China’s far western region of Xinjiang opened its largest ever trade fair yesterday, but a marked absence of Uighurs, who call the region home, underscored the challenge facing the government in addressing the root economic causes of unrest.
China has ramped up security in the regional capital, Urumqi, for the China Eurasia Expo, sending armed police units to patrol the city’s old quarter, heavily populated by Uighurs, which erupted in bloody ethnic violence two years ago that killed about 200 people.
Since 2009, Beijing has turned its attention to boosting development in Xinjiang and providing greater job opportunities for Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people, many of whom chafe at Chinese rule and restrictions on their culture.
“It’s very difficult being a Uighur-owned business,” said Weili Maimaitiaili of Dastur, an Urumqi-based maker of herbal tonics that employs just seven people.
The expo is part of ambitious plans to turn gritty and often polluted Urumqi into a trading hub between China and Central Asia, and hopefully address the economic disenfranchisement felt by Uighurs under the influx of majority Han Chinese migrants.
Walking around the nearly 8km2 expo site, centered on a vast exhibition hall in a remote northern part of Urumqi, what most stands out most amongst the gray officials and the gleaming machinery is a lack of Uighur business people.
“Look around — there are hardly any of us here,” Maimaitiaili said in slightly accented Mandarin. “We have no money for advertising and cannot even think about marketing anywhere outside of Xinjiang at the moment. Most of the Xinjiang companies you see here are owned by Han.”
Other Uighurs at the expo appeared to be either reporters for state-owned media or government officials.
At the stand for Kashgar, an old Silk Road city in southern Xinjiang, officials struggled to find a single Uighur to talk to the media.
“We’ve got lots more people coming, including Uighur compatriots. Everyone has been stuck in traffic jams caused by all the extra security today,” said Jia Tingyi, an ethnic Han from a remote Kashgar county.
Others said they thought recent violence in Kashgar, as well as the nearby city of Hotan, and reports of thwarted attacks on the Urumqi trade fair had made the government nervous about letting too many Uighurs attend.
“You’d have thought there would be more of us here. It is supposed to be our autonomous region,” said one Uighur official, who asked not to be identified, citing the sensitivity of the situation. “It’s probably the recent events.”
Government leaders have lauded the expo as leverage for economic development.
Nur Bekri, Xinjiang’s governor and a Uighur himself, was quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying the event had “important meaning for promoting Xinjiang’s development.”
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, guest of honor at the opening ceremony, said it was important to remember the economic causes of terrorism.
“Poverty and economic injustice are closely linked to terrorism. Pakistan understands this relationship perhaps better than any other country,” he told an audience that included Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang (李克強).
Still, the Uighur entrepreneurs who did speak to reporters said the government was starting to make it easier for them to operate and was actively supporting their development.
“It used to be almost impossible to get bank loans,” said Ayxam Yiming, a manager at Xingbao Fruit Products, a “proudly Uighur” maker of preserved and dried fruit from southern Xinjiang’s Korla region.
“It’s much better now. Xinjiang’s leadership is very focused on agricultural products and our quality is top notch,” she said, noting that almost all her company’s staff were Uighur.
Asked to point out the other Uighur-owned companies in the food products section of the exhibition hall, she looked puzzled.
“I think there’s one behind us, though I’ve not seen anyone in the booth yet,” she said. “We Uighur companies are quite a rare sight here.”
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS