China's troubled Xinjiang hit by more violence: state media

[frigidmagi]

Yahoo

More than a hundred people, riding motorbikes and wielding knifes, attacked a police station in China's ethnically divided western region of Xinjiang, state media said on Saturday, in the latest unrest to hit the region in the past week.

The attack in the remote desert city of Hotan, a heavily ethnic Uighur area, comes two days after the region's deadliest unrest in four years that resulted in the deaths of 35 people. China called the incident a "terrorist attack".

Xinjiang is home to the mainly Muslim Uighur people who speak a Turkic language. Many of them chafe at what they call Chinese government restrictions on their culture, language and religion. China says it grants Uighurs wide-ranging freedoms and accuses extremists of separatism.

The animosity between the majority Han Chinese and the Uighurs poses a major challenge for China's Communist Party leaders. President Xi Jinping, who took office in March, has called for the unity of all ethnic groups in China.

In the latest incident, the Global Times - owned by Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily - said "troublemakers" gathered at religious venues before riding on motorcycles to attack a police station in the city's Moyu county.

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Armed police officers stand guard near the international grand bazaar in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uighur Aut …
Authorities are counting the number of casualties and searching for suspects, the Global Times said.

In a separate incident, some 200 people attempted to "incite trouble" at a major shopping area in Hotan, the newspaper said. It said police defused the situation.

Yu Zhengsheng, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the party's inner circle, pledged to step up "action to crack down upon terrorist groups and extremist organizations" at a meeting with government officials in the regional capital Urumqi, state news agency Xinhua said.

Chinese authorities have increased security in Urumqi, the Global Times said.

Photographs on Chinese microblogs showed dozens of military trucks with riot police patrolling the streets.

The increased security comes almost a week before the fourth anniversary of the July 2009 riots in Xinjiang that pitted Uighurs against ethnic Chinese, resulting in nearly 200 people being killed.

In a sign of the gravity of the situation, Xinjiang's top party chief Zhang Chunxian said: "We should be clearly aware of the complex and acute nature of the long-term struggle against separatism," according to the Xinjiang Daily, the official newspaper of the region.

"For those who dare to defy the law, the criminals who engage in violent terrorist activities have to be punished. We can't tolerate them, we have to hold no punches," the People's Daily said in a front-page editorial.

So a 100 guys on motorbikes and knives swooped in and attacked a police station? I'm gonna ask the same thing I would ask if this happened in America. Guys... What did you do!?! Somehow you pissed a 100 guys enough to attack you with knives! This is not something you do over a parking ticket!

[Josh]

That just sounds so much like Hong Kong cinema. Unfreakingreal.

[General Havoc]

You want me to find you a list of what the Chinese police did in Xinjiang to get this shit thrown at them? Because it'll be looooooong.

[rhoenix]

You want me to find you a list of what the Chinese police did in Xinjiang to get this shit thrown at them? Because it'll be looooooong.

I imagine it would be, what with the angry bikers with knives thing. I'm morbidly curious now to find out what the police there did to earn this kind of excited and happy reaction from the locals.

[General Havoc]

Well you could start with the explicit Chinese policy of flooding Xinjiang (among other places) with Han Chinese, evicting the local population from their lands forceably, and then applying the law unequally such that the locals have no recourse in any court against Chinese authority. Then you could go with China's policy of defining non-Han cultural displays as treason, separatism, and revolutionary behavior, punishable by death, imprisonment, or assault. Then couple that with all the myriad of other reasons one might riot in China, and you begin to see...

[Lys]

How strange, because for when i'm standing the Chinese seem to be going to an awful lot of trouble to maintain and glorify their cultural diversity. They make a big deal out of it and trumpet to all the world how damn proud they are of that all these different people are united into one glorious polity, they have schools that teach ethnic minorities in their own language, they exempt ethnic minorities from the one child policy, and otherwise take actions seem calculated to do the opposite of homogenizing their population.

To the extent that the Chinese government seems to be encouraging immigration to its hinterlands, i think it's a matter of economics rather than ethnic cleansing. The most well developed and densely populated parts of China are Han, the least well developed and thinly populated areas are not Han. This is for historical reasons that date all the way back. To develop its hinterlands China needs people to go there and engage in economic activity, so it moves people from the areas that have a population surplus to the areas that are in need of economic and infrastructural development.

The people who attacked the police station obviously have grievances, the Chinese government does have a number of issues. Moreover the provincial government often enact and follow policies that diverge from those of the central government. The Chinese people are aware of this, and it has happened that folks actively rioting and fighting against their local officials will plea for Beijing to help them, convinced that the central party apparatus would do something if only they knew. It's the old fashioned "good Tsar, bad Boyars" tactic, but best as i can tell the local Beijing does somewhat try to live up to it.

[General Havoc]

As with everything in China, the policies are often at odds with the reality. In Beijing, or the coast of China, cultural diversity is all the rage, as are the reports on the results of such policies within the hinterlands and areas of non-Han majority. The problem is that those policies are not generally applied to Xinjiang itself, or if they are, are accompanied by such heavy-handed repression as to rob them of all good. The government, for instance, officially excerpts the Uighur people (among others) from the One Child policy, but then turns around behind the scenes and imposes an eighty thousand yuan ($10,000) tax for every child past the first. They do not collect this tax, by and large (as nobody can pay it), but hold it over the heads of largely every Uighur family, such that if they piss off someone powerful in the Han establishment, or simply have something they want, the tax collectors suddenly remember the tax and confiscate assets, businesses, or land.

