|
The Great Leap west
Aug 26th 2004 | KASHGAR
From The Economist print edition
The “Hanification” of Xinjiang province
IDH KAH Mosque, a towering structure in central
Kashgar, the westernmost city in China's vast province
of Xinjiang, has always been a prime meeting place for
Uighurs, the Muslim Turkic people who historically
dominated Xinjiang. The square outside the mosque,
venerated in Uighur writing and song, used to look
like Amman or Tashkent, full of skullcap-wearing
Muslim men, vendors selling Arabic CDs, and kebab
sellers carving hunks of fatty lamb from steaming
carcasses.
These days, though, the area increasingly resembles
Shanghai or Shenzhen. In the old city of Kashgar,
Uighurs sit out in front of their ancient mud-brick
homes and watch Chinese building workers dig huge
ditches in front of their doors in preparation for
their destruction. Chinese firms are razing
traditional homes near the mosque—without, the Uighurs
complain, paying anything close to decent compensation—in
order to build flashy new shopping centres and
apartments catering to the ethnic Chinese who are
flooding in to Kashgar. For decades the government in
Beijing has relocated Han Chinese to Xinjiang to
dilute Uighur influence over the restive province,
which before 1949 was briefly an independent state.
But until recently most Chinese migrants went to
Xinjiang's east, which had fewer Uighur people. Now,
with the construction of a new railway and an oil
pipeline to western Xinjiang, and large state
subsidies there for Chinese contractors, the Chinese
are encroaching on areas, such as Kashgar, that the
Uighurs consider their cultural heartland. Combined
with a crackdown on Uighur political and religious
activity, this has made Xinjiang an edgy place.
The shift in Xinjiang's population is striking.
China's most recent census showed the Han Chinese
population rising twice as quickly in Xinjiang as the
Uighur population. And these figures do not take into
count the tens of thousands of Chinese “migrant
workers” who come to Xinjiang for building jobs and
never leave. This shift is obvious on the ground.
Large sections of southern Kashgar, situated around
the Wenzhou Hotel (Wenzhou is a city in eastern
China), are filled with Chinese-owned businesses, many
of which reportedly get help from local officials when
competing with Uighur firms. Homes and offices for
Chinese are springing up throughout Kashgar over the
rubble of Uighur buildings.
Meanwhile, since September 11th 2001, Beijing has
tried to link Uighur nationalist groups to al-Qaeda,
even announcing that around 1,000 Uighurs trained with
Osama bin Laden's organisation. A few Uighurs did
indeed fight for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan,
but most support non-violence, and there is little
evidence of significant al-Qaeda links. Yet America at
first played along with Beijing's fiction, placing an
obscure Uighur group on its list of international
terror groups, a designation China used to tar all
Uighurs as terrorists. (China now defines a terrorist
in Xinjiang as anyone who thinks “separatist thoughts”.)
Under this pretext, China has over the past two years
detained tens of thousands of people in Xinjiang—and
executed many of them, according to Amnesty
International. The authorities in Beijing recently
said that this crackdown would continue indefinitely.
All this does not bode well for Xinjiang's future.
Uighurs report that small-scale clashes break out
nearly every day between Chinese and Uighurs in
Xinjiang's western cities. The instability scares off
foreign investors—foreign oil firms have pulled out of
the pipeline project—which might be more willing to
employ Uighurs than Chinese state companies are. And
moderate Uighurs, who want autonomy but not
necessarily independence, worry that repression and
Chinese immigration are playing into the hands of the
most hardline, conservative elements in Uighur society.
Though the Uighurs historically were among the world's
most liberal and pro-western Muslims, fundamentalist
Islam is gaining sway among young Uighur men.
Still, there is hope. Recognising the threat posed by
hardliners, the leading moderate Uighur diaspora
organisations, which used to spend most of their time
squabbling, came together at a conference in Germany
in April to unite behind one leader, Erkin Alptekin.
The Uighurs hope that Mr Alptekin, the son of a
pre-1949 president of independent Xinjiang, can become
their Dalai Lama, promoting the Uighur cause in the
West and serving as a moderate, unifying force for
their nation. Even some American officials are
beginning to realise that China's definition of
“terrorism” simply means anyone who opposes Beijing.
When Mr Alptekin visited Washington earlier this
summer, he was feted by congressional staffers, while
the National Endowment for Democracy, which gets
funding from Congress, has recently given a grant to a
moderate Uighur exile group in America.
|
