Posts tagged ‘Han Chinese’

29/07/2014

Police shoot dead dozens of attackers during mob violence in Xinjiang | South China Morning Post

Police in Xinjiang shot dead dozens of knife-wielding attackers on Monday morning after they staged assaults on two towns in the westerly Xinjiang region, the official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday, citing local police.

china_xinjiang_explosion_tok101_43157649.jpg

Describing the incident as a “premeditated terror attack,” the official Xinhua news agency said a gang armed with knives attacked a police station and government offices in Elixku, a township in Kashgar prefecture, and then some of them moved on to nearby Huangdi Township, attacking civilians and smashing vehicles as they passed.

Dozens of civilians were killed or injured in the attack before police responded by shooting dead dozens of attackers, official media reported.

Citing local police, Xinhua said dozens of civilians of both Uygur and Han ethnicities were killed or injured, while police officers at the scene shot dead dozens of members of the mob.

Over 30 cars were vandalised, some of which were set on fire, the report said.

Earlier this month, the regional capital Urumqi marked the fifth anniversary of the 2009 riot that left 197 people dead and about 17,000 others injured, mostly Han Chinese.

The turbulent region has since seen a series of violent incidents that have left many people dead or injured, including last May’s bombing of a market in Urumqi that left dozens dead and prompted a clampdown by authorities.

In the immediate wake of that bombing, which came just weeks after a blast at an Urumqi rail station left three dead, China launched one-year “anti-terror” campaign in Xinjiang in which hundreds of suspects have been arrested and large amounts of explosives and explosive devices have been seized, according to local media.

On June 17, authorities executed 13 people and sentencing three others to death for their role in terror attacks and related crimes in Xinjiang, including an attack on government facilities and police stations in the oasis city of Turpan on June 26 last year that left 24 police officers and civilians dead.

China’s heavy-handed approach has drawn concerns that many of the region’s Uygurs, including vocal critics and people linked to the separatist East Turkestan Islamic Movement, have been arrested and indefinitely detained without trial, while others have disappeared without trace.

Uygurs in Xinjiang and those in self-exile abroad have long complained that discrimination and restrictions on religion, such as a ban on taking children to mosques, are fuelling anger at the Han Chinese majority.

via Police shoot dead dozens of attackers during mob violence in Xinjiang | South China Morning Post.

09/05/2014

Wheat vs. Rice: How China’s North-South Culinary Divide Shapes Personality – China Real Time Report – WSJ

In China, as in many countries, the north-south divide runs deep. People from the north are seen as hale and hearty, while southerners are often portrayed as cunning, cultured traders. Northerners are taller than southerners. The north eats noodles, while the south eats rice—and according to new research, when it comes to personality, that difference has meant everything.

A study published Friday by a group of psychologists in the journal Science finds that China’s noodle-slurping northerners are more individualistic, show more “analytic thought” and divorce more frequently. By contrast, the authors write, rice-eating southerners show more hallmarks traditionally associated with East Asian culture, including more “holistic thought” and lower divorce rates.

The reason? Cultivating rice, the authors say, is a lot harder. Picture a rice paddy, its delicate seedlings tucked in a bed of water. They require careful tending and many hours of labor—by some estimates, twice as much as wheat—as well as reliance on irrigation systems that require neighborly cooperation. As the authors write, for southerners growing rice, “strict self-reliance might have meant starvation.”

Growing wheat, by contrast, the north’s staple grain, is much simpler. One Chinese farming guide from the 1600s quoted in the study advised aspiring farmers that “if one is short of labor power, it is best to grow wheat.”

To produce their findings, the authors evaluated the attitudes of 1,162 Han Chinese students in Beijing and Liaoning in the north and in Fujian, Guangdong, Yunnan and Sichuan in the south. To control for other factors that distinguish the north and south—such as climate, dialect and contact with herding cultures—the authors also analyzed differences between various neighboring counties in five central provinces along China’s rice-wheat border.

According to the authors, the influence of rice cultivation can help explain East Asia’s “strangely persistent interdependence.” For example, they say South Korea and Japan have remained less individualistic than Western countries, even as they’ve grown more wealthy.

The authors aren’t alone in observing the influence various crops have on shaping culture. Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 book “Outliers” also drew connections between a hard-working ethic (measured by a willingness to fill out long, tedious questionnaires) to a historical tradition of rice cultivation in places such as South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, given that the farming of such crops is arguably an equally tedious chore.

