In June 2011, Astana, Kazakhstan will host the jubilee summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

Over the past 10 years, the SCO has institutionalised economic, political and security cooperation among its members. Western countries have watched the organisation with growing concern. In 2005, the US was denied observer status in the SCO. In March this year, US officials again expressed interest in greater engagement with the organisation.

The rapid development of the SCO represents a major challenge to Western norms of political development and international cooperation. Its success as a multilateral organisation provides support for the notion of ‘autocratic peace.’ Where democratic peace theory posits that democracies do not go to war against each other, autocratic peace theory holds the same for autocracies. This implies that it is not the political features of democracy that are important for peace, but rather the shared preferences for stability that stem from similarities in regime type. This kind of peace provides de facto legitimacy for authoritarianism, and, by extension, suggests an alternative to Western norms of universal values and democracy promotion.

The SCO’s organisational ideology rests upon two sets of non-provocative norms, ‘The Shangai Spirit,’ and the ‘Beijing Consensus.’ The Shanghai spirit is based ‘on the principles of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equal rights, consultations, respect for diversity of culture and aspiration towards common development.’ The ‘Beijing Consensus’ promotes economic development without attached political conditions. This allows autocracies all the benefits of energy, infrastructure, and investment without the pressures of democratisation and market liberalisation. Last year, China granted $10 billion in loans to SCO nations, and proposed contributing $8 billion to establish a SCO Development Bank to promote multilateral economic cooperation.

The New York-based group, Human Rights in China, recently expressed concern over the challenge posed by the SCO to Western norms. In a new white paper, Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights: The Impact of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, it calls to attention the SCO’s problematic approach to counter-terrorism. The paper argues that the doctrine (modelled on China’s ‘Three Evils’ doctrine of terrorism, extremism and separatism) often ‘acted as cover for suppression’ of ‘legitimate opposition groups and the cutting-off of trans-regional ties between them.’ The broad definition of terrorism in the doctrine also enables SCO states to ‘criminalise legitimate expressions of political and religious beliefs’.

Revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan between 2003 and 2005 highlighted the political value of the SCO in providing a support structure for members to rely on in legitimising their regimes. In 2005, China provided support to Uzbekistan in cracking down on separatist revolts in Andijan. For Uzbekistan, Chinese support gave protection against further uprising and Western interference. For China, a successful crackdown in Uzbekistan lowered the chances of revolution spreading to Uyghur extremists in China’s northwest.

The political value of the SCO was again demonstrated shortly after China’s crackdown on the July 2009 ethnic riots in Xinjiang. The SCO’s Secretary General issued a statement which made clear that Xinjiang was an inalienable part of China, and that the Chinese government was taking measures in accordance with its law to restore peace and order in a situation of purely internal affairs. This was rare and valuable public support in the face of Western criticism.

Despite these gestures of support, behind the veil of autocratic peace lie the incoherence and instability characteristic of single party regimes and dictatorships. The desire for stability and the fear of popular uprising are constants in these regimes, hence shared values and ideology will often come second to the desire for self-preservation. As such, the SCO could lack stability in times of difficulty.

A case in point is the refusal of the SCO to support Russia’s push for recognition of breakaway Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, after Russia’s war with Georgia in August 2008. In particular, China is concerned that recognising these secessionist moves would stimulate similar demands for autonomy in Tibet and Xinjiang.

The contrast between this scenario, and the SCO’s immediate support for China’s 2009 crackdown in Xinjiang highlights the strategic competition between China and Russia that underlies the organisation. While they are bound together by their enmity toward the US in Central Asia, they remain suspicious of each other. In particular, a declining Russia is concerned about China’s long-term ambitions in Central Asia, where it has long dominated.

Ultimately, the SCO is a structure in which the two powers manage their tensions, with smaller states balancing their interests against those of the powers. Russia is interested in developing the SCO as a geopolitical counterweight to the US and NATO, and using it as a vessel to shape Chinese thinking and maintain influence in the region. China, alternatively, is concerned with using the organisation to combat Islamic extremism and expand its economic and soft power in Central Asia.

This is why Quentin Peel of the Financial Times described the SCO as a ‘dog that does not bark’. It is an alliance of convenience that ‘masks very different ambitions between Russia and China’. For example, in 2002 China proposed that the SCO be made into a free-trade zone. This proposal was rejected by Russia on the basis of different levels of economic development. Smaller states such as Kazakhstan also fear that they would be turned into Chinese economic protectorates.

As the role and geographical scope of the SCO remains in flux, it is still too early to determine if it will develop into a formal security community or alliance. But, the question may be irrelevant. The SCO’s member states know the limitations of autocratic peace. Institutional instability, nepotism, corruption, and a lack of rule of law will make further cooperation difficult in the long term. This implies that the SCO is not necessarily dedicated to promoting anti-Western values and authoritarianism. Its underlying logic is different to that of other multilateral organisations. Regardless of its future direction, though, there can be no doubt that, as relative power shifts from West to East, the SCO will assume a greater role in international politics.

Andy Yee is a writer and translator based in Hong Kong. Educated at SOAS and Cambridge University, he has worked at the Political Section of the EU Delegation to China in Beijing. He blogs at Global Voices Online and China Geeks.

1. Engaging Central Asia: the EU-Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) axis
2. The East Asia Summit: ASEAN’s forum for maintaining peace
3. The Lee-Obama summit: alliance for peace and unification

When it comes to dealing with dissent within the country, the contrast between the two rising powers in Asia — China and India — is distinct. The Chinese government believes in total co-option or complete marginalisation of intellectuals; the foreign ministry’s strong response to the Nobel Peace Prize for Liu Xiaobo is an interesting case study in this regard. In contrast, the response of the Indian government to international recognition of critics — such as Binayak Sen of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, known for his campaigns against state-sponsored armed vigilantes in Naxal-affected Chhattisgarh in central India — is usually muted. An active civil society, competing media sources, multi-party electoral system, and effective judiciary — all with their own flaws, no doubt — cannot ensure an accountable government in India, but it does mean that dissenting voices aren’t suppressed as easily. This different attitude toward intolerance of dissent is to be expected as India is a multiparty democracy and China is a Party state (where no redressal mechanisms exist against the ruling party).

But it would be misleading to buy fully into a democratic India versus authoritarian China narrative and assume that more plurality, openness and fairness flows automatically out of the former. Anti-minority violence perpetrated by Hindu fanatics, often with state complicity, reminds us of the precariousness of life as a minority in India. While majoritarian nationalisms (Hindutva in India and Han chauvinism in China) are dangerous threats to the mainstream multiethnic nationalisms in both the countries, their lethality is more obvious in India than in China. The Chinese system is authoritarian, but it is so for everyone. Many Han Chinese feel that the government appeases the minorities but they cannot do anything about it. In India, this feeling of perceived appeasement of minorities contributes to the success of rightwing political parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

If we shift from state-majority-minority relations to the relations between the State and the ethno-nationalist movements in the periphery, again there are some apparent differences between China and India. Protests in Tibet in 2008 were quickly followed by a complete expulsion of foreign media, a crackdown, and a denunciation of the Dalai Lama and foreign forces for encouraging separatism. Ethnic violence in Xinjiang in 2009 was handled slightly differently. More foreign media were allowed (mainly because the government knew that, in contrast to Tibetan Buddhists, Westerners were unlikely to have sympathies for Uyghurs Muslims) but the attitude toward demands made by the protestors remained uncompromising. Internet is severely restricted in Tibet and Xinjiang and was in fact completely banned in the latter for many months after the protests. It has become clear that the Chinese government will not accept any outside pressure on matters it considers to be ‘internal affairs.’ Nor will it recognise as legitimate any demands made by citizens for greater participation; any change that comes, must occur from the top-down. Even a whiff of separatism and a crackdown is inevitable.

