The New Dominion

This fine gentleman is Nur Bekri.

This picture is awesome.

Mr. Bekri, who ascended to the chairmanship in early January after his predecessor Ismail Tiliwaldi stepped down, is pretty much a blank page. Sometimes in the most literal sense: although Mr. Bekri is listed as the local government leader of Xinjiang in China.org’s Who’s Who, he, unlike most of the other leaders, has yet to have a linked page about his history in the PRC leadership. Even the voluminous China Vitae lacks a page on Bekri. The only way left, then, to get an impression of Bekri is to look not to his past, but instead, to his actions in the now.

One of the responsibilities of a new official, especially one chosen in the manner Bekri was, is to demonstrate the ways in which he agrees with his predecessor, and the ways in which he departs from former policies. Bekri’s position, which seems so far to serve as a bridge-slash-mouthpiece between the Central Government and the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, is naturally predisposed towards preserving the status-quo and reducing uncertainty. One thing has become certain after last week’s meeting of the People’s National Congress, and that is Bekri intends to preserve fully, right down to the word-to-word rhetoric, the policies of Tiliwaldi vis-a-vis terrorism. From a China Daily article released yesterday:

“Although we have achieved some initial success, we will never slacken in our fight against these evil forces,” he told China Daily.

“We should stay on high alert all the time to crush any attempt to damage Xinjiang’s development and stability.”

Bekri, a deputy to the 11th NPC, made the remarks on the sidelines of the ongoing annual session of the top legislature.

He acknowledged that terrorism, separatism and extremism remain the greatest threats to the region’s development.

“But we have the capability and confidence to safeguard our country’s territorial integrity and ethnic unity,” he said.

A stable, peaceful Xinjiang: anti-terrorism drills near Yining

There’s nothing really new here: good vs. evil, development and stability vs. separatism and extremism, overarching themes of “territorial integrity and ethnic unity.” Elsewhere in the same article we are introduced to some other interesting personae; Hou Xiaoqin, the political commisar of the Xinjiang Armed Police Regiment, and Mamat Hasan, deputy political commisar of the Xinjiang Military Command.

Hou identifies ETIM, or the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, as the primary threat within the larger specter of terrorism in Xinjiang. I’ve seen multiple documents, including this one, issued by Chinese sources describing ETIM as responsible “for more than 200 violent incidents, including explosions, assassinations, arson, poisonings and assaults in Xinjiang and other areas between 1990 and 2001, killing 162 people and injuring 440.” Emphasis on the 1990 to 2001 - a period of time that indeed saw an atypically high amount of violent episodes conducted by terrorist elements. However, as time goes by, every time I see this statistic repeated I can help but wonder with growing curiosity, “What about 2001 to now?” Statistics about such incidents remains expectedly hazy, yet one scholastic article I’m aware of makes a convincing case that the numbers of violent incidents has decreased since the late 1990s. I don’t think its difficult to come up with reasons why it is in the government’s best interest to be relatively less vocal about the decrease of religious violence in the Northwest.

Yet another point in the article, established by Hasan, sees ETIM as unambiguously a part of a larger Islamic extremism and, by proxy, sees China as part of the global forces united against terrorism. Specifically, evidence found during an anti-extremist raid in Akto County last January unearthed clear connections between ETIM and international terrorist forces (evidence that is always pointed to, but never shown, as far as I have found it). Again, its obvious that there are benefits to be reaped from plugging ETIM into a global terrorist network, but anything worth saying about this interesting point has been said in the Millward article above and by the ever keen-sighted davesgonechina in this blog post.

I’m going to have to say that, for the life of me, I simply can’t find an article on Bekri’s, Hou’s, or Hasan’s words in the Chinese media. I’m definitely not going to give myself the benefit of the doubt: I just don’t have enough Mandarin search-engine skills to find it, for sure. But one would swear specifically searching Xinhua for 白克力 would certainly turn it up… if any Mandarin-reading readers are up the the challenge, let me know if you can find anything. I’ll withhold saying “Hm, that’s interesting… English version, but not Chinese?” until the future.

Finally, thanks to a little boost by none other than the man Hu Jintao, Xinjiang managed to nab the top headline on the English edition of China Daily.

I’m not sure why it got that far though, or how long it will last (hence the “print screen” for preservation’s sake), because the actual linked article is just a picture with two paragraphs. Much like the Bekri article, in terms of content and what was said, there’s really nothing new. I’m more amused, actually, by yet another testimony to the rotten state of web design in China. Correct me if I’m wrong, but in terms of structure, shouldn’t the links after the summarizing blurb be semantically connected to the article itself? Hu calls for development, harmony in Xinjiang…FOOD CHALLENGE! It’s my humble opinion that Chinese web designers have a long way to go before overcoming the “vomit links absolutely everywhere with no logic or rhyme or reason whatsoever” phase.