Post-Olympic Miscellanea
First, a quick apology. Both myself and the other writer for the site have been undergoing some major transitions, though again for the both of us these transitions are quickly getting wrapped up and both we and the site should get back to normal quite soon.
And so for now, I’d just like to share just a few links to some post-Olympic stories of note.
The biggest thing, of course, is the post-Olympic crackdown that is currently going down. It so far has taken the form of a religious clampdown, going so far as to put pressure on outward signs of religiosity like beards and the veil during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. It goes beyond that, of course, but for analysis and discussion I direct you to Michahel’s Collective Punishment and Anti-Ramadan campaign posts. The Shanghaiist has done the great task of finding some of the original documents with the crackdown guidelines, such as this Huocheng County site and this blogger’s thoughts on the newly minhted regulations.
A story from the Shanghai Daily, less about Xinjiang itself, but nonetheless occured in Xinjiang and is of note: a shocking family tragedy comes to a violent close with the execution of Abduhalik Muzht on the 4th. Muzht went to his daughter’s school in December of 2006 wielding a knife, ultimately killing two students and injuring a teacher and two other students. Worse yet: the alleged motivation for Muzht’s attack was revenge for his daughter’s death – who was strangled by her brother, Muzht’s son, because he was embarassed by her poor grades. Now that is a lot to digest – something so tragic and convoluted it would be more likely in a soap opera than among a Xinjiang family. Again, I emphasize that on this information alone there is nothing particulary “Uyghur” or “Xinjiang” about this tragedy – given the stress one places on success in China, and the stresses the education system places on the children, this could’ve happened in Xinjiang, Guangdong, or anywhere in between. Still, who was this brother and why was he that obsessed over his sister’s grades (note that this was a younger brother still in primary school)? Why did the father kill his daughter’s classmates in revenge, when she was killed by her brother? Where was mom, and what will happen to the original murderer, Muzht’s son?The story is so bizarrely moving I’m compelled to look further into it when I have the time and I’ll post anything of note here.
The next story: the economic relationship between Xinjiang and the rest of China I feel is elegantly illustrated by the natural gas pipelines between the two. The first goes from Xinjiang to Shanghai. The second goes via Shanghai to Guangdong. Now, feasibility studies for the third pipeline have begun, according to the People’s Daily. One notices that poor Fujian, another economic titan of the East Coast, gets bypassed by both of the original routes. The solution, of course is another pipeline, and Fujian is the projected destination of the third pipeline should the plans go through. Railroads in, pipelines out. Does anyone know if the second pipeline passes through Zhejiang? If not, 浙江真可怜!
Finally, a fascinating report from Reuters on Nur Bekri, chairman of XUAR. Since Nur Bekri’s ascension to the Chairmanship back in December, I’ve been wondering who exactly Nur Bekri is and what he’s like – it was hard to find anything other than his official biography which unhelpfully lists all the positions he held. This Friday, however, in a speech to communist party officials, Bekri in no unclear terms stated his firm conviction that Western powers are directly supporting unrest in Xinjiang, likely alluding to the attacks that occurred back before the Olympics. From Reuters:
The region’s governor, Nuer Baikeli, said “Western hostile forces” unhappy with China’s rise were directly supporting groups opposed to Beijing’s rule in the region in the name of democracy and human rights.
“They all along have been direct behind-the-scenes backers and patrons of the ‘three forces’ at home and abroad,” Baikeli said, referring to terrorism, separatism and extremism.
“They are the most important external factor in the continuing rise of ethnic splittist, destructive activities in Xinjiang, and the large threat they pose from abroad to our national security and social stability will exist for a long time,” he added.
“Our struggle against ethnic splittism, in essence, is a struggle against Western hostile forces’ plots to ‘Westernise’ and ’split’ our country, it is the continuation of the struggle the Chinese people have had for 100 years or more against imperialist plans to split China.”