One must always remember that China does not, fundamentally, operate under the rule of law, especially not in the Western regions of the country. In consequence the policies they adopt, however forward thinking or even genuinely intended, exist solely at the sufferance of the party, or more specifically the local bureaucracy. They can be, and are, withdrawn on a selective basis whenever those in power wish to withdraw them, and there is strictly no recourse at law for anyone so afflicted. This is why the explosive growth of social media in China has brought with it such a mass-obsession with muckraking and scandal illuminating. There is literally no other way for someone targeted by the government, Han or otherwise, to push back save by publicizing their case online. True enough in many other countries I suppose, but in China moreso than normal. I won't go so far as to say that China's social policies are all window dressing, they are not, but it is a mistake to look at them and assume that this is now how things are to be in China.

You are correct that the driving force behind the mass Han migrations into Xinjiang, Tibet, and other places are driven by economics and not some evil desire to ethnically cleanse, but the result on the ground, at least from the perspective of those living in those areas already, is a sense that Beijing is trying to exterminate them as a people. This may or may not be actually true (there are solid pragmatic reasons for why China does not want large groups of culturally united Uighurs running around), but so long as the Uighurs think it is true, then they will react accordingly. And frankly, China has given them little reason to think otherwise. With the example of Tibet rather freshly in mind, it's easy to assume the worst about Chinese policies that just happen to involve settling enough Han Chinese in Xinjiang to render the native peoples thereof "unnecessary" for the purposes of the government's development goals. It also serves to blunt any and all claims for independence from China, something the Beijing authorities are acutely sensitive to.

The Good King with Bad Advisers routine does work fairly well for the CPC, but Xinjiang is a whole different kettle of fish. The Uighurs and others who live out there know better than to appeal to Beijing for help, as they see Beijing as having imposed this state of affairs upon them. Whether or not Beijing is even willing to take on local authorities out there, there is no sense among such communities that China is serious about preserving their way of life or possibly even their physical existence in the long term. As such, the people there turn to... other solutions. And given the location in question, those other solutions may well take the form of Islamic militancy, something China is terrified of. This in turn makes them clamp down on Xinjiang even more, and so we continue.

[Lys]

Thank you for expounding on this subject in detail Havoc, you have expanded my understanding of the situation in Xinjiang. Though, i'm curious as to what you mean by "the example of Tibet". Last i checked, Tibet was still over 90% Tibetan and only 6% Han, rather unlike Xinjiang which is 43% Uighur and 41% Han.

[frigidmagi]

Most of those Han are recent arrivals and the amount of Han moving into Tibet seems to be increasing (it's hard to say). Most of the Tibetans seem to think so and claim that recent infrastructure projects are aimed at increasing the flow of Han into Tibet. That said the TAR is very low in it's population density, something like 2 people per square mile.

They might have point to. According to here. In 2006, Tibetians were 95% of the population, in 5 years they've dropped to 92%. That's a minor thing really but it does suggest more Han have been showing up lately.

[General Havoc]

Tibetans are indeed a majority of the total TAR, but not of the areas of Tibet which the Chinese are pouring development funds into. There is strong circumstantial evidence that Tibetans are a minority within Lhasa itself, thanks to massive Han Chinese emigration. Proof there is not, for the Chinese government has not published census figures since 2000, and all estimates originate with the government-in-exile, not precisely the most independent of judges. Moreover, even if true, this is not necessarily due to some evil plot to breed out the Tibetans. Han migrants to Tibet are not likely to congregate in dirt-poor rural areas of the country, after all, and China has focused on the Lhasa corridor as its primary venue for economic development. But this factor contributed massively to the unrest Tibet saw in 2008. And frankly, the addition of such architectural monuments as The Monument to the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet from the forces of Imperialism do not help matters.

In any event, the perception of what the Chinese have done in Tibet is considerably darker even than what they have actually done (which is dark enough), thus serving for the Uighurs as a wonderful example in their mind of just what they have to look forward to under the "eternal peace and sunshine of the liberating rule of the People's Republic of China."

And yes, that's an actual term.

[Lys]

i'm still not seeing how Tibet is an example for the Uighurs to be worried about. The historical Han percentage in the province was ~30%, this dropped as low as 7% during the Civil War due to Han Chinese fleeing East Turkestan, but has been steadily climbing ever since the Chinese took back the province. The rate of increase has became faster in recent years due to the massive infrastructural projects being undertaken by the Chinese government. Moreover the Chinese do publish census data from Xinjiang, because nobody cares about the Uighurs (which is sad, i like them much more than the Tibetans), and so we know that many of the cities in Xinjiang are majority Han. As previously said, this is for entirely economic reasons, but for some of the locals it's all the same to them. If anyone's worried about the example of their neighbours, it's the Tibetans about Xinjiang.

Incidentally, the Chinese propensity for overly pretentious titles is one of their more charming aspects. It adds a bit of spice to the reading of their history. The title of Emperor itself very roughly means Holy King of Kings (Huangdi), and carried with it the attached titles of Son of Heaven (Tianzi) and Lord of Ten Thousand Years (Wan Sui Ye). Must be quite an ego trip for people to reverently call you those things in your presence. The Chicoms have dispenses with such titles for their leadership, but continue the tradition in statements of intent, state policy, monuments, infrastructural projects, and other such things not attached to any one person.