But what will happen to such differences after people move away from tending such crops, as is now happening across China? The study cites findings that U.S. regions settled by Scottish and Irish herders show more violence even long after most herders’ descendants have found other lines of work as evidence that cultural traits stubbornly resist change, even over time. (Herders, psychologists theorize, are ready to put their lives on the line to protect their animals against thieves or attack.)

“In the case of China,” the authors conclude, “only time will tell.”

via Wheat vs. Rice: How China’s North-South Culinary Divide Shapes Personality – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

Enhanced by Zemanta
07/05/2014

In China’s Xinjiang, economic divide seen fuelling ethnic unrest | Reuters

Hundreds of migrant workers from distant corners of China pour daily into the Urumqi South railway station, their first waypoint on a journey carrying them to lucrative work in other parts of the far western Xinjiang region.

Uighur women stand next to a street to wait for a bus in downtown Urumqi, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region May 1, 2014. REUTERS-Petar Kujundzic

Like the columns of police toting rifles and metal riot spears that weave between migrants resting on their luggage, the workers are a fixture at the station, which last week was targeted by a bomb and knife attack the government has blamed on religious extremists.

“We come this far because the wages are good,” Shi Hongjiang, 26, from the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing, told Reuters outside the station. “Also, the Uighur population is small. There aren’t enough of them to do the work.”

Shi’s is a common refrain from migrant workers, whose experience finding low-skilled work is very different to that of the Muslim Uighur minority.

Employment discrimination, experts say, along with a demographic shift that many Uighurs feel is diluting their culture, is fuelling resentment that spills over into violent attacks directed at Han Chinese, China’s majority ethnic group.

The apparent suicide attack on the station, which killed one bystander, was the latest violence to hit Xinjiang, despite a pledge from China’s President Xi Jinping to rain “crushing blows against violent terrorist forces”.

via In China’s Xinjiang, economic divide seen fuelling ethnic unrest | Reuters.

Enhanced by Zemanta
01/05/2014

Two attackers among three killed in China bombing | Reuters

Two of the assailants who carried out a bombing in western China were among the three people killed, state media said on Thursday, in an attack which also wounded 79 and has raised concerns over its apparent sophistication and daring.

Paramilitary policemen stand guard near the exit of the South Railway Station, where three people were killed and 79 wounded in a bomb and knife attack on Wednesday, in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous region, May 1, 2014. REUTERS/Petar Kujundzic

The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, said on its official microblog that “two mobsters set off bombs on their bodies and died”, though the report did not call it a suicide bombing.

The other person who died was a bystander, the People’s Daily said.

Knives and explosives were used in the assault on a railway station in Urumqi on Wednesday, the first bomb attack in the capital of Xinjiang region in 17 years. The attack was carried out soon after the arrival of a train from a mainly Han Chinese province, state media said.

The bombing was possibly timed to coincide with a visit to the region with a large Muslim minority by President Xi Jinping, when security was likely to have been heavy.

On Thursday, dozens of black police vans were parked around the station, while camouflaged police with assault rifles patrolled its entrance. Despite the security, the station was bustling and appeared to be operating normally.

The government blamed the attack on “terrorists”, a term it uses to describe Islamist militants and separatists in Xinjiang who have waged a sometimes violent campaign for an independent East Turkestan state – a campaign that has stirred fears that jihadist groups could become active in western China.

State media accounts did not say if any other attackers had been killed or captured. Nor did they say if Xi, who was wrapping up his visit, was anywhere near Urumqi at the time.

Pan Zhiping, a retired expert on Central Asia at Xinjiang’s Academy of Social Science, described the attack as very well organized, saying it was timed to coincide with Xi’s visit.

“It is very clear that they are challenging the Chinese government,” he said.

“There was a time last year when they were targeting the public security bureau, the police stations and the troops. Now it’s indiscriminate – terrorist activities are conducted in places where people gather the most.”

There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack.

via Two attackers among three killed in China bombing | Reuters.

