THE riots in the Xinjiang region, the home of China’s Muslim Uighur minority, will affirm to many analysts outside the country that social unrest is a direct threat to the continued rule of the Communist Party. If officials don’t take a long, hard look at how to avoid such uprisings, this argument will run, the government could eventually fall.
If only Chinese officials saw things that way.
But even after at least 156 people have been reported dead in the city of Urumqi, many officials here see the recent violence — with Uighur rioters torching businesses owned by Han Chinese, China’s ethnic majority — as simple ingratitude.
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