Under the thumb - China's far west
3 December 2005
The Economist

China's far west
In dampening resentment, nothing succeeds like success

TO CHINESE cadres, the town of Yining is an advertisement for their country's six-year-old policy of boosting development in lagging western regions. Executive centres and multi-storey shopping malls sprout along the pavements. Fleets of luxury cars, and trucks bearing coal, weave their way along the roads. By day, traders from across a stunning spectrum of ethnicities—Han Chinese, Uighurs, Kazakhs, Russians, Tajiks—gather in the markets to swap goods and gossip about their travels in Central Asia; by night they socialise over a game of pool or hit the parks for a spot of outdoor dancing.

Situated in Xinjiang, China's largest, westernmost province, this once sleepy backwater is becoming increasingly known for its prosperity and cosmopolitanism. The visitor has to journey to Yining's more secluded rural outskirts to hear murmurs of the town's dark past. Twice in 1997, Uighur and Kazakh Muslims launched separatist riots here, provoking a merciless response from the Chinese government. Several people were killed and many more injured. “I'm still afraid sometimes,” confides one Kazakh. But for most of Yining's residents, the memory of those days has faded, paling into insignificance before the promise of quick riches and peaceful stability.

China's goal is not just to replicate the boom of its coastal areas. It wants to tame Xinjiang, its wild western frontier. Since January 2000, when China launched the “great development of the west” (often referred to as the “Go west” policy), it has been clear that there is more to this than simply boosting growth in China's economic backwaters. It is shorthand for a policy of tightening central control over remote, far-flung territories and assimilating them into China proper. Xinjiang (literally meaning “New Frontier”) was the most recalcitrant region of the lot.

A chasm of language, culture and religion lies between the Han Chinese, who make up more than 90% of China's population, and Xinjiang's Uighurs, Kazakhs and Tajiks. The region's brand of Islam, heavily influenced by Sufi mysticism, sits uncomfortably with the atheism espoused by the Chinese Communist Party. Xinjiang is periodically roiled by local uprisings set off by supporters of independence for the region—“East Turkestan” as the separatists call it, rejecting the Chinese name for their territory.

In 1945, a rebellion led to the creation of a short-lived independent republic in the Yining region close to the Soviet Union. But in 1949, this was abolished after the Russians told the Uighurs to co-operate with Mao. An earlier East Turkestan, in 1933, had lasted only a few months. Since 1949, Chinese rule has never been seriously challenged, although the authorities say there were more than 200 “terrorist incidents” between 1990 and 2001, causing the deaths of 162 people. The most recent unrest of any significance occurred in 1997, with the Yining riots. Three bus bombings in Urumqi and an explosion in Beijing that year were also blamed on Xinjiang separatists.

Calls for independence are still heard among members of the Uighur diaspora. Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman and former political prisoner who was sent into exile in America by China in March, has become a prominent cheerleader for the cause. She has been labelled a “terrorist” by the Chinese government and her family members in Xinjiang have been harassed by the police. Amnesty International says the government's accusations “have not been backed up with any evidence” and appear to be aimed at discrediting Ms Kadeer and her associates as part of a broader political crackdown in Xinjiang.

But at the beginning of October, official celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the founding of what China calls the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region passed without disruption. Tight security for the events reflected the authorities' continuing fear that, though subdued, separatists could still pose a security risk. Yet China plainly does not worry that Xinjiang might descend into a Chechnya-style conflict. And for all its warnings of terrorist dangers, it appears convinced that, just as rapid economic growth has bought respite from radical political demands in other parts of China, the same formula could well work in Xinjiang.

Xinjiang is a prize worth keeping for more than just reasons of national pride. As China searches for fuel to power its economic development, its gaze has inevitably turned westwards to the province's rich endowments of coal, oil and natural gas. Driving along the edge of the vast Taklamakan desert, the vista is of endless tracts of wells and drills. Official hyperbole makes it hard to tell how much oil and gas Xinjiang really has. But the province is a focal point of exploration by China's largest oil and gas producer, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).

