How China Wins and Loses Xinjiang, by Christina Larson

On Sunday, more than 1,000 Uighurs clashed with police in the western Chinese city of Urumqi -- marking one of the country's bloodiest ethnic conflicts in recent years.

The government's crackdown on the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority group that has long chafed under Beijing's rule, was nasty, brutish, and short. Overnight curfews were imposed. Thousands of police officers dispersed. President Hu Jintao left the G-8 summit in Europe to focus on putting out fires at home. But not all aspects of China's policies toward Uighurs and other minorities are characterized by such precision.

If you visit Xinjiang, the restive province that's home to China's roughly 8 million Uighurs, you'll realize there's a gap -- often a chasm -- between official intention on minority issues and what happens in practice. Sometimes the government's missteps appear to be the product of malevolence, sometimes of ignorance. The results are both tragic and absurd.

On bad days, the tragedy is obvious: More than 150 people, Uighur and Han Chinese, have died in recent riots. But there is also a thread of dark comedy, a continual drama of miscommunication and miscalculation, as Han authorities try to hamstring the practice of Islam and local politicians try to at once appease and suppress the Uighurs.

On paper, Islam is one of China's five officially recognized and legal religions. And the central government, in order to foster a "harmonious society," aims to help all minority peoples prosper alongside their Han neighbors. But in practice, ethnic policies as implemented alienate and inflame the largely Muslim population of Xinjiang. Tensions run high, liable to erupt at even distant provocations. (The spark that lit last Sunday's riots was the mistreatment and murder of Uighur factory workers in faraway Guangdong province.)

Recently, Robert D. Kaplan argued in The Atlantic that, on purely pragmatic grounds, in the case of Sri Lanka, repression worked. Other writers have recently made similar assertions in the case of Xinjiang. One line of argumentation indeed holds that China's uncompromising stance toward its ethnic populations may be unsavory to Westerners, but is in fact the surest way to keep the peace.

If only Beijing's iron fist were so dexterous. China's government is indeed effective at disbanding protests, building skyscrapers, and staging high-profile spectacles like the Olympics. It's also proved relatively adept, to its credit, at managing the financial crisis and keeping factories churning.

But you don't have to look far for signs of breakdown or miscoordination. Take the embarrassing wavering over Green Dam, the much-maligned Internet nanny program; or last year's scandals over tainted milk, an economic and international public relations disaster for Beijing. China routinely looks more vulnerable from the inside than the outside, and its volatile minority affairs are just another example.

Ultimately, China is more adept at creating fearsome impressions in the moment -- grand like the Olympic Opening Ceremony, or cruel like the crackdown on protestors -- than at maintenance. When you look close, it's apparent how much muddle there is beneath the surface, especially when authorities attempt to formulate policy around something they don't truly understand.

The Uighurs, as well as Islam itself, mystify China's secular leadership. In Xinjiang, a vast western province -- three times the size of France and bordering eight countries -- China's long-term policy toward minorities is puzzled in principle, capricious in execution, and the result is much suffering on the part of both Uighur and Han. Far from containing tension, the heavy-handed approach fans the flames. It is a brutal kind of confusion.

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SHANE9219

10:23 PM ET

July 9, 2009

Search for Han Chinese sister whose family were butchered by Uig

If this author is so smart, you should read this article published on Times

“Search for Han Chinese sister whose family were butchered by Uighurs”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6677379.ece

“We saw hundreds of Uighurs running down the street on the afternoon of July 5. About ten suddenly rushed into the store. They began to hit the people inside, even the old mother, with bricks and stones. They tried to run outside. Then they were dragged back inside.

“There were terrible screams. Just wordless screams. But then very quickly they fell silent.”

“He found no survivors, only four bodies. He has yet to discover the fate of his sister. ”

This was once a tight-netted family of 5 with a boy of age 13.

CALCAL

5:45 PM ET

July 13, 2009

21st century Pax Sinica

The augument that Chinese society is becoming more volatile or unstable because of the Urumqi Riot or some ethnic falt lines (between Han Chinese and Uighur muslim thugs or tibetan monks) is utterly false. Quite on the contrary, the ughiurs thugs' barbaric butchering of (even a single) Han's family will be the rally cry that binds the Han Chinese society together -- just as the single barbaric tibetan attack on the handicapped Chinese athlete in Paris last year. An unjust, barbaric attack on a single Chinese will be taken as an attack on the entire Chinese Nation - it is the equivalent of the NATO Arcticle 5, multiplying by a billion times.

