China’s Xinjiang Woes: Internal and External Implications
Jabin T Jacob
Research Fellow, IPCS
e-mail: jabin@ipcs.org
The recent spate of ethnic violence between Uighurs and Hans in China should surprise no one, particularly after last year’s Tibetan riots. However, it should also surprise no one that the attention and opprobrium for China, particularly from the West, will dissipate sooner that it did on the Tibetan issue. Unlike the Tibetans who have the image of a peace-loving people, are Buddhists and are led by a charismatic leader with influence in Western capitals, the Muslim Uighurs do not form part of the Western imagination, positively or otherwise, and have no one that is the equivalent of the Dalai Lama to promote their cause.
If anything, the Uighurs have been more sinned against by the West than sinning as is evident from the dropping of charges against the Uighur at Guantanamo Bay some seven years after they were first detained. Following 9/11, China managed to take advantage of the global discourse of the ‘war against terror’ and not only got the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a fringe Uighur movement, banned internationally but also portrayed an essentially separatist struggle in Xinjiang as an extremist Islamic movement.
On the internal front, a number of consequences follow for Beijing from the latest outbreak of violence. One, as in Tibet, the logic of economic development as a panacea for grievances arising out of ethnic marginalization and discrimination and of cultural suppression has once again been discredited. China will have to come up with alternative policies to address problems in ethnically- and strategically-sensitive provinces such as Tibet and Xinjiang.
Two, it is possible that as a consequence, the practice of placing hardliners in charge of politically-sensitive provinces will eventually be reconsidered. Wang Lequan, the Xinjiang Party Secretary and his protégé, Zhang Qingli, the Party Secretary in Tibet, under whose watch, the protests in 2008 took place, have been known for their strong-arm tactics.
Third, within the Party, Wang and Zhang who belong to Hu Jintao’s tuanpai faction in the Communist Party of China (CPC) might have just made things more difficult for their patron as he jockeys to place his loyalists in influential positions before he steps down in 2012. Besides, Li Keqiang, who is the top-ranked tuanpai member of the fifth generation of CPC leaders and the likely No. 2 in the party from 2012, also likely to be affected in the long run are Wang Yang, Party Secretary of Guangdong – location of the toy factory where a fight in June led to the death of two Uighurs and sparked the confrontation in Urumqi – and possibly Xinjiang Governor, Nur Bekri, himself an Uighur, who are viewed as key tuanpai figures in the fifth and sixth generations respectively. At the very least, the protests will have tarnished Hu’s legacy, and all the more so, given his rhetoric of a “harmonious society.”
On the external front, China’s relations with the Central Asian Republics (CARs), most of whom are also Muslims and Turkic in ethnicity like the Uighurs, are likely to become more sensitive. Each of the CARs faces several internal dissensions and any added incentive to disgruntled elements in these countries from happenings across the border in China is something that the CAR leaderships can do without. While the mostly authoritarian regimes of the region stand together with China in forums such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, they also view China as a card to be played against the Russians and the Americans. Further, there are growing concerns in many CARs about the influx of Chinese goods and occasionally of Han Chinese, that risk turning their economies into appendages of the larger Chinese economic system.
And what of the implications and consequence for India from the latest Chinese experiences? India will have to check its proclivity in recent years towards strong and very broadly defined anti-terror legislation, and simultaneously place a renewed emphasis on political dialogue as the means of addressing popular unrest in various underdeveloped parts of the country. Also, too often in India, former military personnel or intelligence officials have been given governorships in trouble-prone states such as Jammu and Kashmir or in Northeast India and now also Naxalism-affected ones. This must be completely done away with if the credibility of New Delhi’s intentions and trust in the political process are to be maintained.
Externally, India might find this an opportunity to review its policy in Central Asia. India’s lack of direct physical access to Central Asia has long been viewed as a hindrance to furthering its interests in this region. However, physical connectivity brings with it, its own problems especially in a context of political discontent, ethnic grievances and economic deprivation, as the Chinese and Central Asian leaderships have realized. India could potentially offer an alternative economic and trade relationship that focuses not so much on extracting and transporting energy resources or on no-questions-asked aid as on investments in education, healthcare and agriculture in the CARs and is at the same time based strongly also on the example of India’s own plural and democratic political system. This is an approach whose time has come and is one which India should not shy away from advocating.
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