The discovery of Xinjiang's Kela II natural-gas field laid the foundation for a 4,000km (2,500-mile) pipeline that began pumping gas from Xinjiang to China's east coast last year. Three years ago, the oil- fields of the Junggar basin, in northern Xinjiang, broke the annual output record for Chinese oilfields by crossing the 10 million tonne mark. In 2004, the Tarim basin oilfields chipped in with five million tonnes.

With its borders with Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan, among others, Xinjiang is also China's principal gateway to the energy reserves of Central Asia. Chinese oil experts are frequent visitors to Almaty and Tashkent, where they hammer out some of the biggest deals in the global energy market today. The first phase of an oil pipeline stretching from Kazakhstan to the border town of Alashankou, in Xinjiang, is soon to be completed. The two countries are also exploring the feasibility of a natural-gas pipeline.

To protect these interests, China has no qualms about threatening and using force to keep militant Muslims under control. Religious schools have been banned altogether, and residents report that the prohibition has been completely effective. China has won support for its efforts from fellow members of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, a security and commercial forum which also includes Russia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. “The government has such a chokehold over us today,” mourns one local imam, “that we can't even think about making war.”

China has also encouraged the migration of ethnic Han Chinese into Xinjiang. Although there is no irrefutable evidence of a deliberate attempt to dilute Xinjiang's potentially restive Muslim population with this influx, this is precisely what has happened in many urban areas. Once forming the vast majority of the region's population, Xinjiang's minorities had slipped to a rough parity with the Han even before the “Go west” policy began.

Getting rich together

Critics of China's western development strategy argued that it would simply encourage a further influx of Han, who would collar all the best jobs and dominate local markets completely, to the detriment of the local peoples. There would be growth, certainly, but its fruits would belong to the enterprising new immigrants, while the province's original residents would remain impoverished. But this has not been the case. True, the Han have come in and enriched themselves. But one of the main reasons many local Muslims are loth to disrupt the new order is that significant numbers of their ranks too have grown fat on the spoils.

As formerly obscure towns experience a boom powered by trade, mining and a rocketing tourist industry, Xinjiang's Muslims are better off, in material terms, than they have been in a long time. Wealthy Uighurs own a fair share of the sleek Landcruisers plying the streets of Urumqi. In the rural areas of northern Xinjiang, such as Buerjin, the Kazakhs still tend to their cattle and sheep. But outside the yurts, there now stand gleaming new motorcycles and even cars. A crucial factor behind Xinjiang's avoidance of large-scale strife is that life as a Chinese subject, particularly compared with many other parts of Central Asia, seems to some at least to have its advantages.

Development is by no means a cure-all. Although it helps create a relatively content middle class, as it has elsewhere in China, it also exacerbates social divisions that could store up problems for the future, should growth falter. The divide between urban and rural communities is one looming challenge. Energy and tourism aside, industrial growth is slow enough to leave many of the province's natives by the wayside. Much of Xinjiang is still rural and even the most impressive cities have a tendency to give way suddenly to pastures and mud-houses, where six-person families live cramped in a single room (ethnic minorities in Xinjiang are subject to less stringent family planning regulations than families in Han areas of China).

This growing gap between rich and poor in Xinjiang could provide new fuel for religious and ethnic hatred. While a number of Xinjiang's Muslims have benefited from the Great Leap West, virtually all the losers are Muslim. In spite of stricter border control, access to weapons and even military training from madrassas in neighbouring Pakistan remains an option; in August, several Muslims were indicted for smuggling firearms from Pakistan into China through Xinjiang. With so many non-Han Muslims feeling disenfranchised, to say nothing of the fear amongst neighbouring Central Asians of being reduced to the near-abroad satellites of an expanding giant once again, there is always a chance that the development of China's west might yet be accompanied by a return to 1997-style violence, with bombs going off in Beijing.

All of which, if history is any guide, will probably do very little to deter a state beginning to flex its muscles. Like the development of America's west, the development of China's has seen native peoples who dared to resist crushed or driven into exile. But however brutal the pacification of Xinjiang, China has so far managed to prevent it from degenerating into a security nightmare.