Author: Peter Yuan Cai

In the April-May edition of Survival, Denny Roy put forward a very interesting argument on the dangerous future of China’s democratised foreign policy. He argued that the Communist government in Beijing is actually a force of moderation between nationalism-fuelled public opinion and foreign policy-making. Though democratisation may bring about many positive changes in China, peaceful resolution of serious international disputes is not among them. This interesting hypothesis can certainly be extended into the realm of minority policy in China.

When we discuss the Tibetan or Xinjiang issues, the focus is usually on China’s religious and cultural repression of ethnic minorities or its appalling human rights record. The international stardom of the charismatic Dalai Lama and the rising profile of ‘Ribeya Kadeer as a dragon fighter’ further cement China’s image as a harsh colonial master engaging in discredited 19th century-style imperial practices.

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Guest Author: Mike West, Oxford

While media attention in the northern hemisphere is consumed by the actual wildfires raging in Athens and L.A., the ethnic unrest sparked by the ‘7.5′ riots in Xinjiang stubbornly smoulders on. According to Reuters, last Thursday Urumqi again went into lockdown. All roads in the city were closed and armed security forces (武警) were wheeled in to deal with a 3,000-strong demonstration in the People’s Square, during which glass bottles were hurled at the Party HQ. This round of protests is believed to have been ignited by demonstrators comprising Chinese of all ethnicities calling on their government for more adequate protection after the chilling assault on a five-year-old girl, which marked the culmination of a wave of ethnic terror in which over 476 (mainly Han) Chinese were randomly stabbed with hypodermic needles. There are reports that the emboldened demonstrators went on to call for the resignation of Xinjiang’s beleaguered Party Secretary, Wang Lequan, but these accounts are difficult to verify because a systematic information blackout is in place and telephone lines to the outside world have been cut. What does this recent wave of unrest in Xinjiang province mean for China and the rest of the world?

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Author Peter Drysdale

The economic and political effects of the global economic crisis are still unfolding. Interestingly, when the Great Depression hit the industrial countries in the late 1920s and 1930s, Japan was one of the least affected industrial powers, in economic terms (see my earlier piece). Unemployment rose only slightly (to a measured high of just over 6 per cent compared with 33 per cent in Australia), industrial production dipped briefly, exports surged in a rapidly contracting world market and growth resumed its high pre-war long term trend of over 4 per cent in real terms. This did not mean that Japan was spared of a huge political back-draft from the Depression. The retreat of discarded casual workers back to poverty in rural communities became the seed-bed of a huge political convulsion that saw the ascent of the militarists and Japan’s headlong rush towards the disaster of the Pacific War. Anthony Garnaut’s subtle and important piece today, on the origins of the upheaval in Xinjiang in the travails of the casual Uighur workforce in Guangdong, is a sober reminder of the complicated political and social transformation that Chinese leaders have to manage today, beyond the looking-good macro-economic numbers. This is a huge challenge for China. It is a challenge that the rest of the world needs to understand in all its subtlety and from which it cannot dissociate itself.

Author: Anthony Garnaut, Melbourne University

A video of lethal, apparently racially-motivated, bashings, which triggered an official investigation that uncovered no ‘racist’ motives, that in turn sparked off deadly rioting, arson and looting, which all ended with a downtown curfew imposed by a hefty police presence. It might sound like a page from LA’s recent history, but this was the sequence of events on Sunday in Urumqi, the capital of China’s Xinjiang region, when a vicious riot grew out of what had been a peaceful demonstration that afternoon calling for a fresh investigation into the provocative video. In Urumqi we do not yet know how the police and armed forces restrained the mob, we do not know whether the sounds we hear on the video of the peaceful demonstration were in fact gunfire (because the Chinese media stated that the demonstrators were armed only with knives and clubs), and we do not know how many of the 156 people killed on Sunday were victims of either mob or state violence.

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