China and Xinjiang

no qualm, no hesitation, no flicker of doubt within the Party about the wisdom of its own policy, which amounts to this: punish the Uighurs for the slightest sign of dissent, and when they protest, punish them harder. There is nothing to show that the Party can see what is obvious to anyone who visits Xinjiang: that the Uighurs have been reduced to second-class members of the ‘great Chinese family’. Absent, too, is any recognition of the anger caused by Han Chinese immigration, a wholesale transfer of population from the east which began as exile and which now flourishes on the foundations of China’s desert gulag.

China, we’re lead to believe, is the sleeping giant, the next superpower, now in the process of making a smooth transition to a capitalist economy. Can we really believe that in the light of what we know about what actually goes on there? This is a society where everything flows from the top down. What the Communist leadership seems to have learnt from the West is not an increased respect for human rights but an increased determination to make sure no one hears about their human rights abuses. Russia is often compared unfavourably with China in terms of managing the transition form communism, but Russia actually ditched their party rulers; China is still ruled by theirs, a rule without any legitimacy whatsoever. So will the Chinese empire implode like the Soviet empire did? Who knows? – we’re in uncharted territory here. But you have to suspect that the 21st century is going to be a great deal more interesting for the Chinese than they might wish.