Uighurstan Power Plays

The NYT has an excellent piece today on how the hardline policies in Xinjiang relate to the bigger picture political jockeying within China's leadership.  The profile of the notorious Wang Lequan, which also notes his relationship to his protege and equal in nastiness Zhang Qingli - the hardline party secretary in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, is some quality reportage of the kind that is often sorely lacking when it comes to China.  I hope that everyone in the Obama Administration reads this article, as it exposes a number of important currents in Chinese political thought about how to manage the restive minority nationalities.  To whit: 

- Whereas in most other countries, the fact that Xinjiang exploded into violence in the first place would normally be held against Wang and Zhang, their harsh response and their reputation for toughness (which arguably is a leading factor in the initial violence!) will probably result in their continued promotion up the ladder.

- Wang and his ilk are among a minority who believe that inter-ethnic conflict, rather than economic slowdown, has the most potential to upset the Communist Party's apple cart.  This viewpoint may be self-serving, given his position, and is definitely shaped by the fact that he has spent the past 15 years cracking-heads in Uighurland.  Unfortunately, having recognized inter-ethnic conflict as a problem, he has come to the conclusion that the way to resolve the problem is to be as harsh as possible on one hand while maximizing assimilationist policies on the other.

- Hu Jintao, who comes across on the international stage as Mr. Smooth - a polished, modern leader, is thoroughly linked up with this mentality of repression and chauvinism.  He is probably one of its strongest proponents in the system.  

And so it goes.  US and European policymakers continue to pretend that they are dealing with a modern, normal nation, while China continues to act like a 19th century colonial power.  And we are surprised when the mask slips and the true ugliness peeks out from behind the 21st century veneer.

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Uncle Zhou in Uighurstan

Uh oh.  It looks like the regime is getting serious, now that Hu Jintao has apparently sent the thuggish Zhou Yongkang to Urumqi to "direct safety work" in the restive region.  (Original article in Chinese here.)  So what is Zhou up to?  Let's take a gander at a completely spontaneous moment, as dutifully chronicled those crack journalists over at Xinhua:

“Hai-er-ni-sha-han, a 66 year-old Uighur woman who had been struck in the head with a brick while riding on a public bus, is currently receiving medical treatment. Zhou Yong-kang visited her bedside, and leant over to carefully examine her wounds. He expressed his personal sympathies to her. Hai-er-ni-sha-han said that she has confident in the party and the government, believes that the malevolent goals of villains will not succeed, and that ‘our lives will be sure to improve.’ Zhou Yong-kang said to her: ‘You have indeed spoken well. What you said represents the common aspirations of the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang.’”

Awwwww.  How sweet.  And who exactly is Uncle Zhou and why has he been thrust into this role of healing the ethnic divide?  Well - he just happens to have recently been promoted after serving a five year term as minister of "public security."  Before that, he was the party secretary in Sichuan province, where he launched a major crackdown on Tibetan "splittists" that was marked by the first execution of a Tibetan for a political crime in recent memory.  That crackdown apparently was key to his promotion to the national stage, since beating up on troublesome ethnics has long been a proven path to the top echelons of the Peoples Republic (see e.g. Hu Jintao).  

And who is China's propaganda machine trying to fool with this outpouring of concern from on high?  The domestic audience, of course.  Much as I love the early socialist prose style of this article, it is interesting how the Chinese people can readily believe this garbage when they generally take for granted that Xinhua is only giving them half the truth.  I blame a combination of latent Han chauvinism and, perversely (or not, since I am generally a conservative who opposes such things), the government's showy affirmative action program for minorities, which provides them a number of "advantages" (as long as they are willing to subsume themselves into the Chinese system).  This affirmative action program has convinced many Han that most minorities are either idiots who can't get by without a boost from the state, degenerates who get away with murder because of an official policy of leniency in criminal matters (although this official lenience certainly doesn't carry over to "political" matters), or lazy ingrates who should be thankful for the beneficence of the Chinese (read: Han) state.  

So much for harmonious society...

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