I feel this is pretty significant, and can’t help but wonder how much of this is official party belief (either among officials in Xinjiang or national level officials) and how much of this is Bekri’s personal opinions, but the Reuters article does note some indirect sanction of Bekri’s words: his speech was hosted on the Central Government’s website on Friday. While unpersuasively accusing Xinjiang unrest to have backing from Muslim extremists in Central Asia and international terrorist networks is quite expected, claiming that the Western governments are directly supporting the same unrest Bin Laden himself is supposedly helping out is a very new development. Confidently accusing a foreign government of backing terrorism on one’s own soil is a profound thing, as anyone in the United States can tell you. The question, thus, is the one I asked before and I bring up again: as Chairman of the XUAR, how much respect should we ascribe to Bekri’s words? What does the Central leadership think about these statements? After all, VP candidate and governor of “America’s Xinjiang” (If I may take liberties to call Alaska that) Sarah Palin has been posturing quite aggressively towards Russia recently, but again, on the other hand, the democratically elected governor of a state in a Federal union is quite different from the de facto appointed mouthpiece in one of China’s “Autonomous Regions.” Thoughts?
You’ve “re-interpreted” Baikeli’s words beyond recognition. First of all, where did he ever mention any “Western governments”? He merely spoke of “Western hostile forces”, and there’s no indication whatsoever that he was referring to any governmental entities there. Second of all, where did he explicitly call terrorism an objective of those “Western hostile forces”? His speech was clearly focusing on separatism, and the term “three forces” is simply used as a generic term (a “backer” of the “three forces” doesn’t have to back each one of them, just like a fruit-lover doesn’t have to love each single kind of fruit).
Hi, wgj. Good to see you’re still following our site. I’m searching the web for the words in Chinese so we can go straight to the source. I had read another article on his speech that translated a term of his to “Western powers” which of course has different connotations. I ended up using Reuters for the article because Reuters has more clout. The actual Mandarin transcript will resolve your first question.
Another article just recently popped up on my radar which claims that in the same speech Bekri specifically targeted Rebiya Kadeer as a part of the “Western hostile forces” that are fomenting unrest in Xinjiang. Again, I’d like to point out that even if ultimately we find in the Chinese that Bekri isn’t specifically blasting Western governments, its no secret among both China and the West that the current administration has been quite public in its support for Kadeer – see here and here. If the governor of New York blasted a certain so-and-so for causing terrorism in America, and that certain so-and-so has wide open, public support and approval of, say, a Saudi Prince or Syria’s head of state, then the accusation is there.
Secondly, the three forces specifically are terrorism, separatism, and extremism (its actually in the quote I put in the article) and Bekri states unequivocally that whoever he’s talking about is directly backing the “three forces” – there’s no ambiguity here, according to Bekri terrorism is an objective of the “Western hostile forces.” There’s a reason that extremism, separatism, and terrorism are grouped under one catch phrase often used by Chinese officials, because for many of them the three go hand and hand. You and I can easily envision “separatism without terrorism.” However to those running Xinjiang separatism is expressed through terrorism. And as far as we know Bekri did not directly mention the attacks before the Olympics. You can accuse me of assuming and “reading into” things all you want here, but it would be extremely difficult to persuade me that this speech of Bekri’s was made completely in a vacuum and in no way was an ideological answer, among PRC officials, to the attacks that occurred in Bekri’s territory a month ago. So, yes, looking at the sequence of events I believe that even among the three forces, terrorism is playing a big role in Bekri’s speech.
Your theory of “significance of indirect support” lacks merit.
First, accusations of indirect support are so common place they’re absolutely no big deal. How long has China been making Dalai Lama responsible for violent Tibetan separatist activities with Western backing? And how long has the West been naming China a backer of terrorist states like North Korea, Sudan, Iran etc.?
Second, the CIA’s long history of directly supporting (and in some cases, creating) terroristic forces all over the world (South America, Iran, Irak, Afghanistan) is common knowledge. In comparison, public support of some people who in turn have some possible terroristic links are really nothing special — not only for the US or China, but for any government in the world.
I’m going to have to disagree with you there, especially with your examples. Accusations by the PRC government that the Dalai Lama is backing violent Tibetan separatism is a very significant factor that has repeatedly been a source of frustration in efforts to resolve conflicts between the two sides. You’re right about asking “how long” its been: so long that it’s essentially become canon in the way officials speak about the Dalai Lama, and now it is extremely difficult for them to back down from such statements, even if the Dalai Lama has begun to step away from asking for an independent state and, as far as I can tell, at the present time does not condone violent separatism.
