Flare-Up in China’s Far West Points to Potential Hot Spot for New Regime

Only two weeks before “paramount leader” Deng Xiaoping died in Beijing, Muslim separatists and Chinese police clashed violently in the far western Xinjiang region.

Chinese government officials said the Feb. 5-6 “riot” in the Central Asian region near the border with Kazakhstan was quickly subdued and that no more than 10 people died. But Muslim advocates of an independent “East Turkestan” claim that fighting still rages and that dozens have been killed, including Chinese police.

And with bombs killing at least two and injuring dozens in the regional capital, Urumqi, on Tuesday, the very day of the Deng memorial, the latest flare-up in Xinjiang--one of China’s most volatile regions, rich in oil and other natural resources--underscores what many feel will be a major challenge in the post-Deng era: keeping the wild frontier territory tied to Beijing during a period of political transition.

“China can handle a bad image with Tibet, but there are larger international implications for how they handle Xinjiang,” said Dru Gladney, an expert on Chinese Muslims at the University of Hawaii.

The Xinjiang disturbances sparked demonstrations in Washington; Istanbul, Turkey; and other cities.

Because China relies increasingly on Middle Eastern oil imports, Gladney said, Beijing can’t afford to alienate Islamic nations “that have long felt solidarity with Muslims living under communism.”

The region, which the Chinese government formally identifies as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, covers about 636,000 square miles--four times the size of California. Its vast stretches of arid dunes and forbidding mountains contain oil reserves estimated at up to 40 billion tons, accounting for nearly two-fifths of China’s total. The region also contains nearly 40% of China’s coal, as well as rich resources of gold and copper.

In the glacier-fed oases that lie between the deserts and mountains, Xinjiang’s dozen or so minority nationalities coexist uneasily with the majority Han Chinese. The minorities are tied across political boundaries to their ethnic relatives in the Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union.

Xinjiang’s minorities--the largest of which are the Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs--have resisted assimilation by virtue of cultural, linguistic and geographic differences.

“We have nothing in common with the Chinese people or their culture,” said Huji Tuerdi, a Uighur native of the city of Kashgar who now lives in the United States. “Even though they think their culture is superior to ours, we find they have nothing attractive to us except the superior technology, which they also got from the West.”

The resentment is apparently mutual. Han Chinese often gripe about preferential treatment they believe minorities are getting. They often view minority religions and customs as tokens of backwardness.

Han chauvinism reached fanatical heights during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when mosques were razed, public prayer was banned, Koranic schools were shut down and Han settlers raised pigs in Muslim neighborhoods in violation of Islamic prohibitions.

Like Tibetans, Xinjiang’s minorities complain that they are being swamped by a flood of ethnic Han Chinese from the crowded east. While Chinese officials estimate that minorities make up 59% of a population of about 15 million in the region, Uighurs contend they are already outnumbered by Han. The resulting animosity has fueled sporadic violence in Xinjiang for decades. Last year, separatists killed a pro-government Muslim leader of the regional parliament, and a policeman and a Muslim were shot to death when authorities tried to catch a suspect.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the politically shaky Central Asian states have become wary both of growing Islamic fundamentalism and of China’s wrath toward countries that harbor its separatists. The states have responded to China’s offers of increased trade and investment by curbing separatist agitation at home. Last year, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan signed a communique in Shanghai agreeing to avoid military conflict along common borders.

Beijing recognizes that eastern and western China did not benefit equally from the economic gains of the Deng era. To compensate, President Jiang Zemin has pledged to narrow income disparities by increasing government investment in inland infrastructure and natural resource exploitation.

But Uighurs say that outsiders will just “repatriate” their profits to Beijing. Xinjiang gets to keep little of its oil revenue. Uighur separatists claim that almost all of the industrial and technical jobs in the region are set aside to entice Han Chinese to migrate to Xinjiang while large numbers of minority youth remain unemployed. Many of these resort to drug trafficking and other crime.

The death of Deng is unlikely to have an immediate effect on the shaky balance of the region. China’s current leadership is determined to learn from the Soviet collapse and strengthen the central government. But if political instability develops in Beijing, the Muslims of Xinjiang probably will be among the first to take advantage of it.

Like their Han compatriots, Uighurs greeted the news of Deng’s death with a range of sentiments from optimism to indifference.

“I hope Deng’s death will bring change to people who are dissatisfied with their fortunes under the Deng regime,” said a Uighur restaurateur in Beijing who requested anonymity.

Another Uighur exile, writing anonymously on the Internet, ventured that “another, greater Chinese leader will emerge” who, like former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, will “liberate Uighurs and Tibetans, because the ultimate way for them to preserve [their] own culture is through independence.”

Exile Huji Tuerdi viewed the prospect of transition with disaffected equanimity: “We do not have too many personal opinions about Deng Xiaoping. . . . The wolf goes and the jackal comes.”