The New Dominion

After a casual weekend browsing session through my RSS aggregator and email I discovered that there are an unusual amount of interesting Xinjiang related articles floating around the Internet, and so now is as good a time as any to do a classic “links” post to give our readers some worthwhile food for thought. Here’s what I’ve found so far.

On the 16th, The Opposite End of China uncovered a Hindustan Times article on an alleged plot by Uyghurs to disrupt the Olympic torch relay in New Delhi. In the end, the torch bearers saw an unusually high number of Tibet protesters (logical, given India as the home of Tibet’s exile community and government), but no major disruptions a la Paris and nothing coming from any Uyghur activists. What’s interesting, however, was the unintentional “experiment” set up by Indian intelligence forces, giving all of us an opportunity to compare and contrast how India and China deal with East Turkestan “plotters,” respectively. Within limits, of course. Even within the few paragraphs of the Hindustan Times article we can detect a slightly greater willingness to be transparent with the alleged plot - 5 Uyghurs, along with their names, and also the path they took through Nepal into India, as gleaned from their passports. A sharp contrast to the way plots hit the press in China. Granted, there are a lot of details missing here, but I’m assuming that’s because its not as big a deal in India, rather than deliberate concealment.

Speaking of plots and concealment, via the Foreign Policy Association’s Central Asia Blog we find a brief article by Hudson Institue scholar Richard Weitz on the recent Olympic terrorism plot unveiled and busted by Chinese authorities a few weeks ago. Real or not real? In a weirdly structured article Weitz spends ten paragraphs giving the usual “Xinjiang background” spiel, which is understandable since presumably most of his intended readers are not familiar with Xinjiang, but then he spends a hasty two paragraphs on the terrorist plot, basically saying since Xinjiang is of high strategic value, it is in China’s best interest to fabricate the terrorist plot, ergo, the terrorist plots were probably fabricated. Patrick Frost at the CA Blog argues that while the logic of skepticism is sound, the threat of terrorism in Xinjiang is real especially given the track record of violent terrorism in Xinjiang: with 200+ recorded incidents in the past few decades, surely some were fabricate, but conversely, surely some were real, correct? Between Frost and Weitz, I think the Chinese government’s strategy in withholding proof and evidence becomes a little more clear: by doing so, we’ll never know if it was a legit terrorist crackdown, nor will we know if it was a fabrication. I’m sure some sort of ancient Chinese wisdom (Sun-Tzu probably, if I bother to look) dictates that it is better for the others to not know either way than to know for certain something is real or not real.

Time Magazine journalist Simon Elegant (What an awesome name. Sounds like a video game character, to be frank.) apparently rushed to Khotan sometime after hearing about the protests that occurred about a month ago. I don’t know he did it, but from the looks of his publications he’s there right now. So for your perusal, here’s “In China’s Wild West.” Naturally written with a more journalistic sort of tint, Elegant’s article nonetheless does capture the post-demonstration haze lingering over Khotan through interviews with both Chinese and (courageous) Uyghurs. Elegant offers some firsthand knowledge corroborating RFA’s claims that the death of a prominent jade trader and philanthropist, Mutallip Hajim, was the trigger for the demonstrations. Curiously, this very same article was published twice on Time’s website, the most recent one being the one linked above, which seems to be a hasty replacement for the still reachable old version, whose text is the same but with the title of “The Other ‘Tibet.’” GROAN. Maybe the journalist caught himself and found the title too tacky and cliche, but if you’re going to rebrand your article, don’t forget to take down the old one!

Professor James Millward has written an excellent article for Open Democracy containing advice on how China should approach public relations crises like the string of Olympic torch fiascoes that have occurred over the past few weeks. While the article isn’t a Xinjiang article per se, Millward himself is a Xinjiang scholar and I must proudly say that his reasonable and on-the-mark advice probably sprung forth from his unique perspective on the Chinese situation. The Xinjiang perspective, of course! No need to discuss what Millward said here because Dave’s done a good job of doing that already over at Mutant Palm.

Not to be outdone by Time Magazine, Reuters has also sent a correspondent to scan the aftermath of the Khotan demonstrations. Lindsay Beck’s article, “Restive Xinjiang: China’s next trouble spot after Tibet?” (GROAN) can be found at this link. Like Elegant, Beck uses some firsthand anecdotes and interviews to sort of ferret out the situation in Khotan. Unlike Elegant, Beck states quite clearly in her article that Xinjiang is unlikely to become the next Tibet (Yay?), wisely referring to the words of Xinjiang scholars like Nicholas Bequelin and anonymous (heh heh).