Enhanced by Zemanta
07/03/2014

China’s restless West: The burden of empire | The Economist

After a brutal attack in China, the Communist Party needs to change its policies towards minorities

A GROUP of knife-wielding assailants, apparently Muslims from western China, caused mayhem and murder on March 1st in the south-western Chinese city of Kunming, stabbing 29 people to death at the railway station and injuring 140 others. The attack has shocked China. The crime against innocents is monstrous and unjustifiable, and has been rightly condemned by the Chinese government and by America. But as well as rounding up the culprits, the Communist Party must face up to an uncomfortable truth. Its policy for integrating the country’s restless western regions—a policy that mixes repression, development and Han-Chinese migration—is failing to persuade non-Han groups of the merits of Chinese rule.

The party says the attackers were “Xinjiang extremists”, by implication ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic people with ties to Central Asia who once formed the majority in the region of Xinjiang. The killers may have been radicalised abroad with notions of global jihad. Whatever the truth, there is no doubt that Uighurs are committing ever more desperate acts. Scarcely a week passes in Xinjiang without anti-government violence.

The party claims that Xinjiang has been part of China for 2,000 years. Yet for most of that time, the region has been on the fringe of China’s empire, or outside it altogether. An attempt to incorporate these lands began only with the Qing dynasty’s conquests in the mid-18th century. (The name Xinjiang, “new frontier”, was bestowed only in the 1880s.) During the chaos of the 1940s, Uighurs declared a short-lived independent state of East Turkestan. But from 1949 the Communists began integrating Xinjiang into China by force. Demobbed Chinese soldiers were sent to colonise arid lands, the state repression of Uighurs drawing heavily on the Soviet tactics for handling “nationalities”. Uighur resentment of the Han runs deep. The feeling is mutual. Many Chinese are openly racist towards Uighurs, and the government thinks them ungrateful. In 2009 hundreds of people were killed during street fighting between Uighurs and Han, who now make up two-fifths of Xinjiang’s population and control a disproportionate share of its wealth.

Identity crisis

The Kunming killers’ motives may never be known. But fears of militant Islamism arriving at the heart of China must not obscure the broader problem of Chinese oppression in Xinjiang. Recent crackdowns hit at the heart of Uighur identity: students are banned from fasting during Ramadan, religious teaching for children is restricted, and Uighur-language education is limited. Many Uighurs, like their neighbours in Tibet, fear that their culture will be extinguished. Xinjiang and Tibet (and Inner Mongolia) are still China’s colonies, their pacification under the Communist Party a continued imperial project. Were it not for the Dalai Lama’s restraining influence, violence in Tibet might be as bad as it is in Xinjiang. As it is, over 100 Tibetans have burned themselves to death in protest at Chinese rule.

There is a large military presence in China’s west. The government seems to believe that unless Uighurs and Tibetans are held in check by force, the western regions could break away. That is always a danger. But suppression, which leads to explosions of anger, may increase the risk, not mitigate it.

The only way forward is to show Uighurs (and Tibetans) how they can live peacefully and prosperously together within China. The first step is for the party to lift the bans on religious and cultural practices, give Uighurs and Tibetans more space to be themselves, and strive against prejudice in Chinese society. Economic development needs to be aimed at Uighur and Tibetan communities. Otherwise, there will be more violence and instability.

via China’s restless West: The burden of empire | The Economist.

Enhanced by Zemanta
28/01/2014

More violence in Xinjiang: Unquiet on the western front | The Economist

THE LATEST flurry of news from and about Xinjiang—a fresh bout of deadly violence in the region and the arrest of an activist scholar in Beijing—suggests that Chinese authorities are not about to change their strategy for managing ethnic tensions there. But neither do they look like succeeding in bringing an end to the anger, suppression and unrest.

Twelve people were reported killed January 24th in the latest flare up of violence. And on January 15th, police in Beijing detained Ilham Tohti (pictured above), a 44-year-old professor of economics, a native of Xinjiang and a member of the native Muslim Uighur minority, which has long bristled under Han Chinese rule. Chinese officials have only cited unspecified “violations of law” but Global Times, a party-run newspaper, accused him of frequently giving “aggressive lectures” and “attempting to find a moral excuse for terrorists”.

In another article, Global Times quoted police as saying Mr Tohti “recruited and manipulated some people to make rumours, distort and hype up issues in a bid to create conflicts, spread separatist thinking, incite ethnic hatred, advocate ‘Xinjiang independence’ and conduct separatist activities”.

Mr Tohti is a well-known scholar, focussing on topics like labour and migration. He has also been an outspoken critic of Chinese policies in Xinjiang, and an advocate for better treatment of Uighurs. Last year, he was stopped at Beijing airport as he tried to travel to the United States to take up a teaching position at Indiana University.