Kashmir is different, partly because the Indian system is different, but mainly because the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is an internationally recognised dispute. Unlike Tibet or Xinjiang, where no sovereign state questions Chinese sovereignty, all international actors see Jammu and Kashmir as a disputed territory between India and Pakistan and so sovereignty is already an unsettled question.

If we look at the most recent protests in Indian-controlled Kashmir, we find that more than 100 Kashmiris, mostly boys and young men, have been killed by the security forces. The Indian response to this ‘threat to sovereignty’ is different from the Chinese one. Kashmiri political leaders, including moderate as well as hard-line separatists remain very much in public, announce their protest calendars, denounce the Indian government, and the media can approach them. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the internet has been utilised by Kashmiris to mobilise and raise awareness, even as local journalists face severe restrictions. The Indian prime minister has appealed to the youth for calm, politicians visit Jammu and Kashmir capital Srinagar for ‘fact finding’, and an eight-point plan has been put forward to solve the problem.

But, and this is a significant but, it is a mistake to over-valorise the differences between India and China. The Indian approach is no less repressive when you look at the actual experience of Kashmiris, or many other ethno-nationalist communities living in north-eastern regions of the country. The face of Indian democracy that the marginalised communities witness here is worlds apart from the celebratory tone of the overwhelmingly nationalist Indian media, as well as compliant Western commentators.

Democracy for Kashmiris and many in the North East has meant corrupt and compliant local elite propped up by the Centre through fraudulent elections; everyday humiliation and reminders that mainstream India does not trust them; the overwhelming presence of the security forces, protected by special laws; the onslaught of Indian propaganda, often with active complicity of broadcast media, to misrepresent all demands made by the ethno-nationalist activists as illegitimate and as stemming from extremism.

If one goes behind the fog of propaganda and misperceptions and closely studies Chinese and Indian government policies and practices in the peripheral regions, they’d see that the rising Asian powers have more in common. When it comes to dealing with ethno-nationalist communities questioning the dominant nationalist narratives, a fight against ‘separatism’ and ‘splittism’ overrides any concern for rights enshrined in the states’ own constitutions. In this sense, both China and India are, what I term, ‘postcolonial informal empires.’ While claiming to be anti-imperialist, both countries seek to consolidate and discipline their borderlands and reduce the people living there into culturally different but politically subservient subjects.

Dr Dibyesh Anand is an Associate Professor in International Relations at London’s University of Westminster. His research interests include majority-minority relations in China and India, Tibet, and China-India border dispute.

1. Wen Jiabao’s visit to India and Pakistan reinforces stability and neutrality
2. China-India ties: Wen Jiabao in India – making nice slowly
3. Moving beyond the Blame Game: China-India Border Relations

When thinking about China’s role in Asia, the relationships that are most obvious are those  with its East and Southeast Asian neighbours, from Japan, Korea and Taiwan down to the ASEAN countries. But looking west across China’s hinterland we can see a new set of relationships developing in one of the most strategically important areas of the world: the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

In contemporary terms, Central Asia officially consists of the five former Soviet republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Notably, Afghanistan, which never came under Soviet control, and is now viewed as part of South Asia after its 2007 accession to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), is not included. Increasingly, Afghanistan is being paired with South Asia’s other major trouble-spot, Pakistan, in what analysts term the ‘Af-Pak’ problem.

The region has been the focus of outside powers for centuries and was the site of the 19^th century Anglo-Russian territory grab famously christened the ‘Great Game’ by Rudyard Kipling.

There are two factors that drive China’s involvement in Central Asia.

First, the so-called ‘New Great Game’ is a struggle for oil and gas, and is playing out between the US, Russia, Iran, India, and China.

China is aggressively pursuing Central Asian natural gas, in part due to demand pressures, but also to diversify its energy sources away from the burning of coal.

