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rfmcdonaldAlas, the recent mass-stabbing of commuters in the Chinese city of Kunming by Uighur separatist terrorists seems likely to sour Uighur-Han relations across China.
Liam Powers at Open Democracy ("Beyond the Kunming attack") fears a worsening as the Chinese state and Chinese at large react to the indiscriminate attacks.
The blog China Change, meanwhile, posted translated excerpts from Chinese writer Wang Lixiong's 2007 book My West China, Your East Turkestan. Wang's predictions of "Palestinianization" look prescient.
[T]he attacks in Kunming are far more disturbing than other recent episodes of violence. To begin, they occurred outside Xinjiang. But unlike the October crash of an SUV in front of Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square, Kunming, the subtropical capital of Yunnan Province, is not a touchstone of Chinese political might. And unlike recent attacks in Kashgar and Khotan wherein perpetrators have targeted individuals with identifiable pro-CCP leanings – police officers, village secretaries, and other government officials, the assailants in Kunming indiscriminately and mercilessly attacked unsuspecting crowds.
As the nature of these attacks change, so too will China’s treatment of the Uyghurs.
For Uyghurs in Xinjiang, they will inevitably face more stringent surveillance and control as the government tries desperately to prevent further violence. Policy experts have already identified Zhang Chunxian’s, the current Party Secretary of Xinjiang, recently adopted hardline approach to stability in China’s far northwest as a nod in this direction. Invariably, these policies are aimed at curtailing the influence of Islam.
[. . .]
For the growing number of Uyghurs who work and study in eastern Chinese cities, they will likely face more distrust and harassment from Han Chinese. Even before the Kunming tragedy, young Uyghurs living in Chinese cities claimed widespread discrimination. According to reports I have gathered, several college-educated, bilingual (Chinese and Uyghur) individuals have been refused rooms at Han-owned hotels. At transport hubs, they are routinely targeted by police during “random” checks and forced to present their identification cards. Unfortunately based on the practices already in place, the next step may be to round up Uyghurs who do not possess proper documentation and send them back to Xinjiang.
Based on my experiences on university campuses in Beijing, Uyghur and Han students keep their distance. The rare encounters between Uyghur and Han are regularly shrouded in misunderstanding and prejudice. Uyghur students are routinely asked condescending questions by their Han peers, such as: Why are the Uyghurs thieves? Do you travel by camel in Xinjiang? Do you share rooms with domesticated farm animals? If Chinese blogs provide any indication of the immediate future of Han-Uyghur relations, the teasing will soon mutate into vicious slurs.
What is “Xinjiang?” Its most straightforward meaning is “new territory.” But for the Uighurs, how could the land possibly be their “new territory” when it has been their home and their ancestors’ home for generations. It is only a new territory for the occupiers.
The Uighurs don’t like to hear the name “Xinjiang” because it is itself a proclamation of an empire’s expansion, the bragging of the colonists, and a testimony of the indigenous people’s humiliation and misfortune.
Even for China, the name “New Territory” is awkward. Everywhere and on every occasion, China claims that Xinjiang has belonged to China ever since ancient times, but why is it called the “new territory?” The government-employed scholars racked their brain, insisting that “new territory” is the “new” in the phrase “the new return of old territories” by Zuo Zongtang’s (左宗棠, best known as General Tsao who led the campaign to reclaim Xinjiang in 1875-1876). This is far-fetched, because in that case, shouldn’t it be called the “old territory”?
I will never forget a scene once described by a foreign journalist in which, every evening, a seven-year-old Uighur boy unhoisted the Chinese flag, which the Chinese authorities required them to fly during the day, and trampled it underfoot. What hatred would make a child do that? Indeed, from children, one can measure most accurately the level of ethnic tension. If even children are taking part in it, then it is a united and unanimous hostility.
That’s why, in Palestinian scenes of violence, we always see children in the midst. I use the term “Palestinization” to describe the full mobilization of a people and the full extent of its hatred. To me, Xinjiang is Palestinizing. It has not boiled to the surface as much, but it has been fermenting in the heart of the indigenous peoples.
The indigenous peoples regarded Sheng Shicai (盛世才) , the Han (Chinese) war lord who ruled Xinjiang during the 1930s and 1940s, as an executioner, and they call Wang Lequan (王乐泉), the CCP secretary who carried out heavy-handed policies in Xinjiang, Wang Shicai. But when, in Urumqi, the Han taxi driver saw I was holding a copy of Sheng Shicai, the Lord of the Outer Frontiers, a book I had just bought from a bookstore, he immediately enthused about Sheng. “The policies at his time were truly good,” he exalted.
CCP’s policies in Xinjiang today have been escalating the ethnic tension. Continuing on that path, it will not take long to reach the point of no return where all opportunities for healthy interaction will be lost, and a vicious cycle pushes the two sides farther and farther apart. Once reaching that point of no return, Xinjiang will likely become the next Middle East or Chechnya.
