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ASIA-PACIFIC: Chinese military in Muslim region
Financial Times; Aug 15, 2001
By RICHARD MCGREGOR
China's military completed large-scale exercises in the restive Muslim regionof Xinjiang yesterday with an imposing parade of military hardware through Kashgar city centre.
The Xinjiang parade coincided with the final stages of mock war games off the Taiwan Strait, involving up to 100,000 troops in what are believed to be China's biggest ever military exercises.
The Xinjiang exercises, which have been spread over almost a month, are believed to have involved 50,000 troops, one of the largest ever staged by the Chinese in the region. They have not been reported in the Chinese media. Witnesses said the 40-minute parade featured dozens of armoured personnel vehicles, tanks, camouflaged trucks filled with troops, capped off by a flyover of fighter jets.
The parade, into a square with a tall statue of Mao Zedong, was presided over by General Fu Quanyou, the chief of general staff of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and a member of the Central Military Commission. A number of other generals and senior officers, based at the Lanzhou military region which co-ordinates defence in Xinjiang, also sat on the podium to view the parade.
Large crowds given time off by their employers and bussed into Kashgar's main thoroughfare and square cheered the PLA's display of force, eyewitnesses said.
China has for years battled to suppress Turkic-speaking Uighurs, the indigenous inhabitants who make up the majority of Xinjiang's population, many of whom back independence for the region. Xinjiang borders a number of countries, including Russia, three former Soviet republics and Afghanistan, which China sees as a sources of destabilising militant Islam.
China has used the only international organisation ever formed on its initiative, the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, bringing together Russia and central Asian states, as a vehicle against Islamic agitation. The stakes have been raised by the region's wealth of natural resources, for which the Chinese government needs western investment to exploit. Oil and natural gas pipelines, including one planned Dollars 20bn (Pounds 14bn) link from Kazakhstan to China, would need to run through Xinjiang.
Copyright: The Financial Times Limited
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ETIC REPORT 2000 
