Author: Tom Cliff, ANU

Xinjiang has once again faded from global attention after a brief spate of interest in the wake of the Urumqi riots in July 2009, but a recent series of high-level meetings in Beijing convened specifically to lay out strategy in relation to Xinjiang, and top leaders doing inspection tours of the region this year is proof that China’s Central leadership continues to take the situation very seriously.

Long before the ethnic clashes between Uyghur and Han in Urumqi in July last year (the ‘7/5 incident’), the Xinjiang and Central authorities were already far more concerned about dissatisfaction within the Han community than about the possibility of a Uyghur uprising. Read more…