The American government said in a statement that the case appeared to be part of a disturbing pattern of arrests and detentions of people “who peacefully challenge official Chinese policies and actions”. Scholars who are familiar with Mr Tohti’s work have also expressed concern. “It’s not a good sign,” says Dru Gladney, a Xinjiang specialist at Pomona College, in California.  “It gave us some hope that some Uighurs were still able to teach classes, speak out and speak to foreign media. I’ve never known him to advocate independence or violence, or to associate with separatists.”

via More violence in Xinjiang: Unquiet on the western front | The Economist.

Enhanced by Zemanta
22/01/2014

China urges respect for ethnic traditions in restive Xinjiang | Reuters

Ethnic traditions in Xinjiang must be respected, the top official in the restive far western region of China said, despite criticism that government policies there unfairly target the Muslim Uighur ethnic community.

Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Committee of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Zhang Chunxian delivers a speech during a tea forum celebrating the Corban Festival in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, November 5, 2011. REUTERS/China Daily

The government must implement \”ethnic unity education and propaganda\” among all communities, especially among the region\’s youth, the ruling Communist Party\’s Xinjiang chief Zhang Chunxian said in comments carried in state media on Wednesday.

\” must treat issues of local tradition with respect and resolve issues of violence with rule of law and severe measures,\” the official Xinjiang Daily cited Zhang as saying.

China has intensified a sweeping security crackdown in Xinjiang, further repressing Uighur culture, religious tradition and language, rights groups say, despite strong government assertions that it offers Uighurs wide-ranging freedoms.

In November, officials demanded that lawyers in Turpan, an oasis city southeast of the regional capital, Urumqi, commit to guaranteeing that relatives do not wear burqas, veils or participate in illegal religious activities, and that young men do not grow long beards.

Many Uighurs resent local policies imposed by the government and an inflow of Han Chinese migrants, and some Uighur groups are campaigning for an independent homeland for their people.

Experts say China\’s repression of religious practices has pushed some Uighurs to more strongly embrace Islamic traditions.

Zhang\’s pledge follows state media reports in early January that President Xi Jinping was shifting the region\’s focus to maintaining stability over development, after a series of attacks last year fuelled by what the government said was religious extremism.

\” must acknowledge the long-term, acute and complex nature of the anti-separatism and violent terrorism fight,\” Zhang said, adding that there was no contradiction between stability and development.

via China urges respect for ethnic traditions in restive Xinjiang | Reuters.

Enhanced by Zemanta
01/12/2013

Xinjiang college says approved political views needed to graduate | Reuters

College students in China\’s restive western Xinjiang region will not graduate unless their political views are approved, a university official said, as the country wages what school administrators called an ideological war against separatism.

A Uighur student attends a lesson at the Xinjiang College of Uighur Medicine in Hotan in the southwestern part of China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region September 15, 2003. REUTERS/Andrew Wong

Xinjiang is home to the Muslim Uighur ethnic group, many of whom resent controls imposed by Beijing and an inflow of Han Chinese migrants. Some Uighur groups are campaigning for an independent homeland for their people.

University officials from Xinjiang said their institutions were a frontline in a \”life and death struggle\” for the people\’s hearts and a main front in the battle against separatism, the ruling Communist Party\’s official newspaper in the region, the Xinjiang Daily, reported on Tuesday.

\”Students whose political qualifications are not up to par must absolutely not graduate, even if their professional course work is excellent,\” said Xu Yuanzhi, the party secretary at Kashgar Teachers College in southern Xinjiang, which has been an epicenter for ethnic unrest.

It is unclear if such a policy has been officially implemented throughout the region.

\”Ideology is a battlefield without gun smoke,\” Xinjiang Normal University President Weili Balati said.

\”As university leaders, we have the responsibility to do more to help students and teachers properly understand and treat religion, ethnicity and culture and help them distinguish between right and wrong,\” he said.

China blamed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) for an attack on October 28, when a vehicle ploughed through bystanders on Tiananmen Square in Beijing and burst into flames, killing three people in the car and two bystanders.

Uighur exiles, rights groups and some experts have cast doubt on the official accounts of what China has deemed terror attacks and foreign reporting of the incident has discussed whether it was motivated by punitive ethnic policies.

An Islamist militant group has released a speech claiming responsibility for the incident, which China\’s Foreign Ministry said should silence those who are skeptical about the threat of terror within China\’s borders.