In order to tap the gas deposits of Central Asia, China is building pipelines in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Recently, a pipeline was completed linking the Kazakh shore of the Caspian Sea, an area rich in natural gas, to Xinjiang province, and onto Shanghai.

Second, Uyghur separatism means that China is interested in consolidating its regional political power, particularly as many Uyghur separatists have fled China to the Central Asian republics, mostly Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

According to Indian academic Srikanth Kondapalli, Chinese involvement in Central Asia over Xinjiang has a long history. The region was destabilised after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and, because of broader geopolitical considerations, China countered the USSR by supporting the mujahedin in Afghanistan. Incidentally, these mujahidin are now part of the ‘blowback’ characteristic of Central Asian politics – they  support the Uyghurs in their fight for secession.

In an interview that I conducted, Kondapalli claimed that Chinese General Xiong Guangkai trained five thousand mujahedin between 1979-89; and supplied Red Arrow missiles, which are now being used against the Chinese.

The US also had operations with China during the latter part of the Cold War, including two USSR-facing signals intelligence (SIGINT) facilities at Qitai and Korla in Xinjiang. Further, Mujahedin training programs in Pakistan were conducted jointly by the CIA and the People’s Liberation Army’s International Liaison Department (a counter-espionage unit publicly known as the ‘China Association for International Friendly Contacts’).

Since the fall of the USSR, Sino-Russian cooperation has been reinstated, particularly through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

Thus, in this context, China’s aggressive leadership of the SCO can be seen as a means of achieving its goal of controlling Uyghur ‘splittists’. The original Shanghai Five organisation (the predecessor of the SCO) was developed from security treaties signed between China and the Central Asian states with the aim of clearly demarcating borders and curbing separatism. The SCO is still more of an economic than military organisation, but as the only multilateral institution in the region it is becoming increasingly influential.

China’s main focus is still on East Asia, and Taiwan in particular. Nonetheless, its relationships with the countries on its western borders are becoming increasingly important, and its influence in this volatile region will only continue to grow.

Louise Merrington is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political and Social Change, ANU.

1. Central Asia in 2011: a deceptive calm?
2. Engaging Central Asia: the EU-Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) axis
3. Pakistan refocuses attention towards Central Asia

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. The 7/5 incident, and the series of events that followed it, has not refocused this anxiety onto the Uyghurs as might be expected from a superficial reading of the situation. Rather, 7/5 has served to emphasise how important it is for both the Central government and the Xinjiang provincial-level government to pay even closer attention to garnering the support of the Han community in Xinjiang.

The relationship, or social contract, between the Han mainstream in Xinjiang and the Party and government is one of ‘partners in stability.’ The Han mainstream do their part simply by occupying the border region and by accepting the Party as the best solution for a multi-ethnic, increasingly stratified China, and the government as the Party’s administrators. In return they expect protection and that what is being built in Xinjiang is being built in the first instance for them, regardless of the official policies that grant special privileges to minorities. This is clearly not the same contract as in ‘Inland China’, primarily because of the lack of a significant ‘other’ like the Uyghurs in Inland China, the extractive nature of Xinjiang’s economy and, related to both of these, the imperative of populating the border with ethnic Han as a way of justifying and guaranteeing Beijing’s territorial claims over Xinjiang.

However, Xinjiang people have been increasingly feeling left behind and out of the economic advances of the eastern seaboard cities for some years now. Many quote the comparative salaries of government workers in each region as proof Xinjiang is being neglected by the Central authorities, and exploited by the corrupt and ineffectual leaders of Xinjiang. ‘They’re an interest group, concerned only with their own ‘stability’ ‘ said one anonymous comment on a web forum in April 2009. They put ‘stability’ in quotation marks as a mocking reference to the most commonly heard political aphorism in relation to Xinjiang: ‘social stability is a prerequisite [for]…Xinjiang’s development.’ The government employee from Xinjiang went on ‘there’s no way they’ll look after [us here at] ground level, only if it affects their own stability will they give us an increase [in wages], and even then that won’t keep up with CPI….’ These online comments are representative of a great many conversations I was involved in or privy to in Xinjiang in the immediate aftermath of 7/5.

Even more widespread is the antipathy towards the First Party Secretary of Xinjiang, Wang Lequan. He has been in the top position for 15 years, and over that time has placed cadres from his own home province of Shandong in the top positions of prefectural-level governments throughout Xinjiang. More offensively to the general population, he has been openly biased towards businesses run by his buddies from Shandong. One example which now has the status of legend among the Han community tells how he forced farmers near Korla to purchase greenhouse construction materials from his brother Wang Leyi’s company rather than obtaining them locally. The materials were shipped out from Shandong and ended up costing twice as much as the local equivalent. He then ordered his cronies in the prefectural government to legislate that each greenhouse must be a minimum acreage which was 6-10 times greater than what the farmers could afford to finance a bank loan for, and for the Bank of China to grant the loans with no questions asked.

Consequently, the farmers all went bust, the bank lost out and the price of winter vegetables in the nearby city of Korla was pushed even higher. For the people of Korla, this was a tangible example of official corruption, greed and incompetence directly affecting their own standard of living, as well as their own inability to do anything about it. The perception is that in the east of China such an incident would be, or would at least have a chance of being, reported in the newspapers and the officials concerned punished, but because Xinjiang is mostly controlled by the ‘Shandong clique’ and more importantly because the authorities (including the Central authorities) do not want to expose anything which could threaten stability, the incident was suppressed in Xinjiang.

The 7/5 incident, and the needlestick attacks that followed in September, provided a handle with which the ‘everyday Han’ of Xinjiang could grasp the government’s own rationale – delivered here by Wang Lequan himself: ‘that stability trumps all … [and it] is the main task and number one responsibility’ – and turn it around to criticise the government. The general feeling of Xinjiang Han is anger that, in the name of stability, they suffer inconveniences and restrictions on freedom more frequent and more severe than people elsewhere in China, yet 7/5 showed that the authorities have failed to guarantee even the ability to walk safely down the street. Added to this is the feeling among many second and third-generation Xinjiang people that they have been neglected by the Centre and even excluded from most of the benefits that have flowed from the rapid growth of Xinjiang’s economy during the tenure of Wang Lequan.

In failing to forestall the Urumqi riots, the Party and government broke the particular social contract that they have with the mainstream of Han society in Xinjiang – the ‘partnership of stability.’ 7/5 also exposed some of the longer-standing fractures in this partnership. What is now going on in the relationship between Xinjiang and the Centre, and between the Party and government and their most important constituency in Xinjiang is a renegotiation of rights, roles and requitals.

Tom Cliff is a doctoral student at the Australian National University’s Contemporary China Centre.

1. Xinjiang riots: A jaundiced hack’s-eye-view of China’s restless Western frontier
2. Chinese unrest in Xinjiang – Weekly editorial
3. Restructuring China to promote social stability

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.

Despite China’s new openness in managing its public relations and international media, demonstrated most clearly by allowing journalists’ access to Urumqi shortly after the deadly riot, it has been far from successful in improving its international image. In fact, its campaign to smear Mrs. Kadeer backfired badly, to the extent that it has given her an undeserved legitimacy and credibility beyond her dreams. Ms Kadeer sarcastically thanked the Chinese government for the unexpected boost in her public profile at a Canberra press conference.

It seems that Beijing is suffering from the stigma associated with being an authoritarian government. Even the violent deaths of hundreds of innocent Han Chinese at the hands of Uighur mobs could not give Beijing any moral high ground. The relatively restrained anti-riot actions of the Chinese, taken with deliberate care to protect China’s tattered image after the earlier Lhasa riot, could not prevent it from being labelled as genocidal by the Turkish Prime Minister.

Beijing once again attributed the blame for the violence to a small clique of extremists. It seems that the previously obscure World Uighur Congress bore the brunt of official Chinese anger. That was done in an attempt by Beijing to find a suitable scapegoat to appease an aggrieved Chinese public clearly shocked by the scale and intensity of the violence. However, the Chinese public and especially those in Xinjiang were far from satisfied with the government response. When we responded to the marching columns of heavily armed Chinese soldiers and police officers with criticism of such heavy-handed and repressive tactics, a terrified Urumqi Han resident responded simply that ‘you have come too late and have done too little to protect us.’ Michael Sainsbury wrote in the Australian that ‘There has been large-scale discontent with the government’s handling of Xinjiang.’

Online discussion forums in China were flooded with images of dead Han Chinese with their heads smashed and blood-soaked street pavements. The story of an entire Han Chinese family including an elderly grandmother and young children being burnt to death by Uighur mobs circulated on the web like wildfire. Angry netizens heavily criticised the government’s slow and restrained actions in putting down the riots. One of the most telling and perhaps chilling remarks was if General Wang Zhen was still in charge, this could never have happened. This reference was to a hardline Chinese general who ruled Xinjiang with an iron fist during the 1950s and 60s.

Far from basking in the privileges and perks of being colonial masters in Xinjiang, many Han Chinese complain bitterly of perceived government discrimination against them. The top grievances include the exemption of Uighurs from the One Child Policy and affirmative action for Uighurs in China’s highly competitive and prized college entrance examinations. Most importantly, ethnic minorities are usually treated with leniency under China’s otherwise harsh criminal law system.

This angry response is not dissimilar from the earlier Chinese populist reaction after the Tibetan uprising, where many have judged Hu Jintao’s government to be ‘weak and cowardly’ in its response to the unrest. Angry Chinese residents decided to indulge in Old Testament style retributive actions and started to attack Uighur residents in the city through large-scale organised violence. Beijing quickly moved in to separate the two warring factions and senior Chinese leaders in Xinjiang had to personally placate the emotionally charged residents and assure them of their safety.

The recent syringe attacks in Urumqi sparked a large scale demonstration against the Xinjiang authorities for their failure to keep peace and order in the region. Two high ranking officials were sacked to appease the public as well as to protect Hu’s close political ally Wang Lequan.

This highlights the widening gulf between the current of opinion amongst the Chinese populace and Beijing over the management of China’s restive frontier province. It seems that the Chinese public is far more belligerent than Beijing in handling ethnic unrest.

The more bellicose stance taken by the Chinese public is not only a product of Beijing’s persistent efforts to foster strong nationalist credentials but also a reflection of a long-standing nationalist tradition in China since the early twentieth century. The ‘century of shame’ school of historiography is truly entrenched in the Chinese imagination just as the Anzac legend assumed its central position in modern Australian psyche. The nationalist sentiment in Xinjiang was also significantly strengthened by simmering ethnic tension after the organised Uighur violence against innocent Han residents.

Having created and fostered such a strong sentiment among the public, Beijing has to ride the tiger it has raised. On many issues, Beijing is forced by public opinion to project an image that it guards China’s sovereign and territorial interests jealously and protects the safety and well-being of its citizens—with force if necessary.

However, China’s status as a rising superpower and ‘responsible international stakeholder’ complicate this otherwise simple equation. On the one hand, Beijing must cater for the nationalist sensibilities at home and, on the other, it must also simultaneously project a more benign and humane image abroad. It seems that Beijing’s recent action in Urumqi satisfied neither side.

1. Urumqi ethnic conflict and failure of the Chinese justice system
2. Xinjiang riots: A jaundiced hack’s-eye-view of China’s restless Western frontier
3. Chinese unrest in Xinjiang – Weekly editorial

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?