The same could be said of America’s occasional decisions to make Chinese support (or claims of Chinese support) for places like North Korea and Sudan an integral part of negotiations. Regardless of the extent of Chinese support (or lack thereof) to these governments, American beliefs about Chinese involvement with them have had real effects on the relationship between China and the US and I’m quite sure have irritated the hell out of Chinese diplomats (and some American ones too).
Nur Bekri is the Chairman of an Autonomous Region. His actual power in Xinjiang is insignificant compared to Wang Lequan’s, and in a top-down government like China’s someone with a position like his doesn’t say things that should be intepereted as foreign policy. I’m not crafting any grand political “theories” about PRC foreign policy with my posts on this remote blog outpost, though I’ve come to the realization that you take blogging quite seriously. Most people following China are aware that the state is quite vocal about its struggle against global Islamic terrorism, and that the same people believe in an insidious Western campaign to “Westernize and democratize” China that conventionally they are far less vocal about. Here, the “Chairman” of one of China’s more unstable regions (from the former “force” far more so than the latter, imo) speaks quite forcefully about both in the same speech, switching from one to the other and at one point conflates the two which I will address in response to your comment in the other post. I do not take this to be a statement of PRC policy or a harbinger of future posturing towards the US. I believe the PRC leadership is an extremely cynical and pragmatic leadership and that in situations involving these kinds of belief cynicism and pragmatism is a good thing which keeps heads cool (vis-a-vis the West). What I’m saying is that with a cynical government rarely do we see what the leaderships personally believe regardless of what policies they decide to implement (wouldn’t we all like to know what goes on in Bush’s head), and here we have Bekri covering some interesting topics in a speech not to the masses but to other Xinjiang CCP leaders. This is why in this original post the question I wanted to see answered is “How conventional are Nur Bekri’s words,” how much of it is propaganda value, how much of it is Nur Bekri’s own impassioned beliefs, and how much of it was transmitted by a higher state organ to be disseminated by Bekri at this meeting.
As to your second point – “public support of some people who in turn have some possible terroristic links are really nothing special” – obviously I think you’re responding to my above comment. If that’s the case, do you think Rebiya Kadeer has “terroristic links?” Because, if so, I would like to see you present that case. “Public support of some people who very likely don’t have terroristic links but who has been questionably place deep into the ‘terroristic narrative’ by a government with an agenda” is significant. You’ve argued, not without merit, that Bekri draws a clear line between Western “peaceful rise” forces and violent religious extremism. If that’s the case, then is Rebiya Kadeer a Western peaceful rise force or a violent religious extremist force? She’s mentioned directly in the speech.
I wasn’t actually referring to anyone specifically (and indeed didn’t have any specific person in mind) when I talked about “public support of some people who in turn have some possible terroristic links”. But since you’re now asking me about Rebiya Kadeer, here is what I think about her: She is the president of WUC, an organization that — at minimum — publicly sympathizes with East Turkestan terrorism. The WUC’s response to the numerous attacks before and during the Olympics is “the Chinese government and its oppressive policy is primarily responsible for the violence”. Please, isn’t “the oppressor made me do it” the very universal justification of all terrorist in the human history? So no, I’m not aware of any (alleged) terroristic involvement by Kadeer, but I’d clearly categorize her as a sympathizer of terrorism.
Also, to demonstrate that I’m by no mean a brain-washed CCP lapdog (seriously, the 50-cent gang would be much more successful in international PR if its members’ foreign language skill is as good as mine, I believe), I’d like to state the obvious that the latest Ramadan clampdown is just insane — more than simply idiotic, that is. I can understand obligated opening hours for restaurants, but forbidding fasting, mosque visits — and beard? You gotta be kidding me! I find it seriously inexplicable how unburdened by basic human intelligence some public policy makers can be (unfortunately this is by no mean limited to China).
[...] with the phrase "Western hostile forces" (西方敌对势力). The first time was back in September when Bekri delivered a massive speech to party officials in which he again identified "Western [...]