China Bluffs the World

The violence and rioting in Urumqi, and other cities in the vast, desolate Western Chinese province of Xinjiang, constitute the greatest political loss of life in China since the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. They are also the most serious challenge to Chinese state authority. They demonstrate the failure of the Chinese development model for both Xinjiang and Tibet, and the crudity of Chinese rule in those two provinces.

They also demonstrate the danger of the nationalism and ethnic Han chauvinism (Han is the dominant ethnic group in China) encouraged as a key way of gaining legitimacy by the Chinese state. It also reveals a new approach to media management by Beijing. Hu Jintao had to drop out of the G8 meeting and rush back to China to take charge of the crisis. Although the heroic leader returning to the rescue is now standard in Beijing dealing with a crisis, it is nonetheless a very bad look and a serious loss of face. According to official Chinese figures, more than 150 people are dead, 800 injured, 220 buildings and 260 vehicles destroyed and more than 200 shops damaged. There have been well over 800 arrests.

The sequence of events is contested, but goes like this. In Shaoguan City in distant Guangdong province two Uighurs were accused of raping a Han Chinese girl. The Chinese authorities now say this accusation was baseless. However, it led to some kind of anti-Uighur pogrom and at least two Uighurs, and possibly a few more, were killed.

This led, the next day, to a demonstration against the general repression of Uighurs, China's biggest Muslim minority, in Xinjiang's capital city, Urumqi. The Uighurs have a lot of grievances. The Australian government clearly thinks some of them significant, as Uighur issues always figure in the annual Australia-China human rights dialogue. When the Chinese communists took control of Xinjiang in 1949, ethnic Han made up about 6 per cent of the population, with Uighurs the vast majority.

Today, the Han make up about 50 per cent, with Uighurs a minority in their own homeland. There are several other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. It is now a very segregated province. Urumqi has clear Han and Uighur districts, and throughout Xinjiang there are separate Uighur, Khazak and Han villages.

The practice of the Muslim religion is very circumscribed. Individual visits to Mecca for the haj are illegal. Religion is discouraged in schools, religious festivals not fully celebrated.

The vast natural resource development has resulted in jobs for Han, not for Uighurs. Although Xinjiang is formally designated a Uighur Autonomous Region, all political power, most political positions, most jobs and most economic development has gone to the Han. Some Han are recent migrants, others were forcibly relocated to Xinjiang during either the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution.

The Uighurs say the recent violence began when their peaceful demonstration was met with savage brutality by Chinese police. We cannot know for sure what happened, but the Uighur claims are plausible as they would be consistent with Chinese police behaviour elsewhere in China and especially in Xinjiang.

The Chinese authorities say the violence began when the Uighur demonstrators went on an anti-Han rampage. Subsequently Han mobs went on an anti-Uighur rampage. If any other country were managing a minority region with this degree of crudity there would be immediate calls for greater autonomy and perhaps self determination. But, as usual, the Chinese have the international community bluffed. They have achieved this with Xinjiang in part by convincing the world that all Uighur activists are 9/11-style terrorists.

In fact, the Americans are trying to find homes for the Uighur residents of Guantanamo Bay because they have come to the conclusion that they pose no terrorist threat.

There have been Uighur separatist terrorist bombings in China, but independent analysts believe the number of Uighurs involved in international jihadist terrorism is tiny. However, by its recent behaviour China certainly risks radicalising young Uighur men.

A fascinating aspect of the conflict has been Beijing's new approach to the media. It has made the standard but implausible accusation that all the disturbances are being orchestrated by outside forces. It shut down the internet in Urumqi to try to limit the demonstrators' organising ability. However, rather than trying to impose a media blackout as it did in the Tibet uprisings last year, it has swamped the media, domestic and international, with its own television images designed to suggest Uighur violence against Han. It is thus using the authoritarian power of the state to lead and dominate the media, rather than try to black it out. This is a significant development and signals China's move from the totalitarianism of communism to a more contemporary authoritarian style. Still a dictatorship, but significantly more sophisticated.

The problem with this media strategy, though, is that it inflames Han hostility to the Uighurs. The Chinese state has used Han nationalism, along with economic performance, as the key source of legitimacy for its rule, given the death of communist ideology. But this nationalism is increasingly ugly.

Further, the policy lessons Beijing will draw from this are that it needs to be tougher on Uighur activists. This is exactly the reverse of the truth. In fact it needs to be more liberal with people, allow them to pursue their cultures more freely, give them more authentic autonomy and integrate them in a more sophisticated fashion.

There is one implication out of all this for Australia. Michael Wesley, the new head of the Lowy Institute and one of Australia's best foreign policy thinkers, recently argued that the Rudd government had had some trouble in its dealings with China because it did not have a big, integrated China policy.

I have the greatest respect for Wesley, but this is dead wrong. Problems in Australia-China relations result sometimes from specific mis-steps, such as having a politburo member here and trying to keep it secret. Or they result from the nature and actions of China's government, a government that will arrest an Australian Rio employee and deny consular access, a government which acts the way it does in Xinjiang and Tibet, compelling Australian concerns about human rights. Similarly, China's massive military build-up requires some sort of insurance policy by Australia. Trying to make a definitive statement about China's ultimate intentions, which are unknowable, achieves nothing and could harm a lot.

Meanwhile, the prospects in Xinjiang, and Tibet, are very gloomy.