Yes, China is more diverse than many westerner think -- China is a continent that contains great diversity -- even among the 92% Han Chinese. For example, as a Chinese American fluent in Mandarin I could barely understand the dialects of southern Chinese. However, on the other hand, most westerners fail to understand that China is not a "nation state" in the traditional european sense, but a "civilization state". What has always bound the Chinese Nation together for the past 5000 years is the deep-rooted and irradicable sense of belonging to a "superior" civilization -- the Chinese Civilization.

Chinese society has its historically, highly distinctive position on race, where about 92 per cent of the population believe that they are of one race, and therefore, from which is the lack of a conception of, or respect for, difference that flows from other minorities. The deep sense of China as a unitary civilisation, together with a pervasive belief in Han superiority, leaves little room for the claims of other cultural groups. That is where most westerners fail to understand that Chinese draw our deep-rooted sense of belonging and identification not from some religions, nation states, dialects, founding father principles or universal human rights, but from our ancient history, culture and civilization. For the majority of Chinese, no matter where he is and what citizenship he has -- mainland, taiwan, hongkong, or european or American -- he is, first, last and always, a Chinese. Ask a New York Chinese restaurant dish washer who he thinks he is, he will probably tell you, proudly, Chinese.

Han Chinese Dynasty comes and goes every several hundred years or so for the past 5000 years. Chinese probably have endured more civil wars and internal turmoils than any other civilization. However, whenever faced with an existential threat, attack or challenge to the "superior" Chinese way of life, the entire Chinese Nation has always rallied around the flag of Chinese Nationalism. That is why no other unitary civilization state, except China, has survived the entire 5000 years' human history.

The witless, end-of-history triumphalism that shaped western attitudes in the post-Cold War era is always good for a belly laugh and is nowhere more misplaced than in regard to China. History is on the move again – and it is not the delusional, teleological, self-congratulating history dreamt up by either the dimwitted, self-righteous neocons on the right or the naive,self-glorifying liberal rationalists on the left, which somehow always meets with themselves as the winners in the middle. The 21st century Pax Sinica is the real thing, a world-changing event that marks the end of dominance of western civilizaton.

BING SHALIMAR

8:22 PM ET

Who's Triumphalist?

Thank you for your post. Your check from the Central Committee should arrive in four to six weeks.

AMITA

1:52 AM ET

July 14, 2009

This is the clash of the wild dogs.

This is the ultimate. This is the clash of the wild dogs. Chinese versus Muslims.

It is so typical of China that they want to grab every bodies rights every time, and they could not care a penny in slaughtering thousands of innocent people, as long as it concerns the interests of a greater China.

It is so typical of Islam that all most everywhere that Muslims are a majority they behave like criminals, and all most everywhere that Muslims are a minority, they behave like irritants

The extremely important point is, the West should analyze this extremely valuable laboratory study of Chinese versus Muslims. Don’t you think we can then formulate a policy in dealing with Islam at least ( as China is not a threat to the entire civilized world, only a threat to its indigenous population )

RCHIAN

2:46 PM ET

Urumqi riots

I am an ethic Han born in China. The author is objective and his comments are mostly on target. As the author mentioned that CCP/the government is suspicious of all religions and will try everything to minimize the religious influence. However, I don't believe it singles out Islam for suppression. After 9-11, the government may have over-reacted to the terrorist/separatist threats. While I think that action to put a big TV screen opposite the Mosque is 50% intentional and 50% insensitive I don't believe to serve meal in school during the Ramadan purposed offense.

Like last year’s Lhasa riots, the root of racial tension that exploded in July 5 in Urumqi is mainly a consequence of economic inequality between immigrants (Hans and Huis) and locals (Tibetans and Uighurs). The Chinese government has tried to promote development in minority areas, but it failed critically in 2 issues, IMO: rigid power control and failed mandarin education. Minorities should have more presentations in the regional autonomous governments, and the managements on minority affairs should mostly handled by minority officials. I don’t see the central government’s minority policies are aimed to assimilate minorities. In contrary, it has invested heavily not only in economic development, but also in cultural reservations in minority regions, particularly Tibet and Xinjiang (compared with it did in Han dominated areas). However, the insensitivity and ignorance of local officials executing minority policies erase all such efforts and perceived by minorities as insulting and disrespectful. Failure in mandarin education results in minorities having less chance to get government and corporate jobs and difficulties in doing business with government and corporate due to lack of necessary language skills. When the minorities are suspicious about government's intention, pushing for mandarin education is viewed as evidence that the government tries to wipeout minority cultures, and is met great resistance (the government mandate schools in minority regions INCLUDE mandarin teaching, not replace minority languages with mandarin as many Western media claimed).

How China Wins and Loses Xinjiang

The Chinese government can put down a riot -- but its heavy-handed tactics ensure that ethnic tensions will keep simmering.

BY CHRISTINA LARSON | JULY 9, 2009

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