While Beijing blames a handful of separatists with overseas support for incidents such as Saturday’s horrific attacks in Kunming, analysts and exile groups point to a long history of tension between Chinese authorities and the Muslim Uighur ethnic minority who make up more than 40 percent of the population in Xinjiang Province.
The intended remedies of aggressive economic development and tighter controls — the security budget has quadrupled to US$1 billion since 2009 and religious restrictions have increased — have not prevented repeated outbreaks of violence in the northwestern region and beyond.
Many analysts suggest they have exacerbated the problem.
Clashes and attacks in the late 1990s appeared to have been suppressed by a government crackdown. However, days before the Beijing Olympics opened in 2008, 16 border police officers were killed in an attack in Kashgar. The following year, almost 200 died when Uighurs in Urumqi assaulted Han Chinese and Han launched revenge attacks.
Since then, unrest has escalated and intensified, with more than 100 people dying in the last year alone. For the Chinese government, such incidents are proof of a sophisticated, systematic and far-reaching terrorist network intent on creating a separate state of East Turkestan.
Magnus Ranstorp of the Swedish National Defence College said it was possible that attackers in Kunming might have drawn tactical inspiration from overseas, but the interaction of Uighur militants with foreign groups had been limited, nor did foreign terrorist organizations appear particularly interested in the region.
Wang Lixiong (王力雄), a Han Chinese writer well known for his writings on ethnic policy, asked why the terrorist attacks had increased given the security crackdown.
“Mao Zedong (毛澤東) said there is no hate without reason. What does result in the hate from Xinjiang?” he wrote.
Others suggest that accelerated development from 2009 — partly due to wider stimulus measures and a belief that raising incomes would reduce dissatisfaction — has backfired.
“The government says: ‘We are doing everything we can to help them and raise incomes,’ but the policies that do that might actually create a lot of discontent among the population,” said Andrew Fisher, an expert on development in minority areas of western China at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Many in the Uighur community feel they have not benefited, saying that Han are far more likely to have white-collar jobs. Others feel that an influx of migrants to the region is eroding their culture.
Officials have said that expanding Chinese-language education will give people a better chance against Han competitors in the job market, but that has also increased concerns about the erosion of Uighur language and culture.
In recent years, a growing number of Chinese academics have suggested that China should recast its policy on ethnic minorities entirely.
However, Fischer said that would be likely to entrench the movement toward an increasingly assimilationist policy.
“I think there’s a powder keg there. It is an extremely pressurized situation,” he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia