly replied, "but we're Chinese".

With this one taxi ride, I formed a simple hypothesis that Uygur officials and police officers would be supportive of China, but taxi drivers would be less so. This inference was quickly dismissed by my next 40-minute traffic jam in Urumqi, a taxi ride.

The driver was also a Uygur, but this time with impeccable Mandarin. My complementing of his Mandarin was taken as an insult. He barked back at me, "of course, my Mandarin is good it's our national language".

The offense taken by him is a reaction I've met several times by Uygurs. Indeed, it must be frustrating for those whose identities are invested in being a member of a multi-ethnic state to constantly have assumptions made about them.

Throughout the ride, we talked about the situation in Xinjiang and China as a whole in general. While he was a supporter of a multi-ethnic China like all Uygurs I have met before him, he was no less proud of his Uygur identity with good Chinese.

As we stopped in the traffic jam, he showed me pictures on his phone of a recent family holiday to Beijing.

The very advantage of the "taxi driver methodology", which is the unlikeliness of meeting the same driver again, means I cannot say for certain why one driver was happily invested in the multi-ethnic country while the other was not.

Some who I have told the story to have pointed out that the second driver's better Mandarin was the key as such, he was able to more readily benefit from opportunities across China.

The question is, does his bilingualism infringe on his freedom and his "true" identity as an authentic Uygur. I would argue now because being bilingual outside of the Anglosphere world is the norm for most people. Secondly, learning languages leads to greater freedom to navigate the world at large.

A more pertinent question is probably who bilingualism serves for rarely does the bilingual combination of "English+native-language" ever cause a stir.

If the West wants to make headway into Xinjiang then no doubt dialogue can open into how to balance diversity and unity in a multi-ethnic country. This subject is pertinent not only to China but the global community too.

For former British settler colonies in North America and Oceania, their homogenization of all ethnicities indicates that they have the most to learn from such a dialogue; for nascent states such as the EU, their lack of ability to create greater unity will always be a stumbling block to statehood, and for the diverse and populous developing countries such as India and Indonesia their very survival and ability to flourish depends on this balance.

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com.)