Posted By IISS at 03/09/2009 16:08:19
Fresh disturbances erupted this week in China’s western Xianjing region, two months after clashes between ethnic Uighur and Han Chinese killed nearly 200 hundred people and injured 1,700. On Thursday, some 2,000 Han Chinese gathered in the main square of the capital, Urumqi, to protest about deteriorating public safety. The renewed unrest, in which demonstrators scuffled with police, follows several stabbings of members of the public with hypodermic needles.
The Chinese government deployed 20,000 extra troops to Xinjiang after members of the region’s main Uighur ethnic group targeted Han residents in July. Another outbreak of violence ahead of the 60th birthday of the communist People’s Republic on 1 October will be particularly worrying to the authorities.
Such recent violence in Xinjiang has laid bare the idea of China’s ‘harmonious society’. And as the latest issue of Strategic Comments explains, it has also exposed failings in the government’s minorities policy. Beijing has oscillated between relative tolerance of Uighur customs and enforced assimilation, when the Uighur language and practice of Islam has been banned. Today’s leadership in Beijing is having to tread a fine line.
Click for a backgrounder to recent Ethnic strife in Xinjiang. As this week’s developments show, it’s a wound in China’s side that’s unlikely to heal soon.