The Uighurs are culturally closer to ethnic groups across central Asia and Turkey than the Han Chinese who make up the vast majority of China\’s population.

via Xinjiang college says approved political views needed to graduate | Reuters.

04/11/2013

In China’s Xinjiang, poverty, exclusion are greater threat than Islam | Reuters

If the analysis in this report is correct, then it is good news for China and Xinjiang. Alleviating poverty is difficult, but far easier than eliminating religious extremism.

“In the dirty backstreets of the Uighur old quarter of Xinjiang\’s capital Urumqi in China\’s far west, Abuduwahapu frowns when asked what he thinks is the root cause of the region\’s festering problem with violence and unrest.

A police officer stops a car to check for identifications at a checkpoint near Lukqun town, in Xinjiang province in this October 30, 2013 file photo. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Files

\”The Han Chinese don\’t have faith, and the Uighurs do. So they don\’t really understand each other,\” he said, referring to the Muslim religion the Turkic-speaking Uighur people follow, in contrast to the official atheism of the ruling Communist Party.

But for the teenage bread delivery boy, it\’s not Islam that\’s driving people to commit acts of violence, such as last week\’s deadly car crash in Beijing\’s Tiananmen Square – blamed by the government on Uighur Islamist extremists who want independence.

\”Some people there support independence and some do not. Mostly, those who support it are unsatisfied because they are poor,\” said Abuduwahapu, who came to Urumqi two years ago from the heavily Uighur old Silk Road city of Kashgar in Xinjiang\’s southwest, near the Pakistani and Afghan border.

\”The Han are afraid of Uighers. They are afraid if we had guns, we would kill them,\” he said, standing next to piles of smoldering garbage on plots of land where buildings have been demolished.

China\’s claims that it is fighting an Islamist insurgency in energy-rich Xinjiang – a vast area of deserts, mountains and forests geographically located in central Asia – are not new.”

via In China’s Xinjiang, poverty, exclusion are greater threat than Islam | Reuters.

28/06/2013

Death toll from Xinjiang attacks rises to 35

SCMP: “Beijing yesterday raised the death toll from a series of attacks in Turpan , Xinjiang , on Wednesday from 27 to 35.

e22b4f2d9201a0f19cff5f0782b8ea82.jpg

Twenty-four were killed by rioters, including two policemen, Xinhua said, adding that 16 of them were Uygurs. Police killed 11 rioters, while 21 police officers and civilians were injured.

Xinhua said an unspecified number of “mobsters” stormed the government office, the police station, the People’s Armed Police base and a construction site in Lukqun township, Shanshan county, at around 5.50am on Wednesday. The authorities did not mention that a PAP base was also among the targets of attacks until yesterday.

It said four suspected rioters who were injured had been detained.

It was the first Chinese-language report on the incident released by Xinhua, which carried an English report roughly seven hours after the attacks.

Neither report mentioned the number of attackers, their ethnicity or what caused the attacks. But yesterday’s report branded the incident a “violent terrorist attack”.

A visitor to Turpan yesterday said he saw a roadblock with armed police officers and about 20 police vehicles.

A resident said a helicopter arrived on the scene along with many police and soldiers.

The Global Times, a tabloid affiliated with the People’s Daily, yesterday quoted an unnamed regional official as saying that “earlier this year local police handled a case in which a store was attacked, which might have triggered that violence”.

The attack came less than two weeks ahead of the fourth anniversary of ethnic clashes between Han Chinese and Uygurs in Urumqi , the regional capital, which left nearly 200 dead. Two months ago, 15 policemen or officials and six assailants were killed in another conflict in Bachu county, Kashgar , which involved attackers armed with knives and axes and the burning of a house.

A Lukqun resident told the South China Morning Post by phone that local officials had told people to stay at home and be vigilant soon after the violence on Wednesday, adding that dozens of militia soldiers from his village were patrolling the streets.

It was the deadliest unrest in the region since the media-savvy Zhang Chunxian became regional party secretary in April 2010, less than a year after the bloody clashes in Urumqi.”

via Death toll from Xinjiang attacks rises to 35 | South China Morning Post.

See also:

Law of Unintended Consequences

continuously updated blog about China & India

ChiaHou's Book Reviews

continuously updated blog about China & India

What's wrong with the world; and its economy

continuously updated blog about China & India