by Chairnewman Cardigan
The beleif by some Zionists that an independent palestinian state would be a springboard for a war against Israel is irrational based upon the balance of forces and the concrete political situation.
The belief by Beijing that an independenct Xinjiang would be a client state of the USA used as a springboad to further destabilise the republic is rational, and consistent with the actual balance of forces, and concrete historical situation.
Let us look at the concrete situation today in Xinjiang province.
The Sinophobic reading of the situation there seems to be that the Chinese government are Han chauvinists, suppressing national minorities, persecuting the Islamic religion, and seeking to swamp Xinjiang with Han settlers. But this analysis simply doesn’t accord with the facts.
Firstly, historically the Chinese state has not been built on ethnicity, but on a Mandarin speaking civil bureaucracy, where Mandarin provided a lingua franca for an ethnically, socially, religiously and linguistically diverse society. Secondly, since the Communist party of China coming to power in 1949, they introduced a nationalities policy that created certain rights and privileges for minorities that met the criteria – for example the right to promote their own language, and in modern China, the very significant complete exemption from the one child policy.
Islam is not in any way persecuted or repressed in modern China. Nowadays in China there are ten national minorities, including the Hui and Uyghur, with a total population of 18 million, whose faith is Islam. There are some 30,000 mosques served by 40,000 Imams and Akhunds. Islamic Association of China is an independent organisation promoting the interests of Muslims. Islamic organisations in China run their own affairs independently and can set up religious schools, publish religious texts and periodicals, and run social and welfare services.
here have been a series of terrorist incidents, including the racist murders of Han and Hui, attempted suicide bombings on an airliner last year, and riots during the Olympics that left 16 members of the People’s Armed Police dead. Both the Chinese and US governments accuse Uyghur separatists of links with Al Qaeda.
The security crackdown by China in Xinjiang is therefore a decisive attempt to restore order, and prevent racial tensions from further developing. It is necessary to understand the imperative drive for China to achieve economic growth in what is still a developing country, where many people still live on a $1 per day. It is also necessary to understand the great historic achievement of defeating the Japanese, throwing out the colonialists and reuniting China as one country.
The division of China is simply non-negotiable for the government in Beijing, and they are correct in seeing the unity of the republic as an important precondition for their economic and political independence, which is itself necessary for developing and improving the living standards of their 1.3 billion population. But they clearly do need to rethink how the “Go West” policy is in practice impacting on the autonomous regions, where an understandable and commendable desire to pull these Western provinces out of extreme poverty has created the unintended side effect of increasing wealth differentials, and ethnic tensions.
Well compare and contrast. the peoples republic is a multi-ethnic state that has specific constitional privilages for national miniorities.
Isreal is a Jewish state, despite the fact that 20% of its population is non-Jewish, and the non-Jewish population is legaly discriminated against.
Israel has been involved in a 40 year occupation of palestinian territory, including the anexation of East Jerusalem, and the settlements in the West bank are formally segragated from the Palestinians with different road system, public infrastructure, etc, etc.
In contrast no Chinese soldier has ever stood on foreign soil; and the disadvanatge of Uyghar and Tibetans is the unintended consequence of seeking to develop their regions.
Israel is in military occupation of someone else’s country, and has annexed half of a major Arab city. the only peaceful settlement would be one that involved independence for palestine, unless Israel wants to engage in perpetual warfare.
There is no analogy with the situation in Xinjiang. Which is not under military occupation, and is an autonomus region within the Peoples republic;
October 17, 2009 at 3:32 pm |
“No Chinese soldier has ever stood on foreign soil” … yeah right!!!! You seem to forget they invaded a free and independent Tibet! China also attempted to invade Viet Nam. Please, be honest!
November 3, 2009 at 7:21 am |
Tibet was only independent because the british and indians conspired to make it a buffer between india and china and to weaken china territorially. During the Qing dynasty, the tibetan king voluntarily made itself a part of the empire after a chinese princess was married off to him. China has as much a claim to tibet as america has to hawaii or california. Or as much as a claim as the UK has to northern ireland. If you are going to criticize china go ahead, but dont forget to criticize western countries too
China did invade vietnam but that was a matter of international politics. If you want to talk about invasions, how about the british invading china and taking Hong Kong after the chinese refused to buy their opium? Or an 8 country coalition which attacked china, burned the summer palace and split China into different european zones of interest. Or the japanese invasion of china?
This article analyzes chinese perpectives from rather fair point of view. There is no way China can let any region go independent cuz that would lead to the collapse of china and probably destabilize all of asia. The government does not ESPECIALLY discriminate against muslims. Urumchi has the highest muslim to mosque ratio in the world. It “discriminates” against all of its citizens equally so you can criticize the government’s policies to its people but it does not single out muslims. The xinjiang region’s troubles are mainly economic and from the fact that all of china’s west is undeveloped because it is desert and mountains. The chinese gov has a lot of work to do there, but please do not use moralistic judgements on China