Prima facie the picture might appear unremittingly bleak, but in reality it represents a marked improvement in Chinese media savvy. Indeed, the result this time is little short of a PR coup for the PRC, at least compared with the clumsy management of the riots in Tibet last year, when the CCP scored a spectacular own-goal by enforcing a blanket ban on the international media which rendered balanced reporting impossible. China’s openness this time round should be regarded as a step in the right direction by western commentators.

Moreover, China is perhaps the most rapidly developing nation in the world today and the Chinese learn fast. The press freedom afforded to the international, and increasingly also to its domestic media, in the wake of 7.5 is a case in point. This unprecedented openness is another important step forward for which the Chinese government deserves due recognition. It faces the thankless task of managing a treacherous web of ethnic relations in a country with a total population double that of the whole of Europe, which, contrary to perceptions of China as a vast monolith, consists of a delicately stitched patchwork of 56 officially recognised ethnic groups. Western nations need few reminders of how intractable ethnic relations can be, even for developed countries, after the searing lesson of the Balkans in the 1990s.

Although greater press freedom is essential, ultimately the Xinjiang problem cannot be resolved by a PR campaign. Points won this time will just as quickly be lost if the CCP fails to tackle the underlying problem. Thankfully, the Western press does have a bias for negative reporting and it is bad news which sells newspapers, thus to avoid falling foul of its fickle new media friend the Chinese government needs to be brave enough to find a permanent solution to the Xinjiang question.

Firstly, the solution does not lie in the firing of the feckless Wang Lequan, who like many hapless, high-ranking Chinese officials inherited a ticking time-bomb in Xinjiang which he only had the misfortune of watching blow up under his watch. Nor does the solution reside in flooding Xinjiang with migrants while pacifying Uighur hostility with economic development and policies that discriminate against Han Chinese. These policies are unlikely to succeed for the CCP, and, as the technology and means of terrorism have never been so readily available to those who wish to employ it, the CCP run the very real risk that the spurious spectre of Uighir terrorism raised in the aftermath of 9/11 will become a deadly reality.

Anthony Garnaut previously compared the causes of the riots in Xinjiang to the injustices and racism that provoked rioting in LA following the appalling police brutality towards Rodney King (and the inadequate response from America’s White Establishment) in 1992. To invoke another lesson from Anglo-Saxon history, the solution to Xinjiang might be found along the lines of the Northern Ireland model of devolution and power sharing. There, the UK government was brought to its knees by a single renegade province with a population of a little over 1.5 million. It tried and failed to crush unrest through military might, infamously opening fire on unarmed protestors and shooting 72 of its own citizens during the Bloody Sunday massacre. It also pointedly tried to bring peace through prosperity, a British brand of economic development, but this, too, failed because it did not recognise the legitimate aspirations of all communities for self-governance.

Only after exhausting all the alternatives did the UK government finally begin to resolve the troubles when the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement gave birth to the process of power sharing between the Protestant and Catholic communities. This agreement seemed to balance the demands of both parties, reconciling the one’s ambition to remain part of the Union with the other’s intransigent insistence on outright independence. Simplifying grossly, the Northern Irish now have their own parliament, make their own legislation and have powers over most things with the exception of defence and foreign policy. This is a model which might interest aspiring Chinese politicians.

In the Chinese context, granting ethnic minorities real autonomy is not tantamount to independence. Whereas independence is something which is manifestly not in the interests of the majority of Chinese, the majority of Uighurs, and certainly not in the interests of the wider international community, autonomy means giving the Uighurs power to make their own decisions within the framework of a Chinese nation-state. It goes against the belief of politicians of all countries and every political persuasion to devolve, or de facto give up, power. And yet, paradoxically, the English experience in Northern Ireland shows that unity can only be preserved and even enhanced by letting go. This is a timeless truism transcendent of all cultural boundaries, and it defies the imagination that a government with aspirations to represent the Chinese people will in the end not grasp such a basic equation of universal realpolitik.

1. China’s partnership of stability in Xinjiang
2. Chinese unrest in Xinjiang – Weekly editorial
3. Between Scylla and Charybdis: the CCP’s minority policy dilemma

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.

1. Predicting the performance of the Chinese economy – Weekly editorial
2. Chinese political system – Weekly editorial
3. The question of Chinese over-investment and over-capacity – Weekly editorial

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.

The events leading up to the demonstration in Urumqi are, however, better known. The video of the lethal bashings was shot on June 26 at a toy factory owned by a Hong Kong tycoon in Shaoguan, Guangdong province, which had just recruited 800 Uyghur workers from an impoverished district of southern Xinjiang under the auspices of a state-sponsored economic migration scheme. Most of the Uyghur workers were female, aged between 16 and 19. The official version of the Shaoguan incident, based on an initial investigation by local police, was that a disgruntled ex-employee of the factory posted on the internet a false allegation that a group of Uyghur male workers at the factory had raped two Han female workers. Several days later, a ‘brawl’ broke out between Han and Uyghur workers that resulted in the hospitalisation of 120 people (81 from Xinjiang province, though their presumably Uyghur ethnic status was not spelled out), and the deaths of two Uyghur workers. No mention was made of the gender of the injured or deceased.

Different versions of the Shaoguan incident developed in internet chat rooms and bulletin boards. The incident had been captured on video by Han employees and posted on the internet. The footage shows an excited, male, Han mob armed with long sticks chasing down and beating two Uyghur women. Other photos circulated via the internet showed at least half a dozen bodies on the ground. At least two of the bodies appear dead, one male and one naked female.

The official and internet versions of the incident are not necessarily incompatible, but lend a very different character to the incident. The official account frames the incident as a breach of public order instigated by a ‘rumour-monger’. To viewers of the footage, both Han and Uyghur, the incident was an obvious outbreak of racial hatred. One of two Han spectators whose voices are recorded on the video exclaims excitedly that the beating received by a Uyghur woman was well deserved, presumably for her ethnic connection with the fictive rapists of the falsified rape claims. To at least some Uyghur viewers, the footage was confirmation of the predatory dangers faced by the young Uyghur women recruited against their will into the state-sponsored migration scheme.

Back in 1992, much of the American public, black and white, had difficulty reconciling the video footage of the Rodney King beating with the verdict of the predominantly white jurists in the first trial of the L.A.P.D officers captured on video, which found them not guilty of assault.

The crowds of people who came out into the streets in Urumqi expressed their frustration at a similar failure of the justice system to which they are subject.

In the absence of a coherent and compelling official response to incidents of ethnic conflict, people will interpret what happened in their own ethnically-informed manner. If hot-headed bloggers are appointed as jurists, they are unlikely to come to a verdict that will satisfy both parties to the conflict. Now the Han and Uyghur blogging communities have turned their attention to the incidents that have taken place in Urumqi since last Sunday.

To the credit of the Chinese government, the international media has been given unprecedented access to Xinjiang to report the facts of the riot and its causes as they see it, and the riot police deployed to contain the riots as they developed on Monday carried out their unenviable task with professional skill, at least in the situations that have been described by the international media.

While some Uyghurs may dream of having their own nation, in their waking hours both Uyghur and long-term Han residents of Urumqi today lament the loss of a world that existed before 1989 when children of both ethnic groups played together in the dusty alleyways of their apartment compounds. The reclamation of this lost land in northwest China may be as difficult a task as the fulfilment of Martin Luther King’s dream. Let us hope now that the arc of the Chinese moral universe bends in support of a justice system that serves the interests of all ethnic peoples.

Anthony Garnaut is an historian at the University of Melbourne

1. The taming of ethnic conflict in Indonesia
2. China’s partnership of stability in Xinjiang
3. Xinjiang riots: A jaundiced hack’s-eye-view of China’s restless Western frontier