China’s Muslim dilemma in ‘The New Frontier’
Posted: Friday, August 08, 2008 6:55 AM
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Beijing, China
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
KHOTAN, Xinjiang Autonomous Region – Across much of China, strangers upon being introduced will ask each other, "Where is your ancestral home?"
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| An Uighur couple in Khotan |
But in the far northwestern province of Xinjiang, they ask, "Are you Han Chinese?"
Xinjiang, which means "New Frontier" in Mandarin, is home to China’s restive minority Uighur population. It’s a remote and rugged region long known for its simmering ethnic tension, an historical antipathy towards the majority Han Chinese, and the occasional outbreak of separatist activism.
And with the Summer Olympics upon us -- an event which Beijing hopes to carry off seamlessly -- Xinjiang's unique population and the potential conflict they could create, have come under heightened scrutiny from central government authorities.
Officials in Kashgar, scene of a bomb attack that killed 16 Chinese policemen this week, have said they've tightened controls on potential troublemakers who might attack the Games.
‘The New Frontier’
The Han, or ethnic Chinese, comprise more than 90 percent of China’s 1.3 billion population. The rest come from the country’s 55 officially recognized ethnic minority groups.
Of these, the Uighurs make up a tiny fraction and number fewer than nine million. The population’s relatively small size would be unremarkable were it not for several factors.
One is culture and ethnicity: the Uighurs practice Islam, speak a Turkic language, use an Arabic-based script, and don’t look remotely Chinese. Second, they are concentrated in Xinjiang, an autonomous region that is one-sixth of China’s territory -- sensitive frontier land that borders Central Asia and brims with the promise of vast oil and mineral riches.
Third, many Uighurs have long resented the expanding Chinese presence, which over the decades has grown so fast that, in fifty years, ethnic Chinese have gone from making up under ten per cent of Xinjiang’s overall population to nearly half.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| In Khotan's main square, one can see statues of Chairman Mao greeting an Uighur, Kurban Tulum, in 1958. |
This demographic shift was clear as we travelled around the region recently. On my first trip to Xinjiang in 1994, most of the towns evoked Central Asia with their dusty oases, mosques, low-rise clay houses, colorful open bazaars, and dirt roads. This time, they looked more like Chinese cities: gleaming but nondescript boxy high-rises, paved highways, and cars everywhere.
Moreover, most Han Chinese people we met this time were not migrants to Xinjiang but locally born. And their growing numbers has meant tougher competition for jobs and fewer resources, and, as a result, greater ethnic tension.
The income gap
In Korla, we encountered a young Uighur man who was about to vacate the house he had called home all his life. The building was built by his grandfather and – along with others on former farmland on the edge of the city – was primed for demolition to make way for a high-rise populated by ethnic Chinese.
The young man, crouched on the dirt next to his 80 year old mother, said life had grown hard for them since they had stopped farming on their land a few years ago. Jobs for people like him, he said, were scarce; when they did find work, it was of the menial, low-paying variety. "Our Chinese is not very good," he explained in heavily-accented Mandarin. "So we can’t find good jobs."
Despite a policy of inward investment dubbed "Go West" that was launched eight years ago, many Uighurs say they have not benefited directly from Beijing’s development strategy and appear to be languishing on the fringes of Xinjiang’s economy – farming or working in cottage industries.
Some Chinese, however, believe the source of the problem isn’t economic policy but within Uighurs themselves. One night in Korla, we went to a dinner organized by a fixer – an ethnic Chinese woman, born in Xinjiang, who had helped organize logistics for other foreign journalists. Savvy and clever, she joined in a frank discussion about the opportunity gap between the Han Chinese and the Uighurs, and betrayed some of the local stereotyping.
When one of the guests, an English teacher at an elite local school, observed that there were fewer than ten Uighur students compared to hundreds of ethnic Chinese, she piped up. "Oh, the Uighurs are always complaining about opportunities," she said. "But they are lazy and unmotivated. They don’t work hard."
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| Correspondent Ian Williams, cameraman Kyle Eppler, and soundman Simon Ballmer film a standup on the dunes outside Khotan |
Terror threat?
The income gap amplifies long-simmering ethnic tensions in the province. Like Tibet, China’s other troublesome ethnic region, Xinjiang enjoyed intermittent periods of independence and autonomy until 1949, when the Communist government took power in Beijing. The area was declared a Chinese province and, six years later, was deemed "an autonomous region" under the People’s Republic of China.
Although there are signs of Islam everywhere – people go to prayer on Fridays and women wear headscarves – mosques are forbidden to broadcast the call to prayer on loudspeaker, imams are vetted by the state, and, according to Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch, young men must be over the age 18 before they can set foot in a mosque.
"There is a very strict framework for religion in Xinjiang," said Bequelin. "Anything outside of [the state-sanctioned religious system] is considered illegal religious activities [sic] and invites immediate state repression."
Heavy-handed police tactics have increased with the advent of the Summer Olympics; some Chinese analysts have said the key issue here isn’t economic or ethnic disparity, but terrorism.
"The main problem of Xinjiang is separatism," said Li Sheng, Dean of China’s Borderland History and Geography Research Centre at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "Terrorist activities, including activities using human rights, sovereignty, and other extreme religious activities, are all parts of the main problem."
Provincial officials this year claim to have uncovered several "terror plots" in Xinjiang and a handful of suspected bomb attacks have been reported, including one this week that killed 16 policemen in Kashgar, near the border with Pakistan.
But many observers discount the terrorism threat, saying it has been hyped up by Chinese authorities in order to justify a sweeping crackdown on Uighurs.
"Since 1998, the Chinese government itself has not documented one terrorist action in Xinjiang," said Bequelin. "They claim to have foiled many plots but there is no hard evidence that there is any kind of Islamic inspired terrorist movement in Xinjiang at the moment."
The real danger, these skeptics argue, is that the worsening economic gap and stepped up repression and censorship over the long run will transform resentment into extremism, driving underground legitimate movements pressing for greater freedoms.
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