'CHINA’S ETHNIC PROBLEM: PANDORA’S BOX OR POWDER KEG?'

from nl-aid..........

"In recent days there has been renewed violence in the troubled northwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang only two weeks after Chinese security forces killed 18 people following a riot in which hostages were taken. The riot in the town of Hotan on July 18th took place almost two years after the region was engulfed in widespread unrest known as the Urümqi riots. Approximately the size of Alaska or Western Europe, the Autonomous Region of Xinjiang is both the largest region of China and comparatively sparsely populated. It is also home to China’s largest Muslim population, the ethnic Uyghur who while a plurality only constitute a majority of the population in the western and southwestern areas of the region. 


Like the much more famous case of Tibet, Xinjiang has been on the outer fringes of Chinese control for centuries, its fortunes waxing and waning in an inverse relationship with the strength or weakness of successive Chinese regimes. This briefly culminated in the short-lived, and ill-fated ‘independence’ of three northern districts of modern Xinjiang under a Soviet-backed Chinese warlord in November 1944 that came to an end with the creation of the Peoples Republic of China"